Response to Pulling Delta 100 on a Contrasty Day

Dan. The idea of 'pulling' a film is to decrease the overal contrast by shortening the development time. Whether you need to make an exposure compensation is really independent of this, and depends on how the scene is metered.
If you meter correctly by taking a reading from a key tone, then there should be no need to downrate the film.
If you take an average, or camera TTL meter reading, then the meter might be fooled by the wide brightness range of the scene, and tend to underexpose.
Really, the exposure and the development are two separate issues, and should be dealt with separately. Pulling the development doesn't do anything except lower the overall contrast of the negative, while changing the exposure only alters how much detail will be recorded from the the shadows of the scene. With a very contrasty subject, giving more exposure could be entirely the wrong thing to do, by pushing the highlights up into the unprintable region where the film curve goes nearly flat.
IMHO it's better to expose normally, and use a compensating development technique, rather than a straight 'pull'. Compensating development means starving the film of developer, usually by using a more diluted developing solution. This naturally limits the maximum density of the negative, and leaves the highlights printable.

[ Previous | Next ]