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A bottle sits on the film developing worktop. A treacle-brown liquid meets an equal quantity of air in the container, and, as film developers go, it looks to be in a sorry state. Air = oxidation = spent developer, right? In film developing terms this bottle is however half-full, not half empty.
(Please excuse the terrible pun.)
I don't know precisely how old this bottle is. It seems to have escaped my usual practice of labelling with an opening date in marker pen (definitely recommended). Looking at my negative collection, I estimate it was opened in 2013.
R09 - a modern day copy of the famous Rodinal - is liked by many photographers for its tonality. I haven't developed very much with it in comparison to other developers, so I won't make a judgement on this. You will notice the grain in your image with this developer (especially with medium speed and fast films).
It was always purported to have a splendid shelf-life, but today I confirmed that for myself. I present below the latest addition to my Pebble Project, FP4+, developed in the formula in question. I was very pleasantly surprised to see a half-opened bottle of some age produce a perfectly good looking negative. A fresher batch may produce better results (the label on the bottle recommends not exceeding six months when opened).
It looks like I have found a good developer to keep at the back of the cupboard for emergencies.
FP4+ R09 (Rodinal) 1+50 15mins 20c
To access the full gallery so far, go to Resources on the main menu above and select Pebble Project Galleries.
Welcome to post two in my blog series introducing tone in black and white photography. If you haven't already done so, you might want to check out the first instalment. You can navigate to it using the menu on the right or the search box above it.
Here's today's instalment.
Imagine a continuous line of tone that stretches from black, through every conceivable grey, and arrives at pure white (which is often in practice simply the ‘colour’ of our paper, minus tone). We can make a visual representation of this using software:
From black to white - an imaginary line of every tone
Photographs can be made up of predominantly one tone, e.g. very dark grey, or they can contain a staggeringly wide range. There is no a priori rule that says photographs must contain certain tones, where on this scale tones must come from, and in what combination they should be seen. However, we do have a good deal of precedent regarding what works well in a given situation. As ever in art practice, rules of aesthetics can sometimes be broken.
The scale above hints at an infinite scale of grey, at least theoretically. This tells us of the beauty and flexibility of black and white. It is an incredibly subtle medium, which looks deceptively simple. I liken this for my students to the keys on a piano. You can ‘get’ that they produce a series of notes, even if you are not a musician, but making actual music from them - putting them together in a certain order, with the right timing - is something else. In isolation tones are as characterless as a single note, but in combination they are there to be ‘played’ and made to sing.
Now, it is not very practical to refer all the time to an infinite scale of grey, even if that is what an analogue medium can potentially produce. So in photography it is customary to divide the tones into a series of ‘zones’ that are a stand-in for more subtle and complex groupings. The zones help us to specify the areas of tone we mean, and perhaps more importantly can be related to the practical business of exposure. Exposure is essentially how light or dark our image turns out, and is determined by the amount of light we ‘expose’ our film or sensors to.
Let’s do this practically. Were I to point my camera at a white wall and let the meter determine the exposure settings I would get something like this:
Let us say, for the sake of argument, this is 1/250, f11 at ISO 400. (If you don’t know what these numbers mean, now is the time to look them up, or make a mental note that you need to come back to them in a little while.) You will observe that the tone I’ve created in my photograph is in the middle of the range. This is because light meters in cameras are calibrated to produce a ‘middle grey’ (there are some nuances and complexities to this, complicated by contemporary metering systems, but that is for another article).
So let’s say I am unhappy with this result and want my photo to look more like a white wall. I can do this by adding more exposure:
I used the same settings as above, but this time changed my aperture to f5.6. That’s two stops more light entering my camera, and two stops up the scale of zones. Sometimes this is referred to as ‘over exposure’ (i.e. too much exposure), but I hesitate because I’m preaching that there is no absolute right or wrong in this. If you want your wall to look this way, this is the exposure you choose.
Let’s now complete the set and produce a dark version:
This time I changed my aperture to f22. My world has gotten darker, the mood is more ominous.
