Originally posted by pathdoc
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Of interest, I have scarcely ever managed to get the crisp black-and-white "just like normal chemistry" look that some of the Caffenol gods seem to be able to achieve. I look at the Caffenol communities on Flickr and keep on asking myself what I am doing wrong.
How does the captured density on the film look. Stand development is really dependent on the chemistry of the developer to move around in the tank on its own. I see a lot of good mid tones lately from Caffenol but a lack of dynamic range with rather substandard highlight reproduction. This could be from the digital conversion but assuming the scan grabbed most of the density off the negative it leaves doubt about the developing or contrast curve adjustment.
When you are working with a DIY developer, an arguably must-have tool is a densitometer. It would help so much. Normally you expose to place dark values in your scene. And then to control if your highlights are going to be too dark or too bright you nail down a "normal" development time assuming your metering captured that range properly. A densitometer will tell you this; otherwise, you'll have to use judgement, experience and a lot of feedback from trial and error. And then comes all the hand waving and speculation. Of course with stand development you don't need to nail down a dev time but the results should not be less than having a good development time with normal development.
So if you know your metering is placing deep shadows just above the base + fog of the film and you can reproduce good highlight detail for your medium (condenser or diffusion enlarger or computer screen) of say puffy, white clouds to a level of about 3 stops above the middle gray exposure, you know you have a good development time/stand development process and then you can say if the developer produces the look you want or not. Doing some Sunny 16 exposure tests can be a good measure of your development time if you're in a good Sunny 16 light level conditions (eg not at an extreme latitude and time of year). With the Sun at your back, a Sunny 16 exposure should place a patch of unpolluted blue sky well above the horizon to a level of gray about 2 stops above the middle gray. In other words, without a colored filter, you should not see a really dark or white sky.
Last edited by tuco; 09-09-2019 at 11:53 AM.
Reason: info