[Leica] Exposure and Development

[walt at waltjohnson.com (Walt Johnson)]

You should be able to look at a negative and make a reasonably close 
guess as to what went wrong. If you ever get a chance to experiment with 
the BW400 or XP compare it to a color neg B&W conversion. My guess is 
that's a better way to go.

Walt

Jeffery Smith wrote:
> Except when I am using C41 monochrome film, I don't know if a problem in a
> negative is due to under/over exposure or under/over development. There are
> so many factors affecting development (age of chemicals, water quality,
> agitation) and so many possible E.I. ratings of film, I finally said
> "Enough!". I am going with three liquid developers with very good shelf
> lives (Rodinal, Prescysol, and PMK Pyro) and, of those, I favor Prescysol
> because it uses the same timings for all films and involves very little
> agitation. If I let a highly controlled development in Prescysol become my
> "anchor" and use ambient light measurements carefully, then I think I can
> settle on an E.I. for a few good films that will work well most of the 
> time.
>
> I would like to use BW400CN or XP2-Super, but with so few labs down here
> now, I would have to either drive to the suburbs or mail the film out of
> town. I'll probably do the latter in Santa Fe.
>
> Jeffery Smith
> New Orleans, LA
> http://www.400tx.com
> http://400tx.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lug-bounces+jsmith342=cox.net@leica-users.org
> [mailto:lug-bounces+jsmith342=cox.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Alan
> Magayne-Roshak
> Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 1:18 PM
> To: lug@leica-users.org
> Subject: [Leica] Exposure and Development
>
>
> On Thu, 1 Mar 2007 Jeffery Smith wrote:
>
>   
>> I made a rather sobering discovery a few weeks ago. I was using a Nikon 
>> RF which, of course, has no meter. So I used a Gossen digital light 
>> meter and  used ambient readings rather than reflective readings. The 
>> exposure in most of the frames was right on the money, much better than 
>> my usual TTL reflected light frames. This made me want to use a 
>> handheld meter and blow off the in-camera meter. 
>> =======================================================================
>> ========
>>     
>
> Mike Tatum of Honeywell used to give a talk on quality in exposure and
> development.  He said the incident meter was best for exposure consistency.
> For part of his presentation, he showed 20 prints made from 20 frames on 
> the
> same roll of 35mm film, shot under various lighting and contrast 
> conditions,
> metered with an incident meter, and printed at the same enlarger settings.
> They all were good. I think this might be where I first heard the advice to
> set an incident meter to one-half the ASA rating for B&W, to get more 
> shadow
> detail.
>
> I bought a Sekonic Studio Deluxe the day after attending the lecture, and
> never regretted it.  Most of my Kodachrome shooting was metered with this,
> and it was so accurate that I never bracketed.  All my outdoor slides were
> with a polarizer, too, and I found that the 3.5x exposure compensation was
> right on.  Now, with digital, I still like using an incident meter.  About
> 90% of the time I have the 1D or 1Ds set on manual.
>
> Alan
>
> Alan Magayne-Roshak
> Senior Photographer
> Photo Services
> Univ. of Wis.- Milwaukee
> Information & Media Technologies
> amr3@uwm.edu
> (414)229-6525 http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
>