"Lighter tones way too flat" implies that the developer does more than enough compensation action...(posted 8072 days ago)Actually, in this case, I would suspect there might have been no compensating action at all. The greenish pyro stain acts as a variable contrast mask with variable contrast paper which is sensitive to green light. So typically, the shadows print with very good local contrast and separation and the highlights print with increasingly less local contrast. Functionally, thought, you are right - the effect is the same as putting an artificial shoulder on the curve of the film. Whether one likes it is a personal call, I guess. I have increasingly come to prefer straight line characterisitcs - -just like the aesthetics of it, no abrupt changes in tonality in different parts of the scale. One other reason I have come to like straight line characteristics is that printing is very easy. Moving the print exposure around will keep local contrast the same in all areas, especially if your printing paper also provides reasonably straight line characteristics - with more marked shoulders and toes, when print exposure is varied, local contrast will change also. But then, keep in mind I do not do the kind of work Ted talked about above. The problem with night shots is that local contrast is already low in the shadows and high in the highlights to begin with - so in these situations we really do need a way to change the distribution of those tonalities - simply developing to a lower contrast index will make shadows very murky.
Cheers, DJ