Hello Shannon, For longer exposures I always use a water / developer technique. I expose my film normally and figure any reciprocity law failure as need and factor that into my development time like usual. I ususally use this process when I shoot at night but it also works for long exposures during the day. You setup your regular developer, stop and fix and also a tank of water. Now the development of your negatives will take alot longer.
Example if your development time is 7min you must break down the development time like this: 30 sec in developer AGITATING ALL THE TIME 30 sec in water NO AGITATION THIS ONE MINUTE OF DEVELPER / WATER ONLY EQUALS 15sec OF ACTUAL DEVELOPMENT TIME. SO TO GET 1 MINUTE OF DEVELOPMENT TIME YOU MUST DO THIS 4 TIMES: 15sec X 4 = 60 sec So your original 7 min development time now turns into 28 min with this technique of every 30 secs moving the negatives from the developer to the water and back untill the 28mins is up. O yes this of course must be done in complete darkness because you have to use open tanks to transfer the negs from the developer to the water. For regular 35mm film load it on a reel or if you are using sheet film onto those metal guides for dip and dunk development. The process seems very long but believe me you will not believe the results that you get I have been using this technique for a year and a half and I am still impressed with the detail you get in the highlight and the shadows and the negatives print up beautifully. What the water does is wash out the developer in the highlights because they develop really quickly but it has no effect on the shadows and lets them still develop normally. I have tried other techniques like the Bird Bath and mixing fast and slow developers but I find this works best. I hope this helps you if you have any question feel free to contact me about this and tell me how it works out for you. JAY. Shannon Stoney wrote: > Sorry to have a one track mind, but I am still thinking about whether you > need to change your development times when you make long exposures. The > theory seems to be that highlights expose more than shadows during long > exposures, so that you should under-develop. But, when I do this the > highlights look too dull. I am wondering if this "rule" is really true. > What do other people on this list do? Do you develop less as you make > longer exposures? > > --shannon > > _______________________________________________ > Post to the list as PLAIN TEXT only - no HTML > Pinhole-Discussion mailing list > Pinhole-Discussion@p at ??????? > unsubscribe or change your account at > http://www.???????/discussion/