Your description of the weather conditions are correct David, not as bright as appears in the image, I needed to make sure I captured the shadow detail by giving extra exposure at the same time the light in front of me was so soft and delicate, so by using the semi-stand method it has retained detail exactly as I wanted.
Now if I had used my normal time for Pyrocat 1-1-100 16mins, agitation every minute, would it have turned out the same, I don’t know, I think I have better edge definition, what I do know is it did work well, creating a negative that preserved detail in both low, mid and high tones.