While the example of the wall shot underlines the direct relationship between tone and exposure, it is an undeniably simple case. It’s not quite true that we are dealing here with single tones that equate to zones, because the images will actually be made up of some quite subtle fluctuations of grey within a zone region. However, you will see that we can use the zones as a useful way to categorise our shots, in which groups of tone do indeed dominate. We can put this is in an even simpler way by using the more common categories of shadows, midtones and highlights. You may have come across these in software (e.g. Adobe camera RAW, or Lightroom), or in general discussions of photography.
Next instalment: contrast & dodging and burning
Tone in black and white photography is an effect created by variations in brightness in the image. Prominent or reflective objects in a scene create bright areas, or tones, whereas recesses create shadows. Think of a simple pencil drawing and the way that an artist creates a three dimensional effect. Darker areas are given more shading and therefore darker tones, whereas lighter areas are left to represent brighter patches. Put together, the effect helps to model the objects and creates a sense of space.
Tone as a concept is useful because it helps us to distinguish this particular effect from other elements of picture-making. Shape, line, composition and texture, are different, albeit related aspects. While tone is not the be-all-and-end-all of black and white photography, it is fundamental, and to a large part influences our response to an image. Tone helps to convey the ‘mood’ of photograph, just as tone in a voice or in music conveys a certain feeling or atmosphere. Photographs can be dark and brooding, light and airy, or dominated by muddy greys. The particular combination of tones selected by the photographer determines how we receive the subject of the picture.
When we speak of tone in photography, we are essentially speaking about a series of different greys (‘pure’ black and white being the exception). It is the photographer’s job to decide how the tones are to be distributed, and hence what mood or atmosphere will be conveyed by the photograph. A photographer learns through technical means to manipulate tone, thus expressing a personal vision. Photographers often refer to the ‘tonality’ of an image. This means how the tones are distributed and, very often, whether an image contains a wide - hence visually satisfying - range of tones.
There are two main things that a black and white photographer must get to grips with. First, how to use the medium (cameras, negatives, paper, software) at hand to create the desired tones; second, an appreciation of what tones will work well in different situations. The first is a technical matter, the second concerns the already existing ‘language’ of photography, and is aesthetic (about how we read and interpret images).
Having the means to manipulate tone is one of the great pleasures of black and white photography. It is what separates the beginner, who is at the mercy of the equipment and its built-in leaning towards mid-greys, and the accomplished photographer, who is able to make the medium ‘talk’.
What follows in the next few posts is a little distilled knowledge from my practice as a black and white photographer. It is my aim to inform you of some key elements that will hopefully set you on a journey towards making better black and white photos. I ask myself simply, if I were starting out in this again, what would I have liked someone to have pointed out to me in the beginning.
I add the usual caveat about a lack of completeness: as you will see, tone is a very big subject that swiftly leads to more very big photography topics. It can’t possibly all be covered in a modest blog series such as this, nor should it. It’s good to think of each element that I raise as something you can investigate much further. If you are experienced in these matters, I hope you will get something from my emphasis and little tips along the way.
Next instalment: a sliding scale of grey
A happy new year to all my readers!
Well, 2017 is here and I'm happy to announce a little series of blog posts I shall be making over the coming weeks on tone in black and white photography.
I shall be writing these posts with a view to offering a primer on tone, something for the beginner, for sure, but hopefully of interest to the more experienced photographer too. As well as making some essential definitions, I shall be considering ways in which tone is of crucial importance in black and white photography, looking at ways it can be manipulated, and examining typical contrast 'recipes'. I will end with a series of exercises, a little tonal work out if you like, aimed at giving anyone who follows them a deeper appreciation of tonal values.
A rough schedule is as follows:
Post 1 (today): Introducing tone
Post 2: A sliding scale of grey
Post 3: Contrast & dodging and burning
Post 4: Recipes of tone
Post 5: Games to play (the exercises)
Please, as ever, your feedback and comments on the posts are welcome. As hinted at above, you'll find the first post immediately following this one.
