This channel is like dankpods, but it's film instead of ipods. I watched all the videos you have in a single day and I regret there isn't more yet. I fell in love with this channel. Please keep it up!
I got dry plates that are 0.3 ASA in the winter and 2.5 ASA in the summer at noon. You shoot upwards of 10seconds wide open (f/4.5 for 9x12). It is challenging.
Thank you! This is a by far the best explanation and comparison of pulling HP5+. I can only applaud the time and effort that went into this. Truly off the scale (a bit like when you got to ISO 5 😝). 👏👏
Pulling doesn’t really make a difference when scanning, but when i tried printing my pulled negatives on the darkroom, i never shot box speed again. Is so much easier to control tonal separation with 1 stop pulled negs (talking about hp5 and trix here) on the darkroom, but on a computer a curves adjustment is all you need, and usually box speed or pushed film looks better more quickly when scanned in my opinion
When you pull, do you decrease in development at 5-10% or do you develop at 400 speed (i.e, you pull one stop to 200, develop normal)? I do dark room printing too, with unimportant instagram shots being scanned in.
@@Adrian-wd4rn push and pull have no meaning. You develop according to the contrast you desire and to the contrast of the scene you photograph. If you overexpose a lot you reach the shoulder of the curve, so highlights will be compressed. If you underdevelop you would obtain something that is not printable at all..
@@슈게이저-b2e you should pull anyways. You can add contrast in the darkroom. The point is to have controll over the negative. There is no point in shooting box speed just to have more contrast
@@giannidigirolamo8868 that is wrong. You can't compare pull and push. Pushing is underexposing and overdeveloping. You loose detail because you underexpose on purpose. Pulling on the other hand is actually developing the film at it's real sensitivity or below. Also you can push 1 stop to gain contrast in low contrast scenes.
Thanks for reminding me of the old Kodachrome 25. That was great film. The only time I shot lower was some glass plate that had been created at ISO 1, yes ONE. The camera had to be on a heavy tripod and you metered at ISO 25 and calculated the time, then took off the lens cover and counted. The results were great at 150 feet you could read the numbers on the gas meter. Those little numbers around the three white quarter sized dials on the old meters. Wow. Thanks for the memories.
RUclips chose this video to recommend to me. I was expecting to see a few hundred thousand subs based on the content quality. Really top stuff you put out.
Great video! ISO 5 is about what some of the x ray film that I have is, and yeah, it's a pain in the butt to shoot with. Haven't tried pushing.....or pulling it yet though, so I might have to give that a shot.
We had some sunny days recently and I was surprised at how usable Velvia 50 was, even though it's fall, those bright cloudless days make it quite easy to work with. I mean, we'll see when I get it back from the lab.
I found it interesting to see these results because I have never once pulled a film. Pushing one or two stops on almost all rolls and cameras is pretty much a baseline for me; I love intense contrast and I'm not bothered by grain, as well as the fact that I feel as though the box speed of almost all film just isn't enough to shoot handheld under most circumstances (I'm a fellow resident of the ever-grey and dark Pacific NW). I would love to see this video but Push Edition next!
Dumb question: How can the amount of graininess change if you're using the same film stock? I always thought that the grain was related to the physical silver grains in the film compound, so even when shot at different speeds and apertures, the size and amount of grain would be the same?
You're half correct. The grain structure doesn't change, but it is affected by both exposure and development. By overexposing, you reduce the number of smaller particles becoming unexposed which would otherwise be removed during processing (longer development also increases apparent grain) and hence it looks finer. This wraps around again to becoming more grainy with severe overexposure, though I think there's other variables for that.
Good experiment, Always Pull, never Push. Experts (not me) state that Ilford HP5+ is actually a 160 asa (iso) film but can be shot at 400 for good results.
People always say things like this but it's wrong. They don't test iso, they test however many stops they want, usually the 11 stop range onto grade 2 paper that Ansel Adams did. Iso measures a single developer(that's similar to d76) for a certain shadow detail retrieval, hp5 is actually up to 500 in that combo. Something like rodinol will give you up to a stop less than that. It depends entirely on your developer, development time, and your requirements for density range. Something like foma 400 is indeed way overrated and really more like 250 iso in d76.
I do quite a lot of Paper Negative Experiments -- In these experiments, I use ISO-1 for old papers (50 to 75 years Out of Date). For newer papers that are expired to NEW I use ISO-3 for shaded areas // and ISO-6 for sunny landscapes. POINT here is = At ISO-100 to that of ISO-20 these images look as if they are orthochromatic in nature. (Interesting VID) = Thank you for Posting.
I've shot HP5 large format with -3 development because of an extremely high contrast scene. It would be interesting to see HP5 shot at ISO 5 (or -6 development) in a scene that has extreme contrast, think shooting a landscape right into the sun and metering for the dark grass/rock area in a foreground.
@@ConstantinSPurcea I genuinely hesitate to post anything at all in one of these giant misinformation festivals that happen so very often on youtube and facebook, but will respond despite my expectation of regrets. The dynamic range of B&W film is far longer than that of day-to-day digital cameras. The reason you think it is only 10 stops is because that is the expected range that B&W paper can generally handle from a negative, though different grades of paper may add a couple stops to that. The negative can have many more stops of density range but the paper can't deal with them. Therefore the range of stops aimed for with B&W film is generally controlled to 10 or 11, in expectation of having to deal with the limited capabilities of the paper. A similar limit is imposed by translation of a negative to a digital format. The film can handle a greater range than most scanners, so again, the film must be controlled in development so as not to render too long a density range for the scanner. Much older films than what we have today had what is called a "shoulder" in their characteristic curves. That was where additional exposure stopped resulting in additional density in the negative and anything exposed at or beyond the shoulder was lost... sort of like overexposing a digital image, resulting in clipping of the highlights.
