Controling highlights in a wet print

[Lawrence A.]

If the negative is too contrasty, and dodging and burning become too difficult for one reason or another you can try two bath development of the print, though this works best on graded fiber papers. Develop your highlights fully in selectol soft, with infrequent agitation, then douse the print in Dektol to add shadow density and contrast. It's tricky and takes some tests, but can be useful with stubborn negs.

I should add I've been out of a darkroom for a while and don't know if the even make selectol soft anymore.

 

[jbrianfoto]

Potassium ferricyanide......

Potassium ferricyanide......

Now this I want to know more about, please elaborate or possibly, links that I could read?

I remember watching things like a HCB documentary. Someone printed out a picture, and a woman took out a small paint-brush and "painted" something something. She was bleaching then?

That was potassium ferricyanide - some printers liked using this stuff to spot bleach areas of their prints. You take the print out of the fixer, blow (with your mouth usually) dry the spot taht you want to lighten, then carefully wipe on a little of this stuff, then resubmberge into the fixer and wipe it off. It is a hit-or-miss technique, some can do it well. I never liked the idea.

Try reading The Zone VI Workshop, I have had great luck using its described method for producing a good, solid negative everytime. I only use one film, one developer and one paper. Once you nail down a propper processtime for your film, and you make tests to determine your actual film speed, you get excellent negatives every time (as long as you follow the rules).

Enjoy yourself too, that is most important. It is fun to be in the darkroom, fun working with craft.

 

[.... _]

I really learned a lot about the complexity of wet printing from all the great responses to my question. Thanks, I really appreciate it.

But I'm going to disappoint by saying that I'm not currently wet printing or even planning to do so, my question came about with my struggle with digital post-processing where IMO the highlights are never light enough and the shadows are never dark enough.

If I may turn the question around and ask those of you who post-process with photoshop, how do you translate these wet-printing techniques and experience into digital?

use levels to expand the range of your image at either end or both ends and adjust the middle bias accordingly to suit your taste. i.e. to increase or reduce separation in the highlights relative to shadows or increase or reduce separation in the shadows relative to the highlights. Levels are your friend. Some people do it with curves. I prefer levels unless I'm being real picky about a specific region of the image and then I'll create a feathered layer of that region and play with just that bit of the image.

 

[fstops]

use levels to expand the range of your image at either end or both ends and adjust the middle bias accordingly to suit your taste. i.e. to increase or reduce separation in the highlights relative to shadows or increase or reduce separation in the shadows relative to the highlights. Levels are your friend. Some people do it with curves. I prefer levels unless I'm being real picky about a specific region of the image and then I'll create a feathered layer of that region and play with just that bit of the image.

Thanks I will try that.

 

[.... _]

Thanks I will try that.

When you go into levels you see a histogram. You just pull the sliders at either end in to the start of the histogram. Any further and you are clipping. Some people will tell you that you should never clip but that isn't always the best approach. Often clipping the shadows adds some real punch to an image by giving it a full range from black to white. Greater care is required if clipping highlights. It should be done very judiciously if you do need or want to do it.

 

[Calzone]

What would the benefits be for using graded papers versus VC? Excuse me if it's a stupid question, I got my darkroom ½ year ago, and know only what I've read on the Internets 🙂

In art school we were taught to make consistent negatives that printed well on either straight grade number two or three paper.

The key here is to be able to control and understand exposure enough to make perfect negatives that are consistent that had just the right density.

The real benefit is that you don't use filters and you don't require all these graded papers.

Also rather than burn I would sometimes locally aggitate the developer near highlights that needed a bit more exposure.

Cal

 

[sepiareverb]

Set exposure for the highlights, then adjust the shadows by changing paper grade. Dodge and burn to refine small areas.

Yep.

VC caught up 20 years ago or more.

Yep.

Different papers dry down more or less meaning there is more tone in whites when the print dries. It all a balance of exposure and ma ny times requires dodging or often in my case burning in the highs. Sometimes they need bleached.

Yep.

I think drydown is the hardest part of the learning curve in the darkroom, as that print that looks so perfect wet may look like mush when dry. Bleach is a great tool, as is a pail of straight developer and a pail of ice water- each with a brush. I was a hard-core graded paper printer for years- where those brushes come in especially handy, but using the modern VC papers from everyone (well the fiber ones anyway- I never use RC) is a no-brainer. They are spectacular. Chris gives the basic recipe, now you just need to practice till you can adjust the seasoning to your own taste. Put on some comfortable shoes, turn up the music and have fun!

