Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/12/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Eric Welch wrote: > > No, there are not ten or eleven zones. Zones are just a description of > a certain specific range of tones. Go back and read the Zone system > again. It's not an absolute process. Especially read something by > Ansel's assistant John Sexton. With his special processing techniques, > such as using TMax developer 1:9 or 1:15 and very long processing > times, he can get way more range of light intensity on film in > printable densities. In one power plant he has a photo that shows a > beautiful range of tones and the highlights are so under control you > can actually the the form if the filament in the light bulbs. That's > way more than the traditional 12 zones that most Zone System > Practitioners will allow for. > > It's not voodoo, it's sensitometry. > Sexton would need to be an expert in ultra low dilutions and developing agents as he develops his negs with continual agitation (roller) a practice which would have his famous mentor Ansel rolling continuously in one direction in his grave! But no ones going to argue with his prints. Yes I'm a aware of all that stuff the - Windich Catechol formula claims 15 stops and there are a whole category of exotic ultra low contrast developers which get its main use in getting normal results from high contrast ultra thin emulsion films. Tech Pan is renamed High Contrast Copy Film which was designed for making title slides for slide shows. Ultra low dilutions and exotic highly toxic developing agents stretch the range of a neg way past a point where the neg was designed to operate. Kodak and Ilford did not test Tri X or TMY in such a treatment to make sure you could get 15 stops with it I'll be willing to bet. If you can get such results it's a quirky deal. Some films can respond that way. Some will not. And Such a film/developer combination is not IDEAL for normal use at all. I'll guess that Sexton has some film holders or backs DEDICATED for this treatment but it's not the default in which he is accustomed toward reaching for first. He'd dilute more normally as a default because extreme treatments really do not make at all for the most ideal negs. They make for negs which may have an extended range of tones or f stops but try to separate them onto a print! ...most often making for a thin muddy look. Not ideal. So you only want to use such treatments in very very contrasty situations. And these situations do exist on planet earth with it's ozone layer as is say in a landscape with very bright sun but you also want to get into those very dark shadows. In reality your eye scans first to the brights then the darks and even your eye is not going to embrace all those tones at the same time. But I have seen prints which seem to reflect this and they have not been overall dull in appearance but still had pop and a glow. And Sexton has some practically famous examples of this. I think of him as an expert in this look which in my experience is like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. You try making these ultra high dilutions work for you I've had no luck with them. Blotchy negs. My local freinds as well. All of them Blotchy. So in comparing the range of digital to the range of film I still recoil at "15" as the f stops we get. One tenth of one percent of us might get that on tenth of one percent of the time. The number they are pulling from the digital end of things has more of a basis in reality. B&W Film has a normal range of stops half 15. That's my seven and a half stop solution! Mark Rabiner Portland, Oregon USA http://www.rabinergroup.com No Archive Hold the Anchovies - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html