Made using a Sony Xperia Smartphone
A dash of smartphone photography for your perusal today.
The light was stunning on this crisp December day, crystal clear and casting characteristic winter shadows. I had arrived at Birmingham in a high-rise car park and was stopped by the view. My mobile phone provided the tool to take advantage of the scene.
I converted the file to black and white in Lightroom and made a few modest tonal adjustments. I added the black border to stop the lighter edge tones from getting lost. The shape of the striding man in the middle puts me in mind of Louis Daguerre's photograph Boulevard du Temple of 1838, which is often cited as the first ever photograph to contain human beings.
St Mary's in Lichfield on Ilford FP4+ in LC29
Wishing all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Thank you to all who have followed my blog and images this inaugural year of my website. The support and encouragement I have received has been huge and touching.
Here's looking forward to new photography adventures in 2017.
Every year when working with my students in the darkroom, I try to encourage a thought process that is as receptive to unintended results as intended ones. This is not always an easy endeavour, and it occurred to me this year that I lack a clear label for the kind of approach I want them to take. Quite often, what I mean becomes evident only when it is found.
We speak a lot about planning in education (we live in a ‘target’ driven world it seems), but not so much about the pleasure of the unplanned, of what one discovers through doing, even when one wasn’t looking for it.
On one happy day when one of my students had the unplanned event revelation, I at last came up with a satisfactory term: ‘serendipity’. Now, before I unpack the term a little (and I will not insult your intelligence; insert ‘happy accident’ and you have my gist), I will add some photographic seasoning with a specific darkroom reference.
In his book Black and White Photography Workshop, master printer John Blakemore tells the story of how he came to work on a new series of especially pale prints. On the day in question, he had intended to do something quite different, but, on realising he lacked the supplies he needed to print in his ordinary manner, set himself the challenge of printing his negative as pale as possible. You can (and should) check the results out yourself, for they are quite exquisite. A fortuitous set of circumstances that led to an unexpected path, a new way of working.
So, finally to serendipity. The term was coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole. He recounted the tale of the ‘Three Princes of Serendip’ who ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’. This could almost be a darkroom mantra! Be open to those discoveries, gained by accident or sagacity (or, we might say, ignorance), of results you weren’t after, but might rather like.
An awareness of serendipity shouldn’t be limited to just darkroom, of course. I wonder how many other aspects of our photography work would benefit from a little of these ‘things we were not in quest of’?
Nikon F80 and 70-300 VR lens, Ilford FP4+ film
The results of my Pebble Project tests to date now have a gallery. You will find it under the 'Resources' section of this site's menu. It puts all the results in one place, and offers both film scans and darkroom prints. You can click on each individual image for a larger version. Any further results that I share in blog posts will be added here too. I hope this will make the gallery a useful resource.
If you have been tuning in to this project, you will notice that I have added some scans and prints of other film and developer combinations. The addition of HP5+ and Delta 100 Professional here suggest the structure of my thinking for films to explore.
If you are mainly interested in the visual aspect of the tests, you may want to head over to the gallery now to take a look. What follows are some technical details and corrections for those interested in such matters, or who want to actively use the recipes explored.
When making the darkroom prints, I was able to standardise at contrast grade 2.5 and aperture f5.6. I used Ilford's Multigrade paper. It was not possible to print every negative for the same time, of course, due to differing exposures and hence negative densities. This then demands a standardisation procedure, and inevitably judgements - my personal judgements - come into play. I decided to print to the first hint of very pale, 'almost white' tone in the central lower small stone. I plan to do some tests with Multigrade Warmtone, which will necessitate changes in exposure times once again due to the different ISO of the paper (roughly half the speed of 'standard' Multigrade).
I came up with quite a list originally with which to offer some interpretations of my first results (grain, midtone contrast, sharpness, and so on). The list itself was good, but I am now a little more philosophical about the comparisons.
