Controlling contrast in development

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Nebular89

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Not too long ago I watched a video in which the development time was cut in half to control the highlights and give a flat negative to make it easy to scan/print.

I believe Rodinal 1:100 semi stand for an hour or so does a similar thing. I have done this before but only when I played around with pushing HP5 to 3200. I wasn’t trying to control contrast.

I have yet to try doing this but if it works why isn’t it the norm? From what I understand this is essentially how Ansel Adams used to develop film. But it doesn’t seem to be done with roll film. I know it would affect the whole roll but if it works…
 
Never tried it, so I can't comment from experience.

The developing process uses up some of the constituent chemicals in the developer as it goes along. If you don't use agitation to slosh the liquid around in the tank (or dish), then certain regions on the negatives will no longer have any active developer to enable development to continue, except what reaches the area by diffusion. Consider what happens if you add a drop of food colouring to beaker of water, without stirring or shaking, it takes some time to colour the whole volume.

That's what's happening in the unagitated tank; the parts of the image that received the most exposure are exhausting the developer faster, and letting the less well exposed parts catch up (relatively). Hence why people push underexposed film by stand development.

There are possible drawbacks like bromide drag (nothing to do with performance art...) but no-one seems to mention (or experience) this, so I suppose it's not an issue.

Development to completion might run the risk of chemical fogging, but again no-one seems to find this.

More development also means (like more exposure) more grain.

From my point of view, standard times give me negatives I like, and take less time overall. The only downsides are manually inverting the tank and not being able to sit down for an hour during the developing.
 
StephenM said:
Never tried it, so I can't comment from experience.

The developing process uses up some of the constituent chemicals in the developer as it goes along. If you don't use agitation to slosh the liquid around in the tank (or dish), then certain regions on the negatives will no longer have any active developer to enable development to continue, except what reaches the area by diffusion. Consider what happens if you add a drop of food colouring to beaker of water, without stirring or shaking, it takes some time to colour the whole volume.

That's what's happening in the unagitated tank; the parts of the image that received the most exposure are exhausting the developer faster, and letting the less well exposed parts catch up (relatively). Hence why people push underexposed film by stand development.

There are possible drawbacks like bromide drag (nothing to do with performance art...) but no-one seems to mention (or experience) this, so I suppose it's not an issue.

Development to completion might run the risk of chemical fogging, but again no-one seems to find this.

More development also means (like more exposure) more grain.

From my point of view, standard times give me negatives I like, and take less time overall. The only downsides are manually inverting the tank and not being able to sit down for an hour during the developing.
Click to expand...
What about cutting the development time in half of a normal development?
When I have done stand development in the past I would agitate half way through and it seemed to work. But I have had bromide drag before, I don’t think I’d use it for anything really important
 
Do you mean (e.g.) 8 minutes development instead of the normal 16 (my time for FP4 in Rodinal)? That would reduce contrast and very slightly (possibly unnoticeably) shadow detail.
 
Nebular89 said:
Not too long ago I watched a video in which the development time was cut in half to control the highlights and give a flat negative to make it easy to scan/print.

I believe Rodinal 1:100 semi stand for an hour or so does a similar thing. I have done this before but only when I played around with pushing HP5 to 3200. I wasn’t trying to control contrast.

I have yet to try doing this but if it works why isn’t it the norm?
Click to expand...

I have no experience with Rodinal 1:100 and reduced agitation, but modulating development length and dilution (whilst retaining agitation) is the norm for many. IMO it's not talked about much on social media because many social media film users tend to offsource development and scanning to a lab, and surrender this essential element of negative control to the lab (though it's of course possible to ask the lab to push or pull a roll by discrete amounts).

I personally do contrast control via development all the time with 120 film (easy for me to shoot the entire set of 8-12 pictures in the same lighting conditions and control contrast via development for all). I'll often do it with 35mm film, especially 24 frame rolls, or rolls I tend to use within an hour or so of loading.

Here's a perhaps relevant recent social media opinion on the matter. Note the discussion focuses on printing, but it's equally relevant when scanning negatives IME.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq8oQGvhFYg
 
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StephenM said:
Do you mean (e.g.) 8 minutes development instead of the normal 16 (my time for FP4 in Rodinal)? That would reduce contrast and very slightly (possibly unnoticeably) shadow detail.
Click to expand...
Yes. I'll see if I can find the video again. He does waffle on a bit too much though.
 
trypdal said:
I have no experience with Rodinal 1:100 and reduced agitation, but modulating development length and dilution (whilst retaining agitation) is the norm for many. IMO it's not talked about much on social media because many social media film users tend to offsource development and scanning to a lab, and surrender this essential element of negative control to the lab (though it's of course possible to ask the lab to push or pull a roll by discrete amounts).

