Response to Mortensen and Gradation

Hi Ed.
I must admit, I haven't read the Mortensen article yet, so these are just some immediate thoughts on the subject of development manipulation:
I decided a long time ago that pulling development wasn't a good idea, for the very reason that it gives flat muddy negs that can be quite difficult to print. Besides, messing about with development too much alters the relationship of tones in the negative relative to the way that the subject is actually seen, and therefore makes that precious and elusive pre-visualisation much more difficult.
It's all very well squeezing every nuance of subject detail into a printable range on the negative; but if the result just looks grey, and the desired atmosphere of the picture isn't conveyed, then vision becomes a slave to technique, and not as it should be, the other way round.

Using the curves tool in Photoshop on scanned images has recently given me a much better feel for, and insight into, which sorts of tonal adjustment look good, and which don't. IMHO, a long straight tone curve is undesirable, and the only way to deal with a wide brightness range is to 'bend' the top and bottom of the transfer characteristic.
If at all possible, the mid tone gamma should be kept fairly constant, and the shadows and highlights rearranged around it. In other words, a compensating developer technique gives a better looking negative than simply pulling a normal development.
(Flush that T-max developer now!)

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