Over Developed - Over Exposed

[Ian-Barber]

So you have just developed some film, and hung it to dry and done the thing you shouldn't do (stand it front of it and stare at what you have made)

You close the darkroom door thinking... "does that look a bit over developed or maybe even a bit over-exposed"

So the next day arrives, you place the film onto your lightbox, reach for the loupe and start poking around.

Still wondering if it could be either over developed or over exposed, what are you exactly looking for?.
Do you reach for that old newspaper you have and start looking to see if you can see some faint print through the dense part of the negative?

What is the tell tale sign which tells you if its over exposed or over developed.

 

[thronobulax]

I look on a light table and make sure I have both detail in the desired shadow areas and that the highlights have detail and are not blocked.

 

[jhotopf]

I accidentally over exposed some HP5 once by 2 stops and they lacked some contrast in the mid to high values.

 

[Dave_P]

I suppose overexposed should be overall quite dense and with little contrast, whereas overdeveloped should be too dense in the lightlights but normal or too thin in the shadows. If it's both, then it'll look like overexposed, only more so.

At the end of the day it's only overexposed or overdeveloped if you can't produce a satisfactory spring/scan from it. So what's, say, overdeveloped for a scanner might be fine for a darkroom print. And something which is fine for a darkroom print might be underdeveloped for, say, a van dyke brown print.

 

[David M]

There are bleaches, like Farmer's Reducer, that you can use. Use them with caution as they cannot be reversed.

 

[Dave_P]

You can also bleach and redevelop, which is normally done to boost density, but you could do it and just pull it from the dev quickly enough (or dilute the developer to slow things down.

 

[thronobulax]

I suppose overexposed should be overall quite dense and with little contrast, whereas overdeveloped should be too dense in the lightlights but normal or too thin in the shadows. If it's both, then it'll look like overexposed, only more so.

At the end of the day it's only overexposed or overdeveloped if you can't produce a satisfactory spring/scan from it. So what's, say, overdeveloped for a scanner might be fine for a darkroom print. And something which is fine for a darkroom print might be underdeveloped for, say, a van dyke brown print.

Fair points all.

Let it be noted though, that overdevelopment/incorrect development may provide a printable or scannable negatives, but these may have non-optimal sharpness and grain characteristics. Thornton speaks to the sharpness issue and we've all seen what happens to grain when you cook a negative.

Ideally, you develop long enough to get good shadow detail and contrast but short enough to keep the highlights from blocking. In normal subject brightness ranges, this isn't all that hard to do, thereby producing sharp, properly grained negatives.

But it gets tricky when you have very large- or very small SBRs and/or you need to pump up the local contrast in the midtones. In many/most images, it is the midtone local contrast that gives the image that "wow" factor. But it's tricky to get that right without also disturbing the shadows and highlights. That's why various compensating developers, extended agitation schemes, and Kachel's SLIMT techiques get brought to bear: To try to concurrently optimize sharpness, grain, shadow speed, highlight detail, while improving midtone local contrast.

Having spent a great deal of time over the past few years on this, I can say with some authority that doing this requires patience, very careful technique, and restraint to do just "enough". I can say with absolute certainty that it is very easy to make a mess of things with these techniques - at least it was easy for me.