Allowing for the fact that these are my results made with my own conditions and equipment (the old zone system caveat of the individual nature of test results), it strikes me now that tonality is the most obvious category of general applicability. The tonal comparisons that the gallery has to offer are broadly good, and I would expect you to get results not unlike mine if you followed the same film and developer recipes.
Making inkjet prints from scans adds variables that are different from darkroom printing variables. Because I am somebody who makes both inkjet and darkroom prints from negatives, I wanted to explore both processes. Comparing darkroom prints to inkjet ones provided an object lesson in the role of the printer drivers and scanner. One could argue that comparisons of grain, sharpness and midtone contrast are still good within, but not across, systems (be it digital setup or darkroom).
I was already aware that exposure variations would impact on tonality. I took the decision to expose the Perceptol samples differently, for example, because it is a speed reducing developer. This is in line with normal exposure practice. Put differently, there is no universal standard of exposure even following ISO in a studio situation. As the zone system teaches, ISO is nothing but a starting point for an individual's exposure value. That said, I exposed the FP4+ sample at 100 ISO, which in box speed terms is a little additional exposure. The Delta 100 sample was similarly exposed at 100, thus making it slightly less exposed by comparison. This can be seen in the negatives. I have ruminated somewhat as to whether to continue to expose Delta 100 at 100, or to give it the extra exposure in line with FP4+.
Lastly, I must declare a good old fashioned mistake. I adjusted aperture in order to change the exposure (as mentioned in the Perceptol sample), but neglected to take this into account when thinking about sharpness and grain. The problem is that, when comparing samples containing aperture and thus exposure differences, you are looking first at differences in aperture, and only second at the role of the developer. Other than making more convoluted adjustments to the lighting strength (and thus introducing a new set of variations), I'm not sure how this can be avoided. Better to look on sharpness differences with this in mind.
By way of a nod to the festive season, may I present this modest (but significant) print offer.
I am offering for sale a limited edition of just ten darkroom prints of my 35mm photograph Rain Lanterns. The prints are approximately 9x6 inches, on Ilford’s superlative Multigrade Art 300 paper. This is an archival material that will therefore last for many, many years if properly cared for. It has an eggshell, slightly pitted surface and beautiful tonality.
The offer is significant because it is the first time I have made a darkroom print available for sale. Prints will be signed and numbered on the reverse, and will come with a certificate of authenticity. The certificates will bear an Ilford authentic fine art print label. I will not print any more of this edition (designated 2016), although I may choose to make future editions (these will be labelled appropriately, so that the current, and first, edition will be identifiable).
If you are ordering in the UK and do so before the 18th December, I will make every effort to ensure you get your print before Christmas. For orders outside the UK, please make them as soon as possible if you are looking for Christmas delivery. Due the nature of international postage, I can’t guarantee a pre-Christmas delivery, but I will ensure prints go out as soon as possible at my end. Postage is free for the UK, and there is a £10.00 charge per order for all other destinations.
Walsall Art Gallery shot with Ilford FP4+ film and a yellow filter
Here's a little tip if you're shooting anything with sky in it on black and white film. Fit a yellow filter on your lens. This filter darkens blue, leading to better separation between sky and clouds (thus helping to avoid void-like white skies too).
Other benefits of a yellow filter include giving better separation to foliage (it lightens green, yellow, orange and red), and, for many, more natural skin tones. Sure, you'll lose a stop of light (the filter shields the light entering the lens by a factor of two, i.e. the same scene needs twice as much exposure). If you are metering through the lens, there is no practical penalty to this, other than that speed loss.
A good addition to the kit of the black and white film photographer.
We make many kinds of photograph. There are our artistic endeavours, aspirational, serious, representative - if at all possible - of what kind of photographer we want to be. There are family photos, and photos to document things for practical purposes. Then there are the photos we make just because we feel like photographing. I rarely get much aesthetic joy with the latter if I’m honest, because generally the right subject and light are absent. I’ve just picked up the camera because I feel like doing photography.