@@davidkachel modern films have a shoulder as well, a point where the highlights will simply be blown out or shadows rendered pure black. It might be harder to get there, but it's still there. Try photographing the moon...moon exposure is simple, 1/ISO and f/11. So if I'm shooting 100 film and want to shoot the full moon over a cityscape at night, maybe I use 10 seconds exposure to properly expose the city skyline. That dot for the moon will be 10 stops overexposed. There's no recovering any detail from that, at least not that I've ever seen.
@@jkmoore1120 Sorry, but you are mistaken. Modern films do not have shoulders anywhere near a reasonable range. I have tested out to 22 stops or more. There are some current films that have shoulders, but only because they are manufactured using old fpormulae, but these are scarce and at the moment, I can't even think of one. Maybe FOMA's 200 Retro? Not at all sure. Also, shadows being "rendered pure black" has nothing whatsoever to do with a 'shoulder'. That is something at the opposite end of the characteristic curve. If shadows are too dark it is due ONLY to underexposure. If you used a ten second exposure, the reason there is no detail in the moon is because the moon moved during that too long exposure. The detail might be there in a shorter exposure.
Yeah, Rodinal wasn't the best choice for grain reduction. Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder what combination of film/pull/developer will yield the finest grain. Hmmm.
@@atticdarkroom I’m sure this isn’t the end-all if finest grain is your goal. But I actually get finer grain from HP5+ @ 250 in HC-110 than I do from FP4+ at EI 64 in Rodinal.
@@atticdarkroom depends on how you define "finest". developers with lesser active chemistry (note: less amounts of metol/hydroquinone) like Perceptol or derived versions of D-76 will yield smoother-looking grain as the chemistry acts milder on reducing silver. however if you're into grain that's still defined but less "chunky", go for the Pyro developers like 510 Pyro or Pyrocat-HD. but these are harder to handle as Pyro is a staining developer that is toxic, carcinogenic, and loves to stain things permanently. someone mentioned xtol, and it too is a good suggestion. my previous lab uses xtol when souping up bw films and it really likes beautiful, with moderately smooth grain and great tonezzz.
Hey man, I've been binge-watching your videos and immediately subbed after watching the first vid! The stuff you do is really interesting and I like to see your thought process unfold on camera. I have a topic that nobody I asked could answer, so I'm hoping maybe you could? How does one calculate reciprocity failure for expired film? I love shooting expired film and the stuff I usually use is 10-30 years old, and I'd love to shoot it at night but nobody can help me with this. Any advice? Maybe you could make a video on this even🤷🏽♂️ Anyway, keep up the great content man💯🔥
Thanks! Unfortunately when it comes to reciprocity failure I'm probably the worst person to talk to. Want to know how I solve for reciprocity failure? I don't. I ignore it until it becomes a problem and at which point I just randomly overexpose/over develop until it looks right. Yeah, I know, great advice. Compounding the issue you're shooting expired film. When the negatives come out thin, where does the expired film end and reciprocity failure begin? Ideally you'd have multiple rolls to bracket and do test exposures, but I know that with expired film that's easier said then done. I wish I had a better answer for you, and if you ever figure it out let me know.
@@atticdarkroom I really appreciate you giving an honest answer man🙏🏻 I'll do what you do and just catch on some shit until I find something that works😂
Depends if the film is color or BW. I shoot expired BW film and when I shoot at night I don't use reciprocity but rather make an "uneducated" guess and double the exposure times that I would require normally. But yeah, it would be too much of a hassle to actually calculate the exact times.
@@atticdarkroom Under no circumstances is additional development in any way a solution or compensation for reciprocity failure. Reciprocity failure is compensated by additional exposure and LESS development time.
Hi … Um.. Thanks for the video, but I couldn’t help but notice; For a film tested at different “speeds” (or, more properly; exposure indexes (EI) -while using the same, famously *grainy* film developer, Rodinal- it seems strange that you’re mainly comparing the *grain* (which, again, will be predictably grainy anyway), rather than the more important aspect; shadow detail. That’s normally the important difference; A lower EI let’s shadow details “get printed” onto the film. At the same time (depending upon the scene brightness range), the highlights might get burned-out … but those can usually be retained by reducing development (it's the basis of the ancient photographic maxim: "Expose for the shadows; Develop for the highlights"). It’d be interesting to see the same test run, looking for these parameters!
I am recently reading "the negative" (Ansel Adams) he told us in the chapter "zone system" that pulling /pushing more than 2 stops makes no sense with modern films. As a result you win (pull) or can cut (push) in the grey tones but not in the lights. Anyway I had to try it out by myself. Finally I can recommend to read the bible from him to get deeper into the term.
Shooting at 800 for everything to me is stupid. I was an Army photographer back in the Neolithic film age. I did mostly photojournalism work and the primary film I used was PlusX 125 ISO. Developed in Microdol-X. It had really fine grain, great tone and dynamic range with good contrast. If it was a darker overcast day. I might use TriX 400 ISO film. We did use a lot of FP4 and some HP5 but it doesn’t give the same results as PlusX with the developer I used. I never pulled film. There was no need for it. If I wanted slower like 25 ISO it was because it was the finest grain. You do this because it has the sharpest image with the most dynamic range and with 35 mm film you can make a poster sized print with little to no grain. And I don’t know what you are metering for but on a sunny day you can shoot 25 ISO film at 1/125 at f/8 or 1/1000 at f/2.8. What lens are you using? Are you using a lens with a maximum aperture of f/3.4 or something. Cause if you are your TTL metering is going to be off by two stops, use a handheld meter. A good one. If you are shooting color film and want a little bit of a pastel look, yes, pull it one maybe two stops tops for artistic sake but not with B&W. 800 ISO has no reciprocity for daylight, unless you use a camera with shutter speeds over 1/4000. Film isn’t digital so you shouldn’t try and shoot it speeds it wasn’t made for. Especially since there are film speeds made in that ISO. In the past TriX was rated at 200, and some cameras only went up to 1/500. And the standard film used was 64 ISO. Use the slowest film for the lighting conditions for best results, I usually start at 100 ISO for daylight, but will go for 25 to 64, if I want more reciprocity. I use 400 and higher only for lower lighting conditions, if I don’t use a flash.
