developing advise please.

niko

niko

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hi all, I am running a roll of porta 400 in my lovely little bessa r3a at the moment.
and at the rate i am getting though it, i think in the next two years i will finish the roll:p
as an experiment i am exposing it as if it was 200, just to see the effect of purposely overexposing, instead of me cocking up-mind you could have that as well!
i am sending away for del/scan would you recommend any particular instructions or developing for it?
 
If you want the resulting images to come out as though they have been over exposed by a stop, then simply ask them to develop as normal (no pushing or pulling). If you want the images to appear as if you've not over exposed by a stop, ask them to pull the developing by one stop. Remember though, this will have an effect on the dynamic range of the scene - compressing it if I remember correctly. As such, if you've shot particularly low dynamic range scenes on the film, these will appear even flatter in the resulting negatives.

I should add however, negative films like Portra have a huge lattitude and so realistically, a single stop either side of stock speed probably won't make a massive difference. I expose all of my 5x4 frames of portra 160 at ISO 100 as a matter of course and then develop as normal (at peak-imaging).
 
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thank you, i was looking to improve contrast really, so increase the dr
 
Ahh ok. Best leave under exposing the film to the next roll then, as it's not advised to change between push and pull on a single film. Although, if you dev as normal then that's more acceptable. I'm no expert however, so do some reading around pushing/pulling on colour and B&W film, as I believe there are some subtle differences that should be taken into account.
 
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Woodsy said:
Ahh ok. Best leave under exposing the film to the next roll then, as it's not advised to change between push and pull on a single film. Although, if you dev as normal then that's more acceptable. I'm no expert however, so do some reading around pushing/pulling on colour and B&W film, as I believe there are some subtle differences that should be taken into account.
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sorry you've lost me there? will not overexposing by one stop and developing as normal increase contrast then?
 
niko said:
will not overexposing by one stop and developing as normal increase contrast then?
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As far as I know, no. It will simply give you a single stop of over exposure. This is because the developer has had the proper prescribed amount of time to develop the film *correctly*. Over exposure at the time of capture and under developing will give you a decrease in contrast as you're effectively compressing the dynamic range of the scene. Under exposure and over developing will effectively expand the dynamic range of the scene.
 
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Woodsy said:
As far as I know, no. It will simply give you a single stop of over exposure. This is because the developer has had the proper prescribed amount of time to develop the film *correctly*. Over exposure at the time of capture and under developing will give you a decrease in contrast as you're effectively compressing the dynamic range of the scene. Under exposure and over developing will effectively expand the dynamic range of the scene.
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thank you, out of interest why do you run 160 @ 100?
 
This is all essentially academic however, because as @steveo_mcg said, +/- one stop doesn't make a wild amount of difference.

Hah, now you're asking. Umm, I forget exactly why now. I think I once read from a reliable source (possibly Tim Parkin if my memory serves (???)) that it just helps that little bit with the shadow detail - which is essentially obvious - and, as above really, it's no where near blowing the highlights unless the scene is hilariously contrasty. It makes life a little easier in terms of metering as well, because you can deal in full stops and it brings it in line with other film that I shoot (Provia 100, Acros 100) and hence I don't have to worry so much about forgetting to change the ISO value on my hand held light meter.
 
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Within limits, developing controls the contrast and exposure the density. The time taken in the developer to produce detail in the shadows is (to me) surprisingly small. If you have a high contrast scene, you can reduce the development to reduce the negative contrast, and increase exposure to bring back the density. Within limits. To quantify, Michael Langford in an earlier edition of one of his books shows the effect of development and exposure changes. With a development time of 15 minutes, shadow detail has appeared after about 4 minutes. This is black and white though the principles are the same.

With colour film (which is what you're using) it's still the same story up to a point. The difference is that you have three different emulsion layers in the film to give the three primary colours, and they do in fact usually (always?) have different characteristics. As they are layers, the fastest will be the lowest layer, the slowest the top (as the light is reduced by the time it gets to the bottom layer). They will therefore not react the same to development changes, which has an effect on the colour balance. Adjusting the development (in terms of both time and developer additives) can be used with slide film to correct small colour casts. With negative film, colour casts are handled when you make the print. What you do have to watch is "crossed curves" which means that you might get one colour cast in the shadows and a different one in the highlights, which is more tricky to correct!
 
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StephenM said:
Within limits, developing controls the contrast and exposure the density. The time taken in the developer to produce detail in the shadows is (to me) surprisingly small. If you have a high contrast scene, you can reduce the development to reduce the negative contrast, and increase exposure to bring back the density. Within limits. To quantity, Michael Langford in an earlier edition of one of his books shows the effect of development and exposure changes. With a development time of 15 minutes, shadow detail has appeared after about 4 minutes. This is black and white though the principles are the same.

With colour film (which is what you're using) it's still the same story up to a point. The difference is that you have three different emulsion layers in the film to give the three primary colours, and they do in fact usually (always?) have different characteristics. As they are layers, the fastest will be the lowest layer, the slowest the top (as the light is reduced by the time it gets to the bottom layer). They will therefore not react the same to development changes, which has an effect on the colour balance. Adjusting the development (in terms of both time and developer additives) can be used with slide film to correct small colour casts. With negative film, colour casts are handled when you make the print. What you do have to watch is "crossed curves" which means that you might get one colour cast in the shadows and a different one in the highlights, which is more tricky to correct!
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brilliant thank you, that makes sense
 
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