The photograph in front of me is a most inauspicious one: it shows the side of a bath (in gaudy 1980s turquoise), a shower curtain, a cloth, a stretch of red patterned carpet, and the bottom of a door. Whilst looking at it, I am transported, partially if not fully and literally, to Morcambe, England circa 2000. It is a thoroughly mundane image, arguably of little aesthetic value and not an image possessed of public currency. Yet it depicts a space that I knew intimately, a space from my childhood and rich with memories of holidays at the seaside and of growing up. Like the Proustian trigger, it sets off a chain of associative memories and feelings. A most unremarkable photo and yet a poignant and fulsome personal one. An incidental thing and somehow a representative one.
Giving this further thought, I begin to wonder if the image is not all the more powerful for being incidental and mundane. Had it been a carefully constructed documentary shot of one of my grandparents’ rooms (for it is taken at their house), or a family ‘moment’, of the officially sanctioned happy family occasion kind, would it be quite so evocative?
Doubtless this is a personal perspective on a specific image, but it does point to a category of personal photography we might single out. Apparently incidental and mundane shots of small details that months, years or even decades later become thoroughly evocative and memory-laiden.
I have always been interested in the historical nature of the photograph. It is a fact of photography that it always represents what has been (even if that moment is as close to us as a few seconds ago). Without wishing to romanticise the fact, photography acts something like a little time machine for our individual experiences. I think there are different kinds of images that do this; or, to put it differently, images that evoke memory through different mechanisms and lines of association.
My little meditation today provokes in me a modest resolution. A resolution to, every now and again, train my camera on some mundane but especially familiar object or corner of my life. A little visual message to my future self and a catalyst for memory.
Darkroom prints of my first Pebble Project film / developer test negatives. Film is FP4+.
Today I bring you a little update of my Pebble Project in the form of some darkroom prints. I have printed the first four FP4+ negatives from the project (results shared in the previous Pebble post) on Ilford Multigrade Resin Coated Gloss paper. I will share these in a larger and more accessible form in a future post, but for now they read: LC29 top left, Perceptol top right, Ilfosol S bottom left, DDX bottom right (with development times as per the previous post).
The darkroom prints make the differences more obvious, and, on a cursory look, I felt they were somewhat more in keeping with what I'd initially expected from the different developers. No surprise here, as negatives are obviously designed to be printed in the darkroom and my expectations (and data such as that from Ilford) were shaped there.
I have more technical information to share on this (such as my darkroom printing decisions) and some more observations and corrections. The project is not at all straightforward - and certainly has its limitations - but I am learning a lot which is great.
I am working on a little gallery of results for this site, which will enable the reader access to all the Pebble images in one place and to view larger versions. I'll publish this in the near future and add to it with more film / developer combinations as things progress. Watch this space.
Thanks to smartphones and proliferating app technology, there have never been as many ways to quickly and easily record our thoughts. I'm particularly enjoying Google Keep at the moment, which is wonderfully efficient and especially good when surfing the web.
There are occasions, however, when the electronic method of note taking isn't the best. I enjoy using physical notebooks for their tactility, straightforwardness and easy accessibility. Notebooks foster connections and memories; when I look over old notes I find ideas return for reconsideration and new possibilities emerge.
Film photographers have long had the need to record data from their shooting activities for later reference. The act of so doing fosters good practice and can prompt little revelations about technique. The digital revolution killed the photographer's notebook at a stroke, with the migration of shooting information to the image file and metadata. The thing is, with your digital friend making comprehensive records for you - aperture, shutter speed, ISO, exposure modes, to name but some - you find yourself with less and less need to look. And with less looking comes less awareness and less learning.
Enter a product such as Photomemo by Mike Padua's artisanal Shoot Film Co. The relevance of this little notebook to film photographer's is fairly self-evident, but I want to go further and suggest that it might be a good thing for users of digital cameras too. Mike kindly sent me a couple of Photomemo's so that I could put them through their paces and write a report here. So what do I think of the design?