once did a test of film. I shot OLD original Tri-X. Years ago, it was fresh film. I bracketed exposures from 25ASA ISO to 1600 plus! I made small prints of each exposure. All printed easily. I thought difference between 400 and 800 ASA was negligible. Your pulled negs are too low in contrast. By the way some lenses cause grain! No laughing! I shot a portrait on Leica M3, 135mm lens. I switched film to Pentax SP, 135mm lens, all in studio. The Pentax images were way grainier. A certain Netherlands photographer found same results! Irving Penn used to expose Tri-X at 250 or less. 120 Tri-X .Color negative behaves different. It really is only 200 ISO. Overexposure (actually correct speed) leads to finer grain, better colours. Good article!
How can the grains shrink in size? They are literally grains of silver halide crystals embedded in plastic. At best the contrast and range of values in the grains are getting lower. So they are harder to see. Maybe they dissolve or something when you leave it in the solution for longer.
First off I don't know what's going on, just want to make that clear. Second, the film is getting underdeveloped with each step, so I'd hazard a guess that less time in the soup leads to less grain being developed. I don't think the grain is getting smaller, just less of it? Again I don't know what I'm saying.
Try Adox 12asa CM20. You may not believe this but 35mm gives about the same grain and sharpness as a 5x4" negative, if you use a tripod and the right lens. Re HP5, try it at 100 asap with XTOL - it's indistinguishable from FP4. Rodinal can't pull films at all.
What change were you expecting to see? Already at 100 you are getting much less blowout, so I'd call it a huge change. Grain size isn't a good reason to pull. The EI stops for dev times often corresponds with the sqrt of 2 just like your aperture stops. So a stop less than 14min dev would be 10min, then 7, 5, etc.
Not sure what I was expecting, I just did it to see what would happen. And regarding the dev times, I'll keep that in mind the next time I try this. Seems more legit than picking a number because it feels right.
I found this very interesting, but when you said shooting at ISO 25 was difficult, I was a bit shocked. I shot Kodachrome 25 for years - at "box speed." Using the "Sunny 16 rule," it can, and I have, shot that film at 1/250th second @ f/5.6. Where's the difficulty in that? I'd expect development times at ISO 5 must have been very short, unless you used a much cooler than 68F/20C development.
Admire your attempt, but feel your method was wrong. First pick up Adams “ The Negative “or Picker’s “Zone Six Workshop” and see how they determine film speed. Next get your hands on a Zone System grey scale and then under controlled conditions take photos- then compare. BTW- ASA is the old ISO.
Why haven't you done any editing to the images down at 5, 12, and 25 ISO? The whole idea of pulling is to reduce contrast and gain additional information in the shadows. This allows you even more control over contrast in the edit, which you should add back in to "edit" the photo back into something more like a final product. If you shoot and develop HP5 at ISO 5 and don't do ANYTHING with it after development and scanning, you're losing out on the whole point of the post production process.
A locked down tripod shot, properly metered and developed and pulled to ISO 12 or 25 should be nice and sharp and full of detail, but rather flat looking. This resembles shooting in LOG format color profiles in videos, to which one applies "color grading" in software in production. This is what you should've done is post produce and edit the image after getting it scanned digitally, preferably editing it in a TIFF file format or similar.
Why not start with an already contrasty film like Pan F? I found that Pan F a punchy film great for certain things but too much hard for most things I shot. I've unsuccessfully tried to tame Pan F's contrast with different developers and pull processing but never took it to the level you did.
hey, I'm wondering if you would find interest in going through the science behind those "film soup" tik toks? sounds like it could be a job for you! otherwise nice video, i always run to watch your stuff
I never tried it, it never really interested me. But as I'm sitting here writing this I thought it over and I realized that there's a few things I would want to try before I completely write it off. I'll have to get back to you on this.
iso5 are obviously too much ) you can achieve same flattening results by shooting at 50-25 and developing in highly diluted developer for a long time with no agitation (this is a key). in this mode highlights quickly consumes all developer around them and developing process almost stops while shadows continue developing. results looks like using shadows/highlights in Photoshop (with same artefacts, lol)
Shooting at anything under ISO 400 you over exposed everything you shot. You pulled the development on everything as well - none of it was overdeveloped. Try overexposing (shooting at a lower ISO) and leaving your development at times for standard 400. Then you will see something dramatic.
@@mikeg4691 minimum exposure for maximum black - he's just shifting and bargaining which tone to lose. Underexposing sacrifices shadows, overdeveloping doesnt recover them.
I'm confused by what you've done here because you didn't really explain it. "Pulling" is a development term, where you intentionally remove a film from the developer early. So did you shoot all these rolls at EI 400 and then pull them more and more to see what would happen? How would you "pull" a 400 ISO film to ISO 5? An ISO 5 film would normally be left in dev longer than an ISO 400 film. So if you're in dev with a 400 ISO film and you use the dev time for an ISO 5 rating, you'd actually be leaving it in longer, which would be "pushing", not "pulling". From context of the video it sounds like you intentionally overexposed the film progressively more and more in camera, and then "pulled" in dev to compensate. However, if that is the case, you would not be "pulling to ISO 5". What you'd really be doing (for example) is shooting at an exposure index (EI) of say, 200, and then pulling to 400. It doesn't make sense to "pull" to a lower ISO. Really, you should leave out ISO from the push/pull conversation and just talk in terms of stops. I think what you've done is to overexpose HP5 by 6 stops and then pulled 6 stops in dev. Makes way more sense to say it that way. Basically, for instance in camera you may have treated the film as 100 ISO (+2). And then in dev, you treated that same roll as 1600 (-2) to compensate. This is the thing people mix up all the time. Positive stops are lower numbers. So in effect, you overexpose to a LOWER ISO. And you underdevelop (or pull) to a HIGHER ISO.