 

[KM-25]

+1...

But I gotta say I love this little gizmo for helping it all along:

http://www.rhdesigns.co.uk/darkroom/html/paperflasher.html

Yep.



Yep.



Yep.

I think drydown is the hardest part of the learning curve in the darkroom, as that print that looks so perfect wet may look like mush when dry. Bleach is a great tool, as is a pail of straight developer and a pail of ice water- each with a brush. I was a hard-core graded paper printer for years- where those brushes come in especially handy, but using the modern VC papers from everyone (well the fiber ones anyway- I never use RC) is a no-brainer. They are spectacular. Chris gives the basic recipe, now you just need to practice till you can adjust the seasoning to your own taste. Put on some comfortable shoes, turn up the music and have fun!

 

[Turtle]

This is very true and desirable, but sometimes not achievable. Unlike shooting with individual sheets, lighting and contrast range can vary dramatically from frame to frame when shooting rolls. For this reason, when shooting more and more 35mm and 120 (instead of 5x4) I became a much better printer, because I would be hopping from dead flat negatives to those that were denser and with high contrast.

I find choosing a forgiving developer helps, such as diluted Xtol. Something like Tmax for everything would make you work a lot harder due to the upswept curve and rapidly building highlight density.The RH designs paper flasher is also astonishingly useful. If mine was taken away I would sulk, then get angry and turn into the incredible hulk to take it back. We are talking £65 of bacon saving brilliance.

In art school we were taught to make consistent negatives that printed well on either straight grade number two or three paper.

The key here is to be able to control and understand exposure enough to make perfect negatives that are consistent that had just the right density.
....
Cal

 

[Pablito]

That was potassium ferricyanide -

If you use it, be very careful. It's poisonous.

 

[sepiareverb]

+1...

But I gotta say I love this little gizmo for helping it all along:

http://www.rhdesigns.co.uk/darkroom/html/paperflasher.html

Flashing is another great tool- sometimes the only one that will work.

 

[Calzone]

This is very true and desirable, but sometimes not achievable. Unlike shooting with individual sheets, lighting and contrast range can vary dramatically from frame to frame when shooting rolls. For this reason, when shooting more and more 35mm and 120 (instead of 5x4) I became a much better printer, because I would be hopping from dead flat negatives to those that were denser and with high contrast.

I find choosing a forgiving developer helps, such as diluted Xtol. Something like Tmax for everything would make you work a lot harder due to the upswept curve and rapidly building highlight density.The RH designs paper flasher is also astonishingly useful. If mine was taken away I would sulk, then get angry and turn into the incredible hulk to take it back. We are talking £65 of bacon saving brilliance.

Your comments are spot on. Making good negatives is not easy, nor is getting the consistency that I mention. You are correct that while my approach is very desirable that you are clear to point out that it is elusive and not always obtainable, but its like magic when it does work.

I only shoot roll film BTW, but I do tend to shoot like I'm shooting large format and making negatives for contact printing.

Cal

 

[KM-25]

A Tale Of Challenging Highlights…

A Tale Of Challenging Highlights…

A story of last night's darkroom adventures...

So a few months back, my wife and I set out to drive about 4 hours away from home to get a fine art level image of the May 22nd annular eclipse, it would be my first eclipse since one that got clouded out in Hawaii in 1991. I wanted a wider view that gave the image perspective rather than often the dull telescopic photos one most often sees with this kind of event. So we opted for a high view above Canyonlands National Park in Utah. That morning, I set up a D800, Hasselblad 501 CM with a 100mm and my 4x5 field camera. I shot Fuji Acros 100 in the blad, Tmax 100 in the 4x5.

I knew the light would be challenging as the canyon was backlit and the sun much brighter than the exposure for the bottom. But when a cloud moved in front of the sun it really upped the challenge factor. I ended up using two 3 stop ND grad filters for a total of 6 stops to hold back as much as I could on the top of the shot, bracketed and my wife and I really had to hustle our buns off to run all three cameras. Needless to say, when I got home, I was pretty disappointed in what my initial results were. The D800, despite it's much improved range, simply did not come close to getting the sun rendered, it was a bright featureless blob of clouds….this did not bode well for the film so I thought.

