I've been thinking about what the goal is here. To my way of thinking, the whole point in 'compensating' developers is to get great shadow contrast without the highlights blowing out on you. I have it easier than a lot of printers since I print in palladium which has the long toe of all long toes. But shadow contrast can be a challenge. I am now wondering about one other factor that no one has talked about : reciprocity failure and its' effect on contrast. In looking at some of my better negatives of subjects with a high brightness range (SBR of 10-14), it seems that the ones that required exposures that measured in the minutes to almost and hour due to reciprocity departure seem to have better shadow contrast than the ones that required only a half second or less The increase in contrast due to reciprocity departure is well known, thus the recommendation for reduced development times in the Kodak and Ilford data sheets. Is it possible to get the higher shadow contrast through reciprocity departure, yet keep the highlights from developing off the chart through stand development or using a divided developer that exhausts (in theory) in the highlights first. I don't know. I am thinking out loud here. I have an idea on how to test this idea, and will communicate back to this thread if anything comes of it. Any thoughts about reciprocity failure's role in the scheme of things? Ted's fantastic N-6 example has great shadow separation in the foreground area. Is it possible that some of the shadow contrast is caused by reciprocity departure? BTW Ted, what was the exposure time on that image? Food for thought.(posted 8170 days ago)Clay