@@mikeg4691 Right, so he's metering the film as if it's lower ISO than it really is (overexposing) and then developing as if it were a higher ISO than it really is (pulling/using a time for a higher exposure index). My point is, it doesn't make sense to "pull" to a lower ISO. When you pull process, you use a time intended for a more sensitive film, effectively treating it as a higher ISO. So, "pulling to ISO 5" is weird to say. In the end the net effect is to treat the film as 400 ISO because he over exposed +6 and the pulled -6.
Massive dev chart is not accurate. Do your own testing. Film doesn't need extreme pushing and pulling. Use different films and devs for different results.
Rodinal is pretty shit developer imo. Really for any film stock. Xtol and perceptol are much better developers, I use xtol for pulling and perceptol for pushing. Both have finer grain than any of these negs.
I actually don't like how Rodinal renders the image. I like it for it's utility and it's cheap, lasts forever, and has development times for pretty much everything. If you look at any of the other projects I worked on you'll notice that image quality (or good photography) isn't really a top priority.
@@atticdarkroom gotcha. Well xtol is pretty damn cheap too, only $12 us for 5l of stock. I'd give it a shot with hp5 with a +3 dilution, it's quite amazing.
@@atticdarkroom Rodinal is an excellent developer for slow to medium speed films, but horrible for faster stock. Unless you like mothball grain. It's an acutance developer than gives good edge sharpness, medium grain and controllable contrast. Rodinal isn't a fine grain developer, but 100 ASA film is fine enough to take it. Fomapan 100 in Rodinal offers a classic monochrome look. Most street photographers shoot film at 400 to 1600 ASA, but remember Cartier-Bresson's classic work was typically shot at 50-100 ASA.
Rodinal is a terrible developer for high speed film. D76 type would be much better or divided developer or perhaps water bath. Your times are too short so you loose contrast. Give it a reasonable chance rather than calling failure in round 1.
Why would anyone want to under develop their film. Your just asking for all sorts of problems. To get that low contrast look just develop the film in D-96 motion picture developer. Easy and safe. The FPP has times for non motion picture film such as HP5.
@@atticdarkroom For the sake of a RUclips video I can understand pulling film simply to find out what happens. However from a practical standpoint it boggles my mind why anyone would pull film other than for the reason you just gave. And my comment was aimed at film photographs in general and not what you did for this one video.
Got it. I guess another reason could be if you accidently overexposed your film. It's nice to know that it's not completely ruined. Otherwise yeah, I agree.
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This channel is like dankpods, but it's film instead of ipods. I watched all the videos you have in a single day and I regret there isn't more yet. I fell in love with this channel. Please keep it up!
Thanks! I love me some Dankpods.
Because of this comment I subscribed before even watching a video
I had the exact same experience today!
Now that James has a channel, I feel like this channel is more like his channel. Lots of abominations made by both creators.
In the sense of shooting at box speed, FP4 at 4 might be an interesting comparison to HP5 at 5
I mean, that's a mere pull of ~5 stops instead of 6.3333 stops, practically usable!
I love your ISO callouts, they are like the altitude callouts on airliners on landing approach... "four hundred"... "two hundred"... so soothing.
I was a bit worried he would get to the 'retard retard' part like the airbus
I got dry plates that are 0.3 ASA in the winter and 2.5 ASA in the summer at noon.
You shoot upwards of 10seconds wide open (f/4.5 for 9x12).
It is challenging.
This channel has answered all of my questions about film that I was afraid to ask.
Keep up the amazing work.
I really love the dreamy vibe the low contrast gives
Modern negative film is bloody amazing in how much you can overexpose it and still get 'something' out of it.
Wouldn't be a true attic darkroom video without the famous forest scene at 3:18
The flatness and lack of density from the slower pulled speeds give a DELICIOUS sun-soaked beach vibe.
Thank you! This is a by far the best explanation and comparison of pulling HP5+. I can only applaud the time and effort that went into this. Truly off the scale (a bit like when you got to ISO 5 😝). 👏👏
Pulling doesn’t really make a difference when scanning, but when i tried printing my pulled negatives on the darkroom, i never shot box speed again. Is so much easier to control tonal separation with 1 stop pulled negs (talking about hp5 and trix here) on the darkroom, but on a computer a curves adjustment is all you need, and usually box speed or pushed film looks better more quickly when scanned in my opinion
When you pull, do you decrease in development at 5-10% or do you develop at 400 speed (i.e, you pull one stop to 200, develop normal)? I do dark room printing too, with unimportant instagram shots being scanned in.
@@Adrian-wd4rn personally I prefer punchy contrasty negs so I just develop at 400
@@Adrian-wd4rn push and pull have no meaning. You develop according to the contrast you desire and to the contrast of the scene you photograph. If you overexpose a lot you reach the shoulder of the curve, so highlights will be compressed. If you underdevelop you would obtain something that is not printable at all..
@@슈게이저-b2e you should pull anyways. You can add contrast in the darkroom. The point is to have controll over the negative. There is no point in shooting box speed just to have more contrast
@@giannidigirolamo8868 that is wrong. You can't compare pull and push. Pushing is underexposing and overdeveloping. You loose detail because you underexpose on purpose.
Pulling on the other hand is actually developing the film at it's real sensitivity or below.
Also you can push 1 stop to gain contrast in low contrast scenes.
Thanks for reminding me of the old Kodachrome 25. That was great film. The only time I shot lower was some glass plate that had been created at ISO 1, yes ONE. The camera had to be on a heavy tripod and you metered at ISO 25 and calculated the time, then took off the lens cover and counted. The results were great at 150 feet you could read the numbers on the gas meter. Those little numbers around the three white quarter sized dials on the old meters. Wow. Thanks for the memories.
