In the development of B&W film rolls, people often talk about their result being flat or glowing. What do these terms mean?
I now have Tri-X 400 roll (not yet developed). How can I achieve glowing photograph in the end?
Answer
In the development of B&W film rolls, people often talk about their result being flat or glowing.
I would urge you to take this with a grain of salt, as no one staring at a print is thinking of the negative. The negative is a vitally important step - but that's just it - it's a step. Many modifications can be made during printing. Because of this, one should strive for the best possible negative to be used as a foundation from which to create the best print.
If we assume that the person is talking about the tonal range, then "flat" is meant to mean "containing a limited range of tones" - generally this is in the mid range, giving a muddy appearance, but too dark images with no highlights of too bright images with no shadows will also appear flat.
The opposite of this would then be "glowing" or images that "contain a full range of tonal values from black to white" - usually without being overly contrasty.
How can I achieve glowing photograph in the end?
I'm glad you mention in the end - your heart is in the right place.
First up, you need a negative that you can work with. Whether something is inherently high or low contrast begins at the quality of light. Big, diffuse light like a cloudy day is inherently less contrasty than hard point lights like the sunny noon sun.
But, no matter what, you need to expose the film such that a "proper" exposure is made. As the negative is simply a step, you're looking to give yourself the best base from which to build. There's an old adage, "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights."
The reason you do this is to make sure that you capture shadow detail. Film has an inertia - a minimum amount of photons must hit it to cause a reaction. This is really exemplified in the case of long exposures and reciprocity failure but the concept shows up again as a microcosm of itself in capturing shadow detail.
Now, film has latitude and can tolerate some level of both over and under exposure. B&W happens to tolerate over-exposure very, very well.
This is why you expose for the shadows (make sure you capture their detail) and let the highlights overexpose if needed. If the scene is very contrasty and you are especially worried about the highlights, then you can develop for them. This means use a compensating developer and/or process, like Stand Development.
Alright - cool. Now you should have a negative where:
- The shadows have detail (no completely transparent sections of the neg)
- The highlights are not blocked (no completely black, detail-less sections)
This gives you a fantastic base from which to start. When it comes time to print, there are many schools of thought. Personally, I test strip with no filters until getting a proper exposure. From there, I'll choose to lower or heighten the contrast over the whole image, and then apply varying contrast filters as either burned or dodged into the whole. The same can be done digitally.
As an example of this, please see the image below (sorry, I only have a picture of a picture for this one). I was satisfied with the image as a whole but it felt "muddy" or "flat" to me. So the bottom corner feathers were burned in with a higher contrast filter. The image in person does look better, as the highlights look brighter. This was me adding higher contrast and burning the corner in order to add in darker shadows, more contrast, and get away from it being flat.
When it comes time to print, it's always good to start off with a good negative. From there, lower or up the contrast globally, locally, or both to finish up with the tonal range that you want for the photograph.
(Click to expand)
xiota was kind enough to edit my photo of a photo. This likeness is more akin to the print (click to expand):
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