Ralph Gibson over exposure and overdeveloment question?

[pmu]

My teacher who has connections with Mr Gibson told me that nowadays Gibson is doing (or someone else is doing for him) larger prints digitally (you know, scanning & computer stuff).

I would like to know what is the technique / gear used in that process... Over exposed and over developed negatives sound like a nightmare to scan.

[jnanian]

barry

you might consider bracketing your exposures
so you have some negatives that are 2 stops
some that are 3 stops &C over exposed,
and shoot in a handful of different lighting situations so
you can judge which of your group looks best for your use.

i regularly over expose my film by at least 2 or 3 stops
and over develop my film. some of the results are less than
stellar, but depending on the light and atmosphere some (other frames)
can look pretty good.
no-high contrast scenes tend to look the best, so the highlights sing.

good luck !
john

[RidingWaves]

One Crucial element about that Gibson Darkroom technique that few notice is that he is printing with a Leitz Focomat Ic with a 212 bulb, which is the twice the wattage of the usual 211 bulb. F-stop is 5.6 for 15 sec, on *Graded* paper, he's able to blast right thru those super dense parts, and his Rodinal technique allows those dense parts to still print thru, admittedly at the expense of the lower end of the print shadows. Oh yeah, extended time in the print developer helps this look as well.

[stradibarrius]

Well here a few of the shots that came form the first roll. The film is Arista Premium 400 (Tri-X 400) developed in Rodinal 1+50 for 16.7 min.
The scanned pretty well. I am not sure I can tell any real difference than the way I would normally shoot the film. I may try again and use Rodinal 1+25 as described in the book.

Working things out for yourself helps me understand better.

[RidingWaves]

That last shot is close to the look. You really need to blast it in exposure, blast it in Rodinal 1:25 and over-develop, and then be able to blast thru the density on the printing stage, then over-develop the print, and that really does it for the Gibson look. He shows his hand holding up a normal neg and one of his and most normal printing people would think that his neg is totally unusable it is so dense, but that how he does it for his look. Quite handy at times.
NExt time try going way too far in everything.

[perkeleellinen]

When I tried I agitated vigorously for the first 60 seconds, then 15 seconds in every minute. By vigorous I mean turning the tank 180 degrees and back every second. So about 15 of those agitations/inversions each minute and 60 of them at the start.