You are my new favorite photography channel.
YES! NEW VIDEOOOO. I am always happy to see a vid from you. You’re absolutely awesome. :)
RUclips chose this video to recommend to me. I was expecting to see a few hundred thousand subs based on the content quality. Really top stuff you put out.
happy to see more oregon images on RUclips -- really appreciate your channel :)
Splendid. Love every second of it
This is great, man! The test we'd like to see, but never had courage to do ourselves.
Nice image at 4:21 great atmosphere @5 iso. Nice job on this experiment
Great video! ISO 5 is about what some of the x ray film that I have is, and yeah, it's a pain in the butt to shoot with. Haven't tried pushing.....or pulling it yet though, so I might have to give that a shot.
The notification that made my night! ♥️
You’re so close to 1,000 subs congrats!! You deserve 50x that! Great video as always! :-)
Thanks man!
this channel is legendary
We had some sunny days recently and I was surprised at how usable Velvia 50 was, even though it's fall, those bright cloudless days make it quite easy to work with. I mean, we'll see when I get it back from the lab.
Yeah, it turned out great, can't complain.
I appreciate the madness that is your channel.
I found it interesting to see these results because I have never once pulled a film. Pushing one or two stops on almost all rolls and cameras is pretty much a baseline for me; I love intense contrast and I'm not bothered by grain, as well as the fact that I feel as though the box speed of almost all film just isn't enough to shoot handheld under most circumstances (I'm a fellow resident of the ever-grey and dark Pacific NW).
I would love to see this video but Push Edition next!
What an awesome video - What an awesome hidden gem channel! love your contents man
Dumb question: How can the amount of graininess change if you're using the same film stock? I always thought that the grain was related to the physical silver grains in the film compound, so even when shot at different speeds and apertures, the size and amount of grain would be the same?
You're half correct. The grain structure doesn't change, but it is affected by both exposure and development. By overexposing, you reduce the number of smaller particles becoming unexposed which would otherwise be removed during processing (longer development also increases apparent grain) and hence it looks finer. This wraps around again to becoming more grainy with severe overexposure, though I think there's other variables for that.
“They never mention which number” hahahaha I laughed out so loud！
Good experiment, Always Pull, never Push. Experts (not me) state that Ilford HP5+ is actually a 160 asa (iso) film but can be shot at 400 for good results.
People always say things like this but it's wrong. They don't test iso, they test however many stops they want, usually the 11 stop range onto grade 2 paper that Ansel Adams did. Iso measures a single developer(that's similar to d76) for a certain shadow detail retrieval, hp5 is actually up to 500 in that combo. Something like rodinol will give you up to a stop less than that. It depends entirely on your developer, development time, and your requirements for density range. Something like foma 400 is indeed way overrated and really more like 250 iso in d76.
Pull and never push? No thanks...
straight to the point. that's what i want. good vid bro
Another great video! I've pulled it to 100 and much like you didn't really see a difference
I was surprised that the changes were so subtle. But like always, if you're stubborn enough you can get the results you're looking for.
New sub. Excellent test! Thanks for the thorough yet concise and brief information 👍
"They never mention which number"
So it's 405 (5 plus 400).
or times....
1600
@@llFlashBackll what
I have been wanting a video like this for awhile, thank you! Not enough videos on pulling film (bc it is not as sexy as pushing I suppose)
Thanks for the experiment! :)
Very interesting!
Good video, thank you!
Edit: Now you should also try this with color film.
I do quite a lot of Paper Negative Experiments -- In these experiments, I use ISO-1 for old papers (50 to 75 years Out of Date). For newer papers that are expired to NEW I use ISO-3 for shaded areas // and ISO-6 for sunny landscapes. POINT here is = At ISO-100 to that of ISO-20 these images look as if they are orthochromatic in nature. (Interesting VID) = Thank you for Posting.
Love your videos!
loved this video, subscribed and hoping for more experiments like this.
Best outro ever.
I've shot HP5 large format with -3 development because of an extremely high contrast scene. It would be interesting to see HP5 shot at ISO 5 (or -6 development) in a scene that has extreme contrast, think shooting a landscape right into the sun and metering for the dark grass/rock area in a foreground.
Curious as the dynamic range of B&W film isn’t that great… allegedly though. Hence the zone system is only 10 stops.
@@ConstantinSPurcea I genuinely hesitate to post anything at all in one of these giant misinformation festivals that happen so very often on youtube and facebook, but will respond despite my expectation of regrets. The dynamic range of B&W film is far longer than that of day-to-day digital cameras. The reason you think it is only 10 stops is because that is the expected range that B&W paper can generally handle from a negative, though different grades of paper may add a couple stops to that. The negative can have many more stops of density range but the paper can't deal with them. Therefore the range of stops aimed for with B&W film is generally controlled to 10 or 11, in expectation of having to deal with the limited capabilities of the paper. A similar limit is imposed by translation of a negative to a digital format. The film can handle a greater range than most scanners, so again, the film must be controlled in development so as not to render too long a density range for the scanner. Much older films than what we have today had what is called a "shoulder" in their characteristic curves. That was where additional exposure stopped resulting in additional density in the negative and anything exposed at or beyond the shoulder was lost... sort of like overexposing a digital image, resulting in clipping of the highlights.
@@davidkachel Modern digital cameras have over 14 stops of dynamic range, and over 10 stops even when pushed to ISO 6400
@@davidkachel modern films have a shoulder as well, a point where the highlights will simply be blown out or shadows rendered pure black. It might be harder to get there, but it's still there. Try photographing the moon...moon exposure is simple, 1/ISO and f/11. So if I'm shooting 100 film and want to shoot the full moon over a cityscape at night, maybe I use 10 seconds exposure to properly expose the city skyline. That dot for the moon will be 10 stops overexposed. There's no recovering any detail from that, at least not that I've ever seen.
