[pure-silver] Re: Tonal gradation/smoothness in 35mm negs c.f. larger formats
- From: "Peter Badcock" <peter.badcock@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:20:43 +1100
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 <//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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