The form of Photomemo is not at all dissimilar to a number of notebooks already widely available. Indeed, this will be the biggest argument against these books: cheaper competitors that might do the same job. Photomemo is well made and has soft, receptive paper. On this front it gives nothing away to its rivals. (I have a love for Moleskine notebooks, and the quality of the paper is one of the things I value, along with their tough construction and durability.) There is a space for your name and details at the front, should it get lost, which is a nice touch. So at lot really rests on the design of the pages themselves, for it is here that your money appears to have gone.
I believe Mike consulted a number of different photographer's whilst in the design stage, and it has paid dividends. Most of the page is taken up with lined space for your notes, punctuated by some double-lined breaks. This might equate to 32 entries (perhaps not accidental, nearly equating to the 36 roll), but we should bear in mind this design is intended to accommodate, medium, large and other formats, such as instant or pinhole photography. However, it's in the header that the real thought has gone. This appears on every page and so needs to be right.
On the left hand side is space to record the roll number, start and end date, camera, lens, film and ISO. This is spot on for me. The roll number allows you to write a corresponding number on the film canister and, later, the negative bag. Start and end dates are invaluable in working out when exposures were made and whether or not time elapsed will impact on quality (with some films preferring prompt development). I have many shots where I can no longer tell if I used my 35mm or 50mm lens on my Leica rangefinder (lens reviewers take note: we see huge differences when we want to, they may be harder to see when all's said and done). Writing down lens used would help in this regard.
On the right hand side is subject, location, push/pull, and a little set of tick boxes for processed, scanned and archived. I like subject and location here, for me two key ways to remember a shoot. In my workflow, there would be a synergy with my Lightroom practice here, because I tend to organise my images by subject. Many of my film shots go into Lightroom, just as my digital ones do, so such potential for consistency is desirable. I don't tend to think in terms of push/pull (I'm more of the EI school), so I'm not sure I'd use this check. Processed et al I welcome, although I tend to scan individual frames and so would need to give this box some thought.
All in all, Photomemo is a well designed and beautifully printed product. I can really see it paying dividends in my shooting practice, especially if used over time and to build an archive of shooting information. Click on the button below if you'd like more details and to check out Shoot Film Co yourself.
Shooting some autumn colour with Kodak Ektar film and a 70-300 lens. This is the scan straight from the lab. Should I choose to make a print, I'll scan it myself and make the necessary adjustments as I print. There's certainly a tad more sharpness and bite to be drawn out with my own scan and print, and I'll be able to look at the colour more critically.
Autumn can be a great time to be a photographer. There's the colourful foliage, the sun is lower in the sky creating long shadows and rich textures, and the light is that bit warmer.
This year I've become conscious that it's also frustrating time for me. I'm an academic and it's precisely the time I get busier indoors. Maybe I've been making more of those furtive glances towards the windows this year, half hoping not to glimpse any scenes of photographic possibility. As you might imagine, I've had to turn away with a sigh on more than one occasion.
So when I'm out shooting I have to hope that the sometimes temperamental light and weather in England is in cooperative mood. I have been shooting a lot of black and white of late, and decided it was time for a little break and some perhaps inevitable autumn colour. To make things interesting, I took a lens I had practically retired, a Nikon 70-300mm with built-in vibration reduction, and began to think about some long shots and flattened perspective.
I had some expired Kodak Ektar film in my fridge, and it was getting high time to put it to use. Ektar is a film that simply loves colour and sunshine. Expose it generously (I tend to go for a half stop more) and it is wonderfully saturated with a very distinctive character; underexpose and things get a lot more pastel and washed out. This was a risky film to choose, because with the British weather in the wrong mood, well, I may as well be back indoors trying not to look out of windows.
The image above is one of my favourites from a couple of outings with this autumn MO. On the whole I was lucky with some interesting light, and the weather held off for just long enough. I spent a fair bit of time chasing patchy sunshine through trees and using what I feared were all-too-slow shutter speeds (bearing in ming Ektar is a 100 ISO film). Nikon vibration reduction, it would seem, is a sound technology, and certainly helped in my endeavours. Now my window-bound glances shouldn't be too longing, and, besides, autumn hasn't really got too long to go.