@@jkmoore1120 Sorry, but you are mistaken. Modern films do not have shoulders anywhere near a reasonable range. I have tested out to 22 stops or more. There are some current films that have shoulders, but only because they are manufactured using old fpormulae, but these are scarce and at the moment, I can't even think of one. Maybe FOMA's 200 Retro? Not at all sure. Also, shadows being "rendered pure black" has nothing whatsoever to do with a 'shoulder'. That is something at the opposite end of the characteristic curve. If shadows are too dark it is due ONLY to underexposure. If you used a ten second exposure, the reason there is no detail in the moon is because the moon moved during that too long exposure. The detail might be there in a shorter exposure.
This was awesome!
I'm so glad you go through this so we don't have to
The photos at iso 5 remind me of wet plate a little bit. Might just be because theres so little dynamic range left? quite cool.
Love me some HP5+. I shoot it at EI 250 though. If you want to get rid of grain, use HC-110 instead of Rodinal :)
Yeah, Rodinal wasn't the best choice for grain reduction. Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder what combination of film/pull/developer will yield the finest grain. Hmmm.
@@atticdarkroom I’m sure this isn’t the end-all if finest grain is your goal. But I actually get finer grain from HP5+ @ 250 in HC-110 than I do from FP4+ at EI 64 in Rodinal.
@@BHuij1992 Have you tried Xtol? Buttery smooth at 1:1 and good tonality.
@@atticdarkroom depends on how you define "finest". developers with lesser active chemistry (note: less amounts of metol/hydroquinone) like Perceptol or derived versions of D-76 will yield smoother-looking grain as the chemistry acts milder on reducing silver. however if you're into grain that's still defined but less "chunky", go for the Pyro developers like 510 Pyro or Pyrocat-HD. but these are harder to handle as Pyro is a staining developer that is toxic, carcinogenic, and loves to stain things permanently. someone mentioned xtol, and it too is a good suggestion. my previous lab uses xtol when souping up bw films and it really likes beautiful, with moderately smooth grain and great tonezzz.
the lack of contrast can be compensated in scans or darkroom - so that shouldn't be a problem except perhaps ISO 5...
Hey man, I've been binge-watching your videos and immediately subbed after watching the first vid! The stuff you do is really interesting and I like to see your thought process unfold on camera. I have a topic that nobody I asked could answer, so I'm hoping maybe you could? How does one calculate reciprocity failure for expired film? I love shooting expired film and the stuff I usually use is 10-30 years old, and I'd love to shoot it at night but nobody can help me with this. Any advice? Maybe you could make a video on this even🤷🏽♂️ Anyway, keep up the great content man💯🔥
Thanks!
Unfortunately when it comes to reciprocity failure I'm probably the worst person to talk to.
Want to know how I solve for reciprocity failure? I don't. I ignore it until it becomes a problem and at which point I just randomly overexpose/over develop until it looks right. Yeah, I know, great advice.
Compounding the issue you're shooting expired film. When the negatives come out thin, where does the expired film end and reciprocity failure begin? Ideally you'd have multiple rolls to bracket and do test exposures, but I know that with expired film that's easier said then done.
I wish I had a better answer for you, and if you ever figure it out let me know.
@@atticdarkroom I really appreciate you giving an honest answer man🙏🏻 I'll do what you do and just catch on some shit until I find something that works😂
Depends if the film is color or BW. I shoot expired BW film and when I shoot at night I don't use reciprocity but rather make an "uneducated" guess and double the exposure times that I would require normally. But yeah, it would be too much of a hassle to actually calculate the exact times.
@@apostoliulian3454 I rarely shoot B&W but this I very helpful, thanks man!
@@atticdarkroom Under no circumstances is additional development in any way a solution or compensation for reciprocity failure. Reciprocity failure is compensated by additional exposure and LESS development time.
Love the ending.
the joke at the end cracked me up ;)
Crazy it looks pretty cool
I really wanted to see this, thank you. What scanned do you use, the photos look very sharp
Maybe that's why it's called HP5
I loled at the end :)
conheci esse canal recentemente e gostei muito, estou iniciando na fotografia analógica então é tudo novo para mim, continue com o seu trabalho :))
Hi … Um.. Thanks for the video, but I couldn’t help but notice; For a film tested at different “speeds” (or, more properly; exposure indexes (EI) -while using the same, famously *grainy* film developer, Rodinal- it seems strange that you’re mainly comparing the *grain* (which, again, will be predictably grainy anyway), rather than the more important aspect; shadow detail. That’s normally the important difference; A lower EI let’s shadow details “get printed” onto the film. At the same time (depending upon the scene brightness range), the highlights might get burned-out … but those can usually be retained by reducing development (it's the basis of the ancient photographic maxim: "Expose for the shadows; Develop for the highlights"). It’d be interesting to see the same test run, looking for these parameters!
Pretty artistic. Looks like snowy days.
Cool experiment! Thanks for doing this so I never think it's a good idea.
Now watching this months later, I think taking the guessing game out of development would've been stand developing
I'm 1-1/2 years late to the ball game. But. You got great separation in the shadows by over-exposing and under-developing.
Lol for both vids I saw when you talk about the ones you think are bad those are the ones I think are worth looking at
I would try to develop the iso 5 film in D19.
So now it's time to push fp4+ to 4000+, right?
🤔
Did a project, where I pushed 120 HP5+ to ISO 12500, I'm pretty satisfied with the result. I eyeballed the exposure time 🙂
Would say, go for it!
Isn't the low max density at ISO 5 an indication of insufficient development, i.e. going too far in the direction of under development?
I am recently reading "the negative" (Ansel Adams) he told us in the chapter "zone system" that pulling /pushing more than 2 stops makes no sense with modern films. As a result you win (pull) or can cut (push) in the grey tones but not in the lights. Anyway I had to try it out by myself. Finally I can recommend to read the bible from him to get deeper into the term.
