Barnbaum 2 bath HC110 question.

[Ccoppola82]

Hello,
I had to shoot in some really harsh contrast lighting the other day. It was pretty much 1-2pm with sparse clouds here and there. There were people in shadows cast from buildings, and others in light in the same shot many times. I didn't have a spot or ambient meter, but I did have my digital camera to get an idea of the contrast of the scene. I was concerned about blowing out highlights easily. I remembered a compensating method from Barnbaum's book, so I took a gamble on trying out a very similar process. I am not totally dissatisfied with the negatives, but I think they could be better. They seemed slightly thin, and scanned dark...but allowed me to bring up more than I thought from the shadows while keeping the highlights very well in check. Im fairly certain that I underexposed due to the harsh light, which would explain the shadows being a little thin. Perhaps an extra stop at exposure would have been good to boost the shadows, and the compensating effect would have more or less kept highlights the same as I got here? Anyway, if anyone can offer suggestions to improve this process or any others that would maintain a highlight in such extreme light, I would love to hear your thoughts. I'll lay out the details of development here

Leica M6
Summicron Rigid w/ hood
Tri X EI250

Developer: 65 degrees F. (should I have increased development time?)
Bath A: 1:50 -45 sec agitation, 45 seconds stand
Bath B: 1:200 - 30 Sec agitation, 15 seconds every minute for 10 total dev time of 10 min.


Here are a few images with some LR and Silver FX adjustments. Just exposure and contrast sliders mostly within 20 pts.

[/url]Pence5-Edit.jpg by Chris Coppola, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url]Pence13-Edit.jpg by Chris Coppola, on Flickr[/IMG]

Pence25-Edit.jpg by Chris Coppola, on Flickr
Pence24-Edit.jpg by Chris Coppola, on Flickr
Pence34-Edit.jpg by Chris Coppola, on Flickr

[/url]Pence9-Edit.jpg by Chris Coppola, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[charjohncarter]

I agree the shadows are a little weak. I haven't used Barnbaum's two bath. But I seems to remember that he had a around about way of determining exposure. I really never could see the difference if use just, as you did, reduce the EI (ISO).

I've used compensating development with both Rodinal and HC-110. Rodinal was a problem for me as development with standing was inconsistent, but I do use HC-110 using Ansel Adams SEMI-compensating development. You can find it on the WEB, it is easy and but takes 18 minutes of development time. Henry Wessel and John Sexton both use exposure and development schemes for very bright scenes (John Sexton's High Contrast Scene Compensation is also on the WEB). Henry Wessel seems to get light shadows that give a photo a Los Angeles look. Shadows are flooded with light. You can just feel how bright the day was with his photos. The only hint he has given us is that he uses 'generous exposure' which I interpret to mean 200 EI (ISO) for Trix.

 

[Ccoppola82]

Thank you! I’m gonna look both of those up. I live in WNY and I rarely encounter lighting like this. It’s typically overcast of some sort, likely from the lake moisture in the atmosphere. However, it’s important to have a development method to deal with that light in the arsenal! Much appreciated

 

[charjohncarter]

One other thing, reflective meters measure to middle gray, and I believe DSLRs measure highlights so as not to blow them out. This might cause you to actually have an incorrect reading for B&W film. The old saw is expose for the shadows and develop to the highlights; so it might not be the best idea to use a DSLR for metering for B&W film.

SLRs did this too as they were set to expose correctly for slide film (measure highlights). This is one reason the B&W film users have all kinds of methods to work around this with on board meters: one being finding your EI (ISO) for each film you use.

 

[john_s]

Apart from testing the true EI for your film and developer if you want to (I do), it's all about metering. Many decades ago, Minolta had a feature in some SLRs called CLC (Contrast Light Control) which was that the meter added exposure to contrasty scenes. The metering in modern film SLRs probably do that to some extent in Matrix Metering or whatever the other companies call it, but nothing beats some experience. The OP's somewhat underexposed negs he will never forget. We have all done it.