1. FP4+ in Ilfotec LC29, 1+19, 8 mins, 21C
2. FP4+ in Perceptol, 1+1, 13 mins, 20C
3. FP4+ in Ilfosol S, 1+19, 6.5 mins, 20C
4. FP4+ in DDX, 1+4, 10 mins, 20C
In this instalment of Pebble Project I present four examples of FP4+ in different developers. In a sense, the results here speak for themselves and the reader is invited to draw his / her own conclusions. That said, I’d like share a little commentary of my own as guidance, especially for the reader who is less experienced in film use. This is a job of interpretation, and as such carries the usual caveat that your impressions may differ.
You will see immediately that different developers have differing effects on similarly exposed film shots (which these are). This phenomenon is a big part of the joy film, its flexibility and potential to be shaped as the user wishes. There are different areas which we could focus on in interpreting the results. I made a list, and then printed the images so I could do a little table-top assessment. I decided to make things interesting by hiding the developers from myself (easy enough, given the degree of similarity of the shots), therefore doing a roughly ‘blind’ test.
First I asked myself about sharpness. I went backwards and forwards, and then backwards and forwards. I didn’t feel confident that I had reached a clear conclusion on this. On the one hand, this points to just how close some these developers come, on the other it might point to unaccounted for variables (like focus variation). I had, as it turns out, settled on the Perceptol sample as the ‘sharpest’, followed by LC29 and Ilfosol S together, with DDX last. I had firmly expected Ilfosol S to be the sharpest, given my experience of using this developer with Delta 100. Ilford don’t list Perceptol as being noted for sharpness. I don’t think DDX is generally known for sharpness, so it is perhaps not a surprise that I rate this last.
Next I tackled fine grain. I regarded DDX as the best (i.e. least grainy), followed by Ilfosol and Perceptol together, and LC29 last or ‘most grainy’. We’re not dealing with grain like golf balls here, far from it, but this is also not Delta 100 grain, which I consider to be finer. I think this conclusion is in keeping with what Ilford would say.
My next category was longest tonal range. I accept that this might be skewed by exposure issues (see notes below). My impression was that the longest march from deep tones to still palpable light ones went to Perceptol and LC29 together. Ilfosol I placed after, with DDX last, insomuch as it has a mid to light tonal range in which the extremities of tone don’t feature. Put differently, we could say DDX has a very open tonality. Ilford say that DDX provides the best overall image quality for liquid developers with FP4+. Perhaps this open tonality figures for them.
I then thought about the most open shadows, having in mind landscapes and other such images where blocked up shadows are a problem. I have hinted at my impression, namely that DDX has the most open shadows, followed by Ilfosol, Perceptol and LC29 in that order. Ilfosol sits in my mental map as something of a contrasty developer, and so I was a little surprised by this, and might have expected Perceptol to figure more highly. DDX gives a speed increase, so this again may account for the more generously exposed darker tones.
The quickest to lose the highlights I saw as clearly Ilfosol, although I am not sure I can usefully distinguish between the others. This is more in keeping with my own impression of Ilfosol as a sharpness enhancing developer that be difficult to print if the shots were made in high contrast light (I am referring to 35mm, somewhat loosely metered and metered from experience, rather than a careful zone system style placement and development regime). FP4+ has a ‘shoulder’ on its contrast curve, and so should deliver very manageable highlights. My results do nothing to contradict this.
Lastly, I thought about mid tone contrast. I went with LC29 and Perceptol together first (i.e. most mid tone contrast), followed by Ilfosol and then DDX. I have used LC29 a lot with HP5 plus and am used to seeing good negatives with plenty of contrast. I have always thought of Perceptol as rather smooth, but my experience is mainly with HP5 plus.
