"Low contrast" developer suggestions?

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I'm not a darkroom perfectionist but I consider myself to be pretty careful with temperatures, mixing, film agitation, etc.

The problem I've been having lately is with highlight blowout on my negatives. I shoot 35mm Delta 400 and HP5+ and use the sunny f/16 rule or an incident light meter. It seems like all my shadows are placed nicely but that my highlights consistently require a great deal of burning in. I'm aware of Delta 400's tendency to do this, so in very high contrast situations I'll take a reflected reading of the lightest highlight with detail and open up two or three stops. I print with a cold light head.

I'm starting to investigate ways to control this situation, and I thought I would start out by experimenting with a general "low contrast" developer, if one exists. I know that increasing the diluation of my Rodinal and XTol might work, and so might controlling my agitation. But can anyone recommend a stock developer that is known for good low contrast development?

-- JM Woo (wooismyid@yahoo.com), August 30, 2001

Answers

If your shadows are coming out right but your highlights are blown out you might be giving the negatives too much development. Try reducing your time by 20-30% and see what that does for them.

-- David Parmet (david@parmet.net), August 30, 2001.

I second what David just wrote. Before you go off trying a gaggle of different cures, keep everything the same but reduce your development time. I'd say -20%, then adjust from there.

-- Ted Kaufman (writercrmp@aol.com), August 30, 2001.

Which developer are you using? It is probably correct that you develop too long. The times stated by the manufacturers most often lead to too contrasty negs. Cutting down is a good idea. If you are not already using a compensating developer it is a good idea to change to one. Rodinal is probably not what you are looking for if you are shooting ISO 400 speed film in 35mmm. It is too grainy. If you should consider ISO 100 film or lower I would highly recommend changing to Rodinal though, or even better to Calbe R09.

-- Volker Schier (Volker.Schier@fen-net.de), August 30, 2001.

Well, Ilford's Perceptol might a good try. However it's a low energy developer, so shoot at iso200 and the recommended times by Ilford.

-- Marc Leest (valdez68@hotmail.com), August 30, 2001.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try reducing developer time. I think it's true that manufacturer times tend to lead to heavy negatives-- I've been using the published times for XTol, and have also experimented with Rodinal.

A while back I used to shoot HP5 at 200 and pull in the development time with D-76. I got some low contrast negatives, but in the right light I would get a beautiful scale of tones. I print with multicontrast paper and I like to add contrast to a scene rather than "removing" it. I know this sounds arbitrary so I guess it's out of habit. And I *hate* the look of paper-white that's been burned in to a readable highlight zone.

Seems to withstand logic to say that you can also blow out something that's in the negative but you can't reign in something (like highlight detail) if it's not there.

Will report back with more experiences.

-- JM Woo (wooismyid@yahoo.com), August 30, 2001.



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