This question was the second part to another post, and seems to have gotten swallowed up and forgotten, therefore a separate thread:
I am wondering how people get such a large tonal range in flat/low contrast scenes, and in scenes where the areas of bright highlight and dark shadow are too small to take a meter reading from. Do you place a grey card in the scene, select you exposure based on that, or a stop or 2 below (to compensate for increased development time), then really increase development? Or do you photograph it flat then use a high paper grade? I don't see how a high paper grade would work, because so much detail is lost in the shadows and highlights when that is done, and the photos I've seen have lost no detail at all. A number of examples that stick out in my head are the photos that many have done of trailside leaves (e.g. front cover of AA's "The Print", Sexton's "Agave Detail"). JBrunner has a great example in his "Botanicals" gallery. Jason! How you do dat!?
Thanks,
Tim
__________________ If only we could pull out our brains and use only our eyes. P. Picasso
Decrease exposure. There is much more seperation between lower exposure zones than there is between lighter ones. And then augment development appropriately and print to your liking.
Decrease exposure. There is much more seperation between lower exposure zones than there is between lighter ones. And then augment development appropriately and print to your liking.
Cool- thanks. So would you just expose for zone 3 for the general area (if there was no specific "shadow" you could meter) then increase development?
Tim
__________________ If only we could pull out our brains and use only our eyes. P. Picasso
If the areas of highlight and shadow are too small to meter from, I would select a good area to meter, and decide where I would like to place that in the scene. Say there was a building that had very little highlight or shadow detail, but a large area of wood cladding that I would like to be slightly darker than a mid-gray. I would meter on the wood, and reduce the exposure by around a stop.
Then, if the contrast range in the scene was very short, I would reduce the exposure by another stop (if really low contrast, by another two stops), and increase my development for the film; generally around 15 - 20% for a one stop reduction, perhaps as much as 25% for a two stop reduction in exposure. This is where a little testing of your film/exposure/development comes in handy, as it gives you a good indication of how much you will have to adjust for a given scene.
Basically. The longer the development, the greater the contrast index of the negative, but also the shadows will become denser; therefore adjust for the shadows by reducing the exposure.
__________________
Steve
"You don't need eyes to see, you need vision" - Maxi Jazz
It can be tough, if not impossible, to get a lot of expansion into a neg that is shot in *totally* flat conditions. Additionally, sharp detail can be hard to render in these situations, due to the totally even and diffused light everywhere. Therefore even if you tweak things to add more contrast, it can look rather odd in the end, with very flat dark areas of the print. No matter how much contrast you add or remove, you are still stuck with the basic quality of light that existed at the scene. So, it would probably be best to really think long and hard about how you want to render the scene, keeping in mind that no matter what you do, you will not get the ultra-sharp, ultra detailed look that comes from a certain quality of light that just cannot be present in a flat lighting situation. Every artist has a different idea of what he or she wants to print. I would personally think that this kind of scene would scream to be printed as a beautiful long-scaled midtoned print, giving up on the standard black-to-white print.
But as long as there is about three "stops" at the scene of exposure, you can get a somewhat "normal-looking" print if you are a good printer. What you want to do is make an exposure that will place the range of luminances at the scene (let's say three "stops" in this example) on a strip of your S curve that will allow you to add the most contrast with development and toning, then develop to N+2, if you can get there without introducing what you consider to be unacceptable levels of fog and grain (the larger the format the better, for this reason), and then tone the neg in a strong selenium bath to push it even farther.
When you make this exposure, however, you also have to consider where you want your last detail (III) and last texture (II) to be on the print. If you want texture on something, you don't want to place it below II. If you want detail, you don't want to place it below III. It would add the most contrast if you were to place the darkest luminance in the scene on zone 0 or I, but you would lose detail and texture at the expense of this contrast. It all comes down to where you want to make the compromises, as they cannot be avoided.
Personally, if I were shooting for a versatile negative in a scene with a range of luminances that was three "stops", this is what I would do:
1. Find the darkest area of the scene where I want texture on the print. Instead of placing this on zone II, I would place it on zone III, as I know for sure that I will have to print on a hard paper, which will push it down in printing. Having it on zone III will not maximize contrast index of the neg, because it moves the whole luminance range up the S curve. However, it will give you enough meat to manipulate the local contrast in this area via dodging and burning when you go to print. Like I said, it's a balancing act. Anything you do that is ideal for one effect will not be ideal for another.
2. This would make the highest luminance value at the scene fall on V. I know with my favorite zone system film, with a combination of development and toning, I can get darned near a net +3, which would have a zone V fall end up at a near zone VIII. So I would develop to N+2, which is as far as I have tested for, and then tone.
3. I would end up with a neg that should theoretically print from zones III to near-VIII with normal printing on my target paper, plus any shadow values that [hopefully] fell below those that I placed on III. However, the extreme development will also have raised the value of that zone III placement a bit. But that is OK, because this just means I can print on an even harder paper without losing that area.
All of this is assuming a wanted a fairly normal looking print, or at least just a versatile neg.
The reason I have had no problems getting to N+2, while others cannot, is that my target paper for my development testing is a grade 3, not a grade 2. I do this so I can either go up one grade or down one grade in printing, given the limited selection of grades now available. I like having the option of one grade below the target paper. This means that my normal development is flatter than is traditional, so my N+s are flatter as well. This means that what I call my N+2 is the same as what most would call N+1. If I tested for it, I bet I could get up to an N+2.5 (or maybe even N+3?) with development alone. I love HP5!
why don't you use a high contrast film? Most of them are pretty slow films and orthochromatic but one is http://www.gigabitfilm.de/html/english/menu.htm which is panchromatic.
I guess if you are doing hanheld then maybe its not suitable but if you are on a tripod, then why not?
We've been discussing, over on another thread, a developer that was specifically designed for that kind of light situation: Edwal 12. It has a way of allowing local contrast to have a much enhanced appearance, "snap" even if the overall contrast is soft. Neat stuff. It was the bread and butter of many of the old timers who used it when Harvey's 777 wasn't right for the situation. It loves to make contrast. Germain's formula is a variant, and does the same thing.
I live in the Pacific NW south of Vancouver BC. It is flat here, too, so I've done lots of shooting in dull situations.
Metering. I'd be careful of applying generalized formulae. The first thing I'd look at is how I'm metering in the first place. If I include the sky in a general reading, even if it is abysmally flat, it will result in underexposure unless corrected. So, I would exclude the sky in the reading even if including it in the scene. The sky, however dull, is the light source.
If I feel the need for precise readings, I will go to the trouble to create a shadow with my body that simulates those that are under things, read that, and place as appropriate, then develop to produce the highlights I want. The aforementioned increase of density in shadow areas is an important point to consider. Familiarity with the particular curves that my film and developer produce can be very helpful. It is important to keep the middle tones out of the toe area, because the best separation is in the midrange "straight line" part of the curve. Enough exposure is important because unless it is given, the sky will fall in the straight line rather than on the shoulder where it belongs, and it would be very hard to get detail in it. If it is in the right part of the curve, chances of saving the detail in clouds, etc, are much improved.
It is surprising how dark shadows can be in those "revealing light" situations, where most shadows are cancelled by overcast. In general, I'd suspect that even a straight reading wouldn't be at all bad. I'd avoid too much low placement, i.e. placing the whole scene at z3 as mentioned. I'd fear having too much of the scene down in the toe, which would give a real strange look and the sky would rocket out of sight, since it would be in the midrange to begin with.
Low contrast scenes 
Linear Mode
