Response to what happens with REALLY long dev't times?

I have no quarrel with what Finnegan says above. 7-8 stops is a normally-lit scene. In Texas, I'm more likely to encounter scenes with 10 or more stops, but Mortensen's arguments convinced me that it is difficult to get good gradation from a negative that has been given N- processing (he says the compression takes place in the high values, where the most interesting tonalities are). So I have taken the PMK route that allows me to get printable detail in all those extra zones with normal development. Occasionally I still get a negative with a scale that is hard to print, so I resort to SLIMT (selective latent image manipulation technique, or latent image bleaching), dodging, burning, selective bleaching, or whatever else it takes. Most of my experiments with Mortensen's 7-D technique have been failures, with a few (spectacular) exceptions. David Kachel states that with modern materials contrast reduction is best handled by film manipulation (referring to SLIMT rather than N- development), whereas contrast enhancement is best handled by paper manipulation.

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