Well, if there is any objectivity here (I hope there is some), then I have seen that some very well established ideas about FP4+ and its developers have been confirmed. I have also had some of my assumptions challenged, and, for me, this would now have an impact on my shooting and developing choices. I haven’t shot very much FP4+ in the grand scheme of things and am already beginning to cook up some uses. I must acknowledge that looking at studio test shots is not the same as looking at a contact print of ‘real’ images. The alchemy of film aside, these results do provide me some food for thought, and I hope this instalment offers you something useful too.
There are more developers to try with FP4+. These I will add to the start made above. I think it is right to compare other similar speed films, and Delta 100 is the obvious candidate, which I shall move on to next. Another legitimate option is to compare different speed films in the same developer. I may do this relatively quickly too, because it might prove more accessible to those who have not shot too much film. A beginner might quite rightly ask, if I buy one bottle of developer, which films might I explore for different conditions? I have started with a relatively arcane scenario by taking one film and comparing it to itself differently developed. Watch this space.
I was looking at gloss inkjet prints, made on an Epson P600 machine, using Epson’s Advanced Black and White print driver. The print medium and driver play their part in the results. I was conscious of some differences between print and screen, as I would expect. Were darkroom prints to be made from the original negatives (here scanned on a Nikon Coolscan machine), the paper and development choices would be an influencing factor too. There is no ‘actual’ negative, other than, well, the actual negative! When we print, with combine parts that work on one another.
Where I am citing Ilford I am referring to relevant datasheets. These are excellent and provide lots of useful information that anyone interested in these matters should consult.
My development times are ‘standard’ (and convenient) ones given by Ilford. I have not used any ‘exotic’ variations, for example greater dilution and stand development. I reason that the Ilford times and dilutions make a great baseline should other recipes be explored. There are many such recipes in the film using community, and often these are cherished and highly personal.
I gave the Perceptol sample twice the exposure, given that it is a speed reducing developer. DDX is known as a speed-enhancing developer, and thus the sample is consistent with the idea that it should be a little ‘faster’, seen here as lighter tones. I did not alter the exposure for the DDX sample.
1. FP4+ in Ilfotec LC29, 1+19, 8 mins, 21C
2. FP4+ in Perceptol, 1+1, 13 mins, 20C
3. FP4+ in Ilfosol S, 1+19, 6.5 mins, 20C
4. FP4+ in DDX, 1+4, 10 mins, 20C
The Memorial, darkroom print on Ilford Multigrade Art 300 paper
I have been busy on lots of fronts of late, but especially with teaching, as it the start of the academic year. My Pebble Project is in full swing, and it too has taken no modest amount of time, demanding my concentration and discipline.
So it is easy for me to forget that some of the best pleasures in doing photography are simple ones. A little time in the darkroom the other day served as a reminder.
Despite some reservations, I went ahead and printed a somewhat underexposed negative taken with my Yashica Mat G medium format camera and Ilford FP4+ film. The image is inescapably dark, so I went along with this, hoping to stay just the right side of 'meh, too dark'. The negative is indeed thin, but is it nevertheless amazing how much detail still resides in even the thinnest of areas.
In a case such as this, one's printing choices are narrowed and fine margins become all-important. My first print was too dark and lacked contrast. Still, I could see that the image struck up a relationship with the paper and its pearly, pitted surface, so I pressed on. I went up by about half a grade, and reduced my exposure. The tonality was now much more open and the image remained suitably dark, but gained much more of a sense of the light beyond. I finished the print with a gentle vignette, maybe heavier than my usual, and dodged the flowers a little to lift the lightest tones and draw the eye to the melancholy memorial.
An hour's printing with this forgiving, flexible and tactile medium that is darkroom.
The finished print in hand. Tactile, simple, analogue pleasures
Thank you Richard @richard_pickup for the amazing print and the sweet note! You have convinced me to look at the p600/800 seriously now! pic.twitter.com/sw7C3HqJQJ
— Ribnar (@ribnar) October 11, 2016
For more about this print click here: