[Pho.Snap] What Does A Good Film Negative Look Like?

A good negative is one that is capable of creating a good print or scan. It contains a rich range of tonalities, decent reflection of grain structure and is free from blemishes. Generally, its tonalities should touch on a majority of zones, as posited by Ansel Adams, from whites to highlights, midtones, shadows, and to the blacks. When handled properly, it should not have scratches, dust, watermarks which can lead to difficulties in printing.

This article is divided into two main sections, 1) on how to read your negatives in relation to the tonalities it contains, and 2) on typical blemishes and damages that can be found on negatives and how to avoid them.

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Well Balanced Range of Tonalities

Ideally, a good negative can readily produce a wide range of tones in the printing/ scanning process without much manipulation.

That said, I would like to begin by borrowing the concept of the Zone system proposed by Ansel Adam, which explains what a good negative should consist of.

We will then proceed to look at various errors or deviations from the ideal scenario, commonly occurring when developing your own negatives.

The Zone System proposed by Ansel Adams

As put forward by Ansel Adams in his book ‘The Negative’ (which is the 2nd volume of his 3-volume series), film as a photographic medium is able to record varying levels of brightness spanning across 10 stops.

Zone I being complete blacks, Zone V being the middle values, and Zone X being complete whites. Ansel asserts that usually, save for deliberate artistic reasons, you would want the subjects in your frame to touch on a wide range on the scale from I to X which creates a sense of balance in your final print (or scan, as I would add).

Since a negative is a negative of the final image, whites in the final image appear as blacks, and blacks appear as transparency on your negatives.

It follows that you would want to check that your negative spans across various shades of blacks, from absolute blacks to absolute transparency.

This is what the zone system is about in highly simplified words.

How to read your negatives

Hold up the shiny face of the negatives towards yourself. The darker regions on the negative represents the brighter regions in the final image, vice versa. A larger variety in densities indicates a larger variety of brightness values, which means more detail capable of being reflected in the final image. Underexposure translates into a highly transparent negative and vice versa; underdevelopment translates into a flat negative, and overexposure translates into a contrasty negative with potentially a loss of detail in dense regions.

In the following sections, we will address the concept of density of a negative, evaluation of exposure and development, and how to differentiate between exposure and development issues.

What is a dense negative?

Density refers to how much blacks there is on a negative. The more black there is, the denser it is. Alternatively, it can be understood as opacity. Denser areas on negatives transmits less incident light through during printing or scanning. Therefore, density is directly proportional to brightness of the resulting image. Denser areas make up the highlights, and less dense areas make up the shadows.

This photo below shows a relatively dense negative - you can see that it is for the most part very dark.