Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

Enough details in the darkest part of the hat. That means exposure was good enough to carry information from dark part of the scene.

You can see enough details on the most exposed part of the image. This button of the water pump is still carrying on its middle and left side information about details, while right side which was directly exposed to the sun is just burned. That indicate the development time for this kind of scene and exposure is just right.

Developed in Paterson Aculux II diluted 1:9 for 6 minutes at temperature 20C. This is what I consider nicely developed negative. You can immediately see deep blacks on hat and whites on the buttons of the water pump. Difference with shot developed using FD-10 is that here there was more light intensity and that could lead to better highlights.

I believe separation in shadows is good, you can see (on good monitor and paper) all the details of the Mamiya viewfinder. This means that there was enough exposure for developing information in the dark parts. So exposure is OK. Well that is not a problem I guess when pulling film :-) You can also observe a grain in this 1:1 crop from 5400dpi scan.

This was only part where histogram shows the most white. Unfortunately you can see the white is not the whites. That is easily seen also from histogram of the scanner. On handle you can see all the details. This would indicate that time of the development was too short to get full whites. This can be also result of not enough light for that exposure, but can be compensated with extended development

Developed in Fotospeed FD10 diluted 1:9 for 6 minutes at temperature 19-19.5C. My feeling also based on following two shots of shadows and highlights is that this will be needed little bit more of development. Probably result of lower temperature.

I have added new experiment page where I show you my progress with approaching development of Fomapan 200 exposed at 100 ASA. The reason for this kind of pulling is that I like to get the best image quality with that old type of look while I need at least 100ASA. This approach failed with Fuji Across 100. It worked perfectly with Kodak 125PX, which is great film, but hard to get here and if than very expensive. Therefore I am trying Fomapan 200 creative.