Several days ago, two Dublin photographers and I converged on the Conyngham Road, where Irish Rail’s branch from Islandbridge Junction to Connolly Station/North Wall enters the Phoenix Park Tunnel.
Our interest was Belmond’s Grand Hibernianled by an Irish Rail class 071 diesel.
Afterwards we paid a visit to Ryan’s of Parkgate Street, a local pub just a short walk up the street and near Dublin’s Heuston Station, where I continued to make photos with my vintage Nikon F3 with 50mm f1.4 lens.
Working with a wide aperture on film allows for selective focus and the ability to select a subject and offset it against a soft background. This the opposite effect often provided by many digital cameras that tend to use a smaller aperture and sharpening software to produce greater depth of field and razor sharp images.
I used Kodak Tri-X, which I processed in Ilford ID-11 using a traditional recipe with my customized multiple-split process to maximize shadow and highlight detail.
The term is mine. Or at least I think it is. Essentially, I process the film with a multiple stage development, but with a break in the developer between the second and third stage. The theory behind this is aimed a controlling the highlight density by limiting the amount of fresh developer to a known maximum, to allow shadows/midtone comparatively more development.
I begin with a ‘water bath’ with an extremely dilute developer to prime the development. By nature of the process, the highlights should exhaust this weak developer almost immediately, giving shadows more time to prime. In the next stage, I introduce my full strength developer, agitate, let sit for a minute, agitate and then remove the developer from the tank and replaced it with fresh water (at equivalent or slightly higher temperature). Again, in the highlights the remaining developer that has absorbed into the film will exhaust quickly, but the in the shadows it will continue to act, giving comparatively more development, thus allowing the shadows to gain greater detail without over processing the highlights. In the final stage, I return the developer to the tank and complete the process. Stop, Fix, wash as normal.
In some situations, I may tone the negatives to bring up highlight detail and provide a silvery gloss in the final image.
I hope that helps, BS.
OK, I will bite. I am no expert since I have not processed my film in decades but what is a “customized multiple-split process.” ?