Compensate for lighting?

[martin s]

Hey there,

I just read this article about Winogrand

He opened his camera bag. In it were two Leica M4's, equipped with 28mm lenses and dozens of rolls of Tri-X. The top of the bag was covered with yellow tabs. He told us he wrote light conditions on the tabs and put them on rolls as he finished them so he would know how to develop them.

I assume it's about contrast, but how would you do this? What would you change with different lighting?

martin

[venchka]

Read Adams "The Negative". It's classic Zone System: Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights."

Put in more rangefinder friendly terms:
Overexpose/underdevelop to reduce contrast. (Pull)
Underexpose/Overdevelop to increas contrast. (Push)

Based on a very few photos of his that I have seen, I think he lost the tabs before processing.

[telenous]

Originally Posted by martin s

Hey there,

I just read this article about Winogrand



I assume it's about contrast, but how would you do this? What would you change with different lighting?

martin

I think he wanted to keep the camera settings around the baseline f/8 and 1/250s mentioned also in the article. (With these he 'd have gotten good depth with the 28mm and properly frozen action). With f/stop and shutter speed constant, he had to push or pull his TriX to the ISO that would give the appropriate exposure value for the light conditions. Hence the labels.

That's speculation of course but I don't think he was the kind who stressed about tonality over content.

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

On bright sunny days where he light is harsh and shadows strong, you need to reduce development to keep contrast in control. Reduced dev. time lowers film speed, so you overexpose a stop and reduce developing time 30%. Works beautifully.