Best fim/dev combo for contrasty low-light?

I've come up with an idea for a new project that might be quite interesting. In a previous post, I published a pic of a tenement close in Dundee - a communal entrance to a late 19th century or early 20th century block of flats. Last weekend, I went walkabout in the West End of the city and had a look at some of these closes and found that many of them would be great for black and white photography.

Monochrome is all about light and shade and that's what characterises these common entrances. They follow a similar pattern: there's a corridor stretching from the front of the building to the rear with stairs heading off towards the back. Often, there's a door leading to the back garden which is usually left unlocked from what I've seen. There's also a window on each stairwell landing looking out over the rear garden.

The walls of the close are normally painted with gloss paint and the actual steps of the stairwells are worn in the middle from decades of use. The end result is a lot of dark, atmospheric shadows, soft bright lighting from the doors and windows and reflections bouncing off the glossy walls. The photographs on this post will give you an idea of the sort of images I'd be looking to get although these were taken a year or two ago on my D700. I quite liked these pics when I took them but it's only now I've thought about expanding them into a project.

On my weekend walkabout I had Agfa APX 100 in the XG2 and hadn't intended shooting indoors. That speed of film was totally inadequate for these dark spaces. I took a few shots just to see how they would look but I was handholding at speeds as low as 1/8th. For one pic, I was pointing the camera vertically upwards using my forehead as a "tripod head", if you can imagine that! I haven't finished the film yet so I don't have anything from it to post.

When I start tackling this subject in a serious fashion I might well use the Rollei SL66E and there will definitely be a tripod on hand. The technical problem will be retaining detail in both shadows and highlights without turning the mid-tones all muddy. Compressed mid-tones are often an unwelcome by-product of the type of compensating development that might normally be used to control the wide contrast ranges involved.

There are several options available, some well-known and two that are a bit esoteric. The common solutions include two-bath development and the use of a compensating developer. I've discussed two-bath on this website before. If you type the words into the search box at the top of the right hand column you'll find several posts relating to it.

Briefly, though, it works like this: Two solutions are made up called A and B. A contains the developing chemicals only along with a preservative and sometimes a restrainer and B the chemicals that, for want of a better description, "start" the development process. The film is placed in Bath A for around three minutes with agitation every minute or so during which time hardly any development actually takes place. With the emulsion soaked with developer, the film is transferred without a stop bath or washing straight into Bath B for the same time. Agitation here should be minimal - just enough to avoid streaking which might mean one or two gentle inversions during the three minutes.

When development gets underway in Bath B the development chemicals soaking the emulsion are exhausted more quickly in the densest parts of the negatives, i.e. the highlights. With minimal agitation, the developer in the dense areas is not refreshed so highlights develop only until the developer is exhausted, automatically limiting their density.

In the shadows, however, where there is less silver to be reduced, the developer isn't exhausted nearly as quickly so development continues for longer to bring out all of the shadow detail. By this combined effect on the shadows and highlights, the contrast of the negative is controlled very well. Time and temperature are fairly unimportant within reasonable limits - a minute here or there or a few degrees one side or the other won't make much difference.

Compensating developers work in a similar fashion. Suitable developers for this technique include Rodinal, ID11, HC110 and Perceptol. They are diluted more than usual to weaken the strength of the developer. The weaker developer exhausts first of all in the densest parts of the negative while development continues in the shadows. It's important not to over-agitate, limiting it to perhaps a couple of gentle inversions each minute.

Both of these methods would work in controlling contrast in the stairwells I'm thinking about. Compensation would probably compress the middle tones more than two-bath and I want to avoid that as prints can otherwise look quite muddy and lacking in sparkle. Some photographers might use a tanning developer such as pyro to control contrast but I've never used them before and I'd rather stick with conventional developers for the time being.

But there is another interesting technique involving ordinary developers which I might try if I can pluck up the courage. This requires exposing for the shadows as usual but before the film is developed it is bleached in highly-dilute potassium ferricyanide. What happens is that the densest highlight areas in the latent image are slightly "cut", effectively reducing their density before development gets underway.

The bleach can be made up of 10 grams of potassium ferricyanide and 3 grams of potassium bromide. This is diluted to make a litre. The film is soaked in bleach at the same temperature as the developer for about three minutes and then the bleach is poured out. After a thorough rinse, the film is developed in the usual way. Two-bath or compensating developers can be used to further control contrast.

It seems a bit drastic but in reality its not as bad as it sounds since its quite tolerant of time and dilutions.  The only problem is that if you screw up then you've lost your negatives. I'm not too worried about that as the stairwells can easily be re-shot and the outdoor light isn't really important.

There is another - possibly even more esoteric - technique that can also be used. Monobath developers are fast-acting developers with a fixer incorporated into them. The idea is that the developer works so quickly that negative density builds up before the fixer can get to work. They were once used where speed was of the essence, such as press work, or where facilities for developing were limited, such as photographers working abroad and needing to wire pics back to their office.

Everything about this technique is good apart from shadow density which can be lacking. However, it can be used with success on films that have already been developed at any time in the past. A bleach is used on the developed negative to completely remove the image and the neg is then thoroughly washed. It's then re-developed in a weak, high-definition developer in ordinary room lighting until you can see that the shadows have built up but before the mid tones have started to develop properly. This stage overcomes the main drawback of monobath developer - the lack of shadow detail. Rinse the negative in water and then put it in the monobath, again in ordinary room lighting, and develop by inspection until the highlights are the way you want them. If you get it wrong, you can re-bleach the negative and start all over again.

At the moment, I want to keep it as simple as possible and am thinking about Fomapan 100 in dilute Perceptol or the two-bath. I used dilute Perceptol with HP5 Plus years ago and loved it. I'll give Fomapan a try, see what the results are like and take it from there.

I'd be interested to hear from you in the comments section below if you have any opinions on controlling contrast in similar lighting conditions to the stairwells, particularly if you've tried either of the more unusual techniques.