5:23 we just need to see a trichrome of hp5 at iso 5
Shooting at 800 for everything to me is stupid. I was an Army photographer back in the Neolithic film age. I did mostly photojournalism work and the primary film I used was PlusX 125 ISO. Developed in Microdol-X. It had really fine grain, great tone and dynamic range with good contrast. If it was a darker overcast day. I might use TriX 400 ISO film. We did use a lot of FP4 and some HP5 but it doesn’t give the same results as PlusX with the developer I used. I never pulled film. There was no need for it. If I wanted slower like 25 ISO it was because it was the finest grain. You do this because it has the sharpest image with the most dynamic range and with 35 mm film you can make a poster sized print with little to no grain. And I don’t know what you are metering for but on a sunny day you can shoot 25 ISO film at 1/125 at f/8 or 1/1000 at f/2.8. What lens are you using? Are you using a lens with a maximum aperture of f/3.4 or something. Cause if you are your TTL metering is going to be off by two stops, use a handheld meter. A good one. If you are shooting color film and want a little bit of a pastel look, yes, pull it one maybe two stops tops for artistic sake but not with B&W. 800 ISO has no reciprocity for daylight, unless you use a camera with shutter speeds over 1/4000. Film isn’t digital so you shouldn’t try and shoot it speeds it wasn’t made for. Especially since there are film speeds made in that ISO. In the past TriX was rated at 200, and some cameras only went up to 1/500. And the standard film used was 64 ISO.
Use the slowest film for the lighting conditions for best results, I usually start at 100 ISO for daylight, but will go for 25 to 64, if I want more reciprocity. I use 400 and higher only for lower lighting conditions, if I don’t use a flash.
once did a test of film. I shot OLD original Tri-X. Years ago, it was fresh film. I bracketed exposures from 25ASA ISO to 1600 plus! I made small prints of each exposure. All printed easily. I thought difference between 400 and 800 ASA was negligible. Your pulled negs are too low in contrast. By the way some lenses cause grain! No laughing! I shot a portrait on Leica M3, 135mm lens. I switched film to Pentax SP, 135mm lens, all in studio. The Pentax images were way grainier. A certain Netherlands photographer found same results! Irving Penn used to expose Tri-X at 250 or less. 120 Tri-X .Color negative behaves different. It really is only 200 ISO. Overexposure (actually correct speed) leads to finer grain, better colours. Good article!
How can the grains shrink in size? They are literally grains of silver halide crystals embedded in plastic. At best the contrast and range of values in the grains are getting lower. So they are harder to see. Maybe they dissolve or something when you leave it in the solution for longer.
First off I don't know what's going on, just want to make that clear.
Second, the film is getting underdeveloped with each step, so I'd hazard a guess that less time in the soup leads to less grain being developed. I don't think the grain is getting smaller, just less of it? Again I don't know what I'm saying.
@@atticdarkroom Yes, that's what I think is happening as well. I was just musing out loud :) great stuff!
Seen a few people make hp5 reversals... how is this possible?
Try Adox 12asa CM20. You may not believe this but 35mm gives about the same grain and sharpness as a 5x4" negative, if you use a tripod and the right lens.
Re HP5, try it at 100 asap with XTOL - it's indistinguishable from FP4. Rodinal can't pull films at all.
Asa 100 looks nice ❤
What change were you expecting to see?
Already at 100 you are getting much less blowout, so I'd call it a huge change. Grain size isn't a good reason to pull.
The EI stops for dev times often corresponds with the sqrt of 2 just like your aperture stops.
So a stop less than 14min dev would be 10min, then 7, 5, etc.
Not sure what I was expecting, I just did it to see what would happen.
And regarding the dev times, I'll keep that in mind the next time I try this. Seems more legit than picking a number because it feels right.
Box died is why I always shoot my Minolta A-7000 at ISO 7000.
For some reason, my pictures always come out black
I found this very interesting, but when you said shooting at ISO 25 was difficult, I was a bit shocked. I shot Kodachrome 25 for years - at "box speed." Using the "Sunny 16 rule," it can, and I have, shot that film at 1/250th second @ f/5.6. Where's the difficulty in that?
I'd expect development times at ISO 5 must have been very short, unless you used a much cooler than 68F/20C development.
I've been shooting at ISO 800 for years so I've gotten used to that. Moving down to anything lower than 100 puts me out of my element.
How did you scan these negatives?
Very muddy at 5 but smooth.
For how long did you develop? Like... 60sec?
How do you avoid uneven processing? Extreme developer dilution?
Here are my times, I diluted the Rodinal at 1:50.
400 - 11:00
200 - 10:00
100 - 9:00
50 - 8:00
25 - 7:00
12 - 5:45
5 - 4:30
@@atticdarkroom great thanks! :)
I guess FP4 is up next
Admire your attempt, but feel your method was wrong. First pick up Adams “ The Negative “or Picker’s “Zone Six Workshop” and see how they determine film speed. Next get your hands on a Zone System grey scale and then under controlled conditions take photos- then compare. BTW- ASA is the old ISO.
Why haven't you done any editing to the images down at 5, 12, and 25 ISO? The whole idea of pulling is to reduce contrast and gain additional information in the shadows. This allows you even more control over contrast in the edit, which you should add back in to "edit" the photo back into something more like a final product. If you shoot and develop HP5 at ISO 5 and don't do ANYTHING with it after development and scanning, you're losing out on the whole point of the post production process.
A locked down tripod shot, properly metered and developed and pulled to ISO 12 or 25 should be nice and sharp and full of detail, but rather flat looking. This resembles shooting in LOG format color profiles in videos, to which one applies "color grading" in software in production. This is what you should've done is post produce and edit the image after getting it scanned digitally, preferably editing it in a TIFF file format or similar.