So I ran half the 4x5 first, it too came out too contrasty to render an image. I then ran the other half at a greater dilution. It got a tiny bit closer but still no good for a fine art image…I wanted powerful, in your face, "Moonlight Over Hernandez" looking stark eclipse…I was not even close…Damn! So with only the one roll of 120 Acros remaining, I really thought my way out of this corner. I looked up really dilute ratios of Acros in Rodinal and the massive development chart only went to 1+50 with that film. So I did some math and decided that at 1+200, I would go for 26 minutes and do three gentle inversions every three minutes. I was stunned at what I saw, it totally worked and I really liked the contrail that went right through it, the shadow it cast! There was enough information on the negative to get the image I wanted in the darkroom, woot!

So for the first time, I printed part of an edition last night, 10 each of the image in 10 x 10 on Ilford Multigrade Warm Tone fiber based variable contrast paper. But as expected, it took a bit of work, so here is how it went, after about 90 minutes of careful test strips, I did the following in this order:

1. Used the paper flasher for 4 seconds on the top 1/4 of the paper only.

2. Printed the entire image at grade 4 for 9.76 seconds.

3. Burned in the top 1/4 of the image at grade 4 for another 2.45 seconds.

4. Burned in the top half of the image at grade 00 for 32.9 seconds, gradually working my way up for an even gradation, the beep every second helped greatly with this.

5. Burned in just the sun at grade 00 for another 11.6 seconds using a mask with a small hole in it.

Every print was totally consistent and looked great. The attached image is of the actual print on my outside deck using a D800, does not do it justice. This is what I would call an extreme case of retaining highlights and I still can't believe it worked…🙂

 

[.... _]

Turtle raises a good point about roll film.

The old adage to expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights is a good one if you are modifying development to suit subject brightness range. But that very often doesn't happen with roll film since the brightness ranges are all over the place.

After years I came to the conclusion that exposing for the highlights is a good solution but with one major caveat which is, if the subject brightness range is greater than the brightness range you've calibrated film development for then you revert to exposing for the shadows. You need to be able to use a spot meter to do that effectively.

The benefits are due to the following reasons.

The average outdoor subject is 7 or 8 stops SBR. I calibrate development for a 10 stop range. This means I get slightly soft negs most of the time but that is simple to bump up contrast in printing.

Now if you photograph a subject of only 5 stops range exposing for the shadows in the usual way, then your film shadow densities are normal but your film highlight densities are lower than normal. When you print working out a time for the highlight, the print time will be shorter than is necessary to produce a max black from the shadow areas because the highlight is thin and requires less exposure than normal. If you then increase contrast you'll block shadow detail because there is no margin in the deep shadows which are very thin with little separation to start with. And you have to increase print time a little to retain subtle highlight detail which makes things worse.
But if you had exposed for the highlights, the film highlight densities will be normal and the print time will be normal regardless of SBR unless you've hit the caveat above.
The shadow film densities on the other hand will be relatively overexposed and thicker than normal. But importantly they will have been lifted up from the toe and have greater separation than normal. That means when you increase print contrast to darken them you have some margin to do it without blocking them.

Another significant factor is the speed point of your VC filters. Ilford MG filters have a speed point which crosses on around 0.3 print density which is great if you are working out print time for highlights. On the other hand my Durst L1200 dichro head has a speed point of around 0.7 which is a middle grey so I work print times for middle grey and not highlights and accept that every contrast change will require a print time change. Ilford MG filters have a lot in their favour and I often use them instead of the dichro filters.

For the few images where the SBR is greater than 10 stops then I just have to fight it by trial and error but having exposed for shadows at least I have some detail to try and retain.

Slightly soft negs using exposures based on highlights makes printing roll film with varying SBRs easier IMO.

Others have come to the same conclusion long before me.

And as one member likes to tell everyone, incident meters are keyed to the highlights. There is a reason for that.

Just my opinion for what its worth. From previous discussions elsewhere this seems to be a controversial standpoint. Largely I think because the old traditions are so ingrained in writings and forced opinion. But I think it has merit if you want to try it. But you do need a spot meter and be able to use it effectively. And be able to do good film dev calibration right through to printing. It's the domain of the landscape, still life or static subject photographer more than the street shooter.

 

[Lawrence A.]

The adage "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights" is great for large format film where each negative can be separated and developed according to its need. Various compensating development schemes for extreme tonal range can work really well. I always liked two bath development using dilute HC110 followed by long spells in a tray of Kodalk solution. For color and all roll film, though, I've tended to expose for the brightest highlight in which I wanted to retain full texture and detail, placing it on zone 7 or 7 1/2 and letting the shadows fall. In normal circumstances it works well. In extreme circumstances: well, its hard to develop a roll that contains everything from images requiring normal development to those needing pyro. In that case something has just got to give.