I personally do contrast control via development all the time with 120 film (easy for me to shoot the entire set of 8-12 pictures in the same lighting conditions and control contrast via development for all). I'll often do it with 35mm film, especially 24 frame rolls, or rolls I tend to use within an hour or so of loading.

Here's a perhaps relevant recent social media opinion on the matter. Note the discussion focuses on printing, but it's equally relevant when scanning negatives IME.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq8oQGvhFYg
Click to expand...
Cheers, ill have a watch
 
When I used to photograph weddings in B&W many moons ago using Tri-X film, to retain detail in both the brides white dress and a grooms dark suit I would always over expose by one F stop ie snap at 200 ASA/ISO and cut development by 25%. It used to work a treat for lowering negative contrast.
 
trypdal said:
I have no experience with Rodinal 1:100 and reduced agitation, but modulating development length and dilution (whilst retaining agitation) is the norm for many. IMO it's not talked about much on social media because many social media film users tend to offsource development and scanning to a lab, and surrender this essential element of negative control to the lab (though it's of course possible to ask the lab to push or pull a roll by discrete amounts).

I personally do contrast control via development all the time with 120 film (easy for me to shoot the entire set of 8-12 pictures in the same lighting conditions and control contrast via development for all). I'll often do it with 35mm film, especially 24 frame rolls, or rolls I tend to use within an hour or so of loading.

Here's a perhaps relevant recent social media opinion on the matter. Note the discussion focuses on printing, but it's equally relevant when scanning negatives IME.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq8oQGvhFYg
Click to expand...
Just watched it. It does make sense, though it might be tricky to apply to roll film unless you bulk roll and can make smaller rolls. I do intend to go down the bulk route soon, just need a loader and I need to decide on Kentmere or HP5. Heart says HP5, wallet says Kentmere!
 
G.K.Jnr. said:
When I used to photograph weddings in B&W many moons ago using Tri-X film, to retain detail in both the brides white dress and a grooms dark suit I would always over expose by one F stop ie snap at 200 ASA/ISO and cut development by 25%. It used to work a treat for lowering negative contrast.
Click to expand...
Thats generally he suggests in the video.
Really I need to get some film in bulk and do some testing with small rolls. I quite often will use the same roll in different types of lighting, 1 roll would last me quite a while when away as I combine film and digital, so ideally Id settle on something that works for most, if not all situations.
 
Nebular89 said:
Thats generally he suggests in the video.
Really I need to get some film in bulk and do some testing with small rolls. I quite often will use the same roll in different types of lighting, 1 roll would last me quite a while when away as I combine film and digital, so ideally Id settle on something that works for most, if not all situations.
Click to expand...

I've not looked at any videos etc, I just know by doing that technique worked for me and (many other toggers) was a standard practice for lowering the negative contrast. I also used to do that religiously when using original FP4 with any format film ie 35mm, 120, 5x4 sheet. My developing was usually done in ID11/D76.
 
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Plus of course the converse of cutting a stop off the exposure and increasing the development time for low contrast subjects.

If you really want to go the whole hog (alternative phrase as per a dictionary - make a complete pig of it :) ) explore the Zone System. But make sure you have everything carefully locked down (Ansel Adams used to measure the actual apertures of his lenses to eliminate that inaccuracy...) and have a densitometer before you start. And a spot meter. You're going to be determining not only the development times but the film speed you should be using. It will take a lot of effort (and film).

I still take the simple route of rating FP4 at 80 (to make sure that the shadows are OK) and using the manufacturer's developing times. I don't use a spot meter - I've used "place my hand in sunlight, take a reading from my palm, open up one stop" since the mid 1960s and found it works for me. But I'm very lazy... And I use Black and white, where the latitude covers this sort of thing.

Historical note - look up speed ratings, where they came from, and how every manufacturer was able to literally double their film speeds overnight, even on already sold stock in the early 1960s... Knowing that makes you easier about film speed, and that just leaves the developing. If you're not doing extreme things (like photographing a black cat in a coal cellar at midnight with no lighting, Pan F in the camera, and absolutely must get an image for next morning's newspaper) then standard development times plus/minus 25-33% should cover almost everything else. If you're scanning, you even have a much easier time of it, because you don't have the paper bottleneck to strangle the quality of sub optimal negatives. See (if you can find a copy) the late Barry Thornton's Elements of Transition.
 
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