charjohncarter said:
Do you think cutting back on the development time will increase the shadows?
Development time won't realistically affect shadows at all. Shadows are exposure. That's why I got all "spot meter-y" on you. To really figure out a film's ability to get adequate shadow detail, you need to meter the shadows exclusively.
One thing - and this is to again clarify what I meant since we had a bit of a disagreement/misunderstanding - is that when I say you have to meter the shadows, I mean that you have to do that if you _really_ want to judge and evaluate film speed (ability to get shadow details). I am not telling you how to meter and/or shoot your photos.
I worked hard to get exactly what I wanted with the TXT @ 200. I am fine with it, and I don't seem to have to much of an exposure problem.
Again, with my comment above - if it works for you, then it works. I mention that overexposure can add grain, and ideally, to minimize it, you want just the _minimum_ amount of exposure to get your desired shadow detail. But such controlled situations are hard to come by or take a lot of work, so stick with what works for you, no question.
So I may try rising the rated speed a little. I tried to get the shadow detail that I like at the box speed and I was never successful, that is when I cut it back.
What you could do is this, if you really want to get wacky
🙂
In your first picture, you are dealing with not only a contrasty scene (as far as I can tell) but also one where the shadow areas are relatively small. You are certainly not metering the shadows, nor are they even dominant. So your meter is going to cause you to lose those shadows almost all the time. That's just the nature of the scene, and of meters. What you can do is rate the film lower, of just increase exposure, in those situations. So shoot that first scene, which is arguably an extreme example of contrast, at like 25.
Your second shot actually has very smooth lighting, as far as I can tell. You could've probably shot that at 64 or even 80 and still been okay.
This is hard, but what I'm suggesting is that you adjust exposure or your actual ISO dial based on the scene. Eventually you will get a feel for what setting to use for a scene.
This, of course, makes development time hard. You have to develop for the extreme contrast situations, since those have the most exposure and will result in the most blown-out highlights. But then you'll get relatively flat negatives for your second scene.
However, development problems like that are almost unavoidable with 35mm film, where it's unlikely that you'll get 36 straight shots of the same rough contrast range.
One last comment - it is not unusual _at_all_ to rate, say, a 100 speed film at 80 or 64 depending on the developer used. But once you get to a full stop, you are clearly running into major problems, such as running into very contrast scenes a lot. One thing you can do is to change developers or techniques to get greater basic speed.
With HC-110, consider higher dilutions, longer dev times and reduced agitation (like 10s every 3 minutes). I've seen results with TXT that look like legit 800 with this method, in terms of shadow detail. Or just try something like Microphen, which should get the Foma to at least 100 in most situations, if not 125.
allan
