[pure-silver] Re: Tonal gradation/smoothness in 35mm negs c.f. larger formats

DEAR PETER,

            There is a guy "Geebee" on the Leica Enthusiast's group that
does EXCELLENT black and white landscapes with Kodak 400 CN.  I will forward
the URL to one of his photos off list.

                        CHEERS!

                                    BOB

 

  _____  

From: pure-silver-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:pure-silver-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Peter Badcock
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 5:21 AM
To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Tonal gradation/smoothness in 35mm negs c.f.
larger formats

 

Hi Richard,

thanks for your reply.  It certainly sounds like the difference in tonal
smoothness is more than just a minor thing as you say "there is a noticeable
difference between 35mm negs and anything larger ".  In fact you mentioned
it here
<http://www.freelists.org/archives/pure-silver/09-2007/msg00098.html>  a few
months ago in pure-silver.

I had also naively assumed that there were few good reasons to use a low
accutance developer.  So for 35mm it appears that there is a trade-off
between accutance(sharpness) and tonal smoothness.  This was also a new
revelation for me. 

I then realised that a chromogenic film like XP2 (which has no grain, but
rather "dye clouds") inherently provides smoother tonality.  I did a quick
search and discovered a post
<http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=003EHC>  by Mark Parsons
to back up my deduction.

"This film (XP2) has very smooth tonal gradations, handles highlights very
well, but seems to have very little edge effects. (High resolution but low
apparent accutance - "fine" but not "sharp".) All of this adds up to a film
that is (in my opinion) wonderful for most portraits and other "soft"
scenes, but not the best for most landscapes and architecture"


Here is one follow-on thought/question.  If I then use a low accutance
developer with a fine grain/high res film like 100T-Max or Delta 100 in
order to get good smoothness, could I then improve sharpness by unsharp
masking? (without losing tonal smoothness) 

regards
Peter

On 14/01/2008, Richard Knoppow <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

 

-----Original Message-----
>From: Peter Badcock <peter.badcock@xxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Jan 13, 2008 5:51 PM
>To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [pure-silver] Tonal gradation/smoothness in 35mm negs c.f. larger
formats
>
>There has been a discussion on APUG about the differences between 35mm
>negatives and larger format negatives in relation to tonal gradation and 
>smoothness of tones (particularly in the highlights).
>So all other things being equal, can somebody please tell me why I can't
get
>the same tonal gradation/smoothness onto a print made from a 35mm neg cf. a

>larger negative of the same film, same scene, same exposure conditions,
same
>developer etc etc.

     My experience is that its mostly a matter of grain. I shoot various
formats up to 8x10. In general, there is a noticeable difference between
35mm negs and anything larger. Recently, I've been using 100T-Max developed
in either Perceptol or Microdol-X (they are identical) full strength. This
begins to give me the sort of "smoothness" I get with 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 

<snip>
--
Richard Knoppow

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