I once tried making negatives with cyanotype it took the whole damn day 🙃
Why not start with an already contrasty film like Pan F? I found that Pan F a punchy film great for certain things but too much hard for most things I shot. I've unsuccessfully tried to tame Pan F's contrast with different developers and pull processing but never took it to the level you did.
hey, I'm wondering if you would find interest in going through the science behind those "film soup" tik toks? sounds like it could be a job for you! otherwise nice video, i always run to watch your stuff
I never tried it, it never really interested me. But as I'm sitting here writing this I thought it over and I realized that there's a few things I would want to try before I completely write it off. I'll have to get back to you on this.
Good joke at the end 😅
Bah... you can shoot iso 6 handheld if it's sunny enough and you've got a fast enough lens.
You somehow managed to make HP5 at box look contrasty. Didn’t think it was possible
It isn’t really 400 speed anyway
iso5 are obviously too much )
you can achieve same flattening results by shooting at 50-25 and developing in highly diluted developer for a long time with no agitation (this is a key).
in this mode highlights quickly consumes all developer around them and developing process almost stops while shadows continue developing.
results looks like using shadows/highlights in Photoshop (with same artefacts, lol)
Why not use Pan F , less of a pull
I thought this was more fun.
for science!
Tedious.
Shooting at anything under ISO 400 you over exposed everything you shot. You pulled the development on everything as well - none of it was overdeveloped. Try overexposing (shooting at a lower ISO) and leaving your development at times for standard 400. Then you will see something dramatic.
I imagine It would be completely blown out if he didn't change the development.
@@mikeg4691 minimum exposure for maximum black - he's just shifting and bargaining which tone to lose. Underexposing sacrifices shadows, overdeveloping doesnt recover them.
I'm confused by what you've done here because you didn't really explain it. "Pulling" is a development term, where you intentionally remove a film from the developer early. So did you shoot all these rolls at EI 400 and then pull them more and more to see what would happen? How would you "pull" a 400 ISO film to ISO 5? An ISO 5 film would normally be left in dev longer than an ISO 400 film. So if you're in dev with a 400 ISO film and you use the dev time for an ISO 5 rating, you'd actually be leaving it in longer, which would be "pushing", not "pulling". From context of the video it sounds like you intentionally overexposed the film progressively more and more in camera, and then "pulled" in dev to compensate. However, if that is the case, you would not be "pulling to ISO 5". What you'd really be doing (for example) is shooting at an exposure index (EI) of say, 200, and then pulling to 400. It doesn't make sense to "pull" to a lower ISO. Really, you should leave out ISO from the push/pull conversation and just talk in terms of stops. I think what you've done is to overexpose HP5 by 6 stops and then pulled 6 stops in dev. Makes way more sense to say it that way. Basically, for instance in camera you may have treated the film as 100 ISO (+2). And then in dev, you treated that same roll as 1600 (-2) to compensate. This is the thing people mix up all the time. Positive stops are lower numbers. So in effect, you overexpose to a LOWER ISO. And you underdevelop (or pull) to a HIGHER ISO.
He metered at a lower ISO and pulled it while developing to compensate the overexposure. You can see the development times in the description.
@@mikeg4691 Right, so he's metering the film as if it's lower ISO than it really is (overexposing) and then developing as if it were a higher ISO than it really is (pulling/using a time for a higher exposure index). My point is, it doesn't make sense to "pull" to a lower ISO. When you pull process, you use a time intended for a more sensitive film, effectively treating it as a higher ISO. So, "pulling to ISO 5" is weird to say. In the end the net effect is to treat the film as 400 ISO because he over exposed +6 and the pulled -6.
Wow
My wet plates are 2iso and I take a dark tent everywhere I go with my camera, come at me
Why not both?
@@atticdarkroom Idk, I just wanted to cry about having to carry a dark tent everywhere. Its a pain in the ass. Very nice video
Massive dev chart is not accurate. Do your own testing. Film doesn't need extreme pushing and pulling. Use different films and devs for different results.
Rodinal is pretty shit developer imo. Really for any film stock. Xtol and perceptol are much better developers, I use xtol for pulling and perceptol for pushing. Both have finer grain than any of these negs.
I actually don't like how Rodinal renders the image. I like it for it's utility and it's cheap, lasts forever, and has development times for pretty much everything. If you look at any of the other projects I worked on you'll notice that image quality (or good photography) isn't really a top priority.
@@atticdarkroom gotcha. Well xtol is pretty damn cheap too, only $12 us for 5l of stock. I'd give it a shot with hp5 with a +3 dilution, it's quite amazing.
@@atticdarkroom Rodinal is an excellent developer for slow to medium speed films, but horrible for faster stock. Unless you like mothball grain. It's an acutance developer than gives good edge sharpness, medium grain and controllable contrast. Rodinal isn't a fine grain developer, but 100 ASA film is fine enough to take it. Fomapan 100 in Rodinal offers a classic monochrome look. Most street photographers shoot film at 400 to 1600 ASA, but remember Cartier-Bresson's classic work was typically shot at 50-100 ASA.
Rodinal is a terrible developer for high speed film. D76 type would be much better or divided developer or perhaps water bath. Your times are too short so you loose contrast. Give it a reasonable chance rather than calling failure in round 1.
Why would anyone want to under develop their film. Your just asking for all sorts of problems. To get that low contrast look just develop the film in D-96 motion picture developer. Easy and safe. The FPP has times for non motion picture film such as HP5.
🤷♂️ I'm bored and want to see what happens.
@@atticdarkroom For the sake of a RUclips video I can understand pulling film simply to find out what happens. However from a practical standpoint it boggles my mind why anyone would pull film other than for the reason you just gave. And my comment was aimed at film photographs in general and not what you did for this one video.
Got it. I guess another reason could be if you accidently overexposed your film. It's nice to know that it's not completely ruined. Otherwise yeah, I agree.