[keyofnight]

And in fact, disregarding the obvious potential problems which have been talked about many times, stand development does not typically produce as much contrast reduction as people think it will. It depends a great deal on the chosen developer. Further, people need to think about what sort of contrast reduction they are looking for, depending on how they will print and what kind of detail they want. Using extreme compensating development procedures in an attempt to compress a long luminance range into the "paper range" can often result in more loss than gain in terms of the printable information in the negative. You can, for example, end up blowing the highlights with too much compression - as counterintuitive as that may sound.

So, I've thought about this a bunch…and now I'm re-reading Ansel Adams' The Negative on the positives of the process. He writes that compensating development will bring up the shadows up a zone, but he doesn't say much about the problems. I'll keep reading.

Either way, I chose the process because of it's insensitivity to error—because I'm new to development. Even still, I shoot in places where I do want to bring the shadows up a zone, even if it costs me a little in the highlights. I also know that I like the way Tri-X looks pushed, and I like having an extra two stops to work with, but I also loses some shadow detail when I push it that far. I love grain, so I don't mind Rodinal's high acutance. Printing isn't an issue yet—I scan everything on my university's Imacon Flextight X1. So…I'm shooting for negatives that scan well. I'm going to sign up for time at a high school's darkroom next quarter…they also have night classes on wet printing. I'll start thinking more about what effects compression will have on prints soon enough.

Honestly, I'm just playing around with the process to see what I like and what I don't. (I'm not sure why I'm trying to justify my decision here. Again, it's not clear why anyone is questioning my choice to stand develop. (;