Slightly OT: shooting high-key

[varjag]

Not really an RF-related, or purely darkroom question, but since we have a lot of experienced shooters here I'd ask anyway.

What is the typical technique for shooting high key scenes? I'm trying to produce a high-key still life with a 13x18 rig I borrowed for a week, and I didn't have much experience with still life before.

My current plan is:
1. Pick an overall light subjects, and set up soft, shadowless lighting
2. Overexpose about 2 stops over the meter reading from them
3. Highlight the white background from below, to achieve a stop or two of exposure over the one for subject
4. Develop the film for highlights thin enough to read a newspaper through.

So I made a test exposure, trying to apply the proper bellows factor correction and account for reciprocity failure, and ended up with the attached neg (sorry for the inaccurate snaps, didn't have a scanner nearby).

As you can see the overall contrast appears too high; supposedly the background and the subject should be less distinguishable. Now the issue is, should I correct the exposure towards denser board, or thinner background, or both? If I make it too thin I'm afraid it won't be printable on normal grade paper (and a contrast grades kinda kill the purpose), while a heavy thick neg also doesn't sound right.

If anyone have done that before, please suggest me what a high-key neg should look like. Any other hints would also be greatly appreciated.

 

[pvdhaar]

Although a thick neg doesn't sound right to you, it's part of the road to getting there. The film responds differently to contrast depending on exposure. Around 18%, response is most linear; differences in contrast show readily in neg density. While at 3 stops over, contrast gets compressed; differences in contrast show marginally in neg density.

From the attachments, I gather that you're shooting B&W. If you're shooting colour, you've an additional worry, and that is that colour reponse is off when you're over or underexposing. You may have to resort to warm or cool filters to achieve the result you want in that case.

 

[varjag]

Thanks for the reply Peter, it was helpful.

You are correct, I'm shooting BW, for aesthetic and economical considerations (have a 120m bulk of 19cm wide film available).

Now, I gather the correction necessary would be increasing the overall exposure about a stop, and cutting on background highlight 2/3rd a stop or so. It should put the image somwhere up the curve, while still avioding deep black background. Will see how it come out later today.