Black and White Photography

Pulling Film. The term pulling film means decreasing the film development time.

Often you’ll want to do this to slightly lower the negative contrast, as described

above. But as with pushing film, the most dramatic results come when you

change your film speed and decrease the developing time. Here’s how it works.

Let’s say the light is extremely bright and the meter suggests an exposure of

f/11 at 1/500 with ISO 100 film. If you use these settings and develop the film

normally (say, for 10 minutes), you’ll get a negative that is very high in contrast.

Sometimes high contrast looks great, but often it looks harsh and it usually

means your negative will not have good shadow detail. This is because the

shadow (dark) areas of your subject are especially dark on a bright day and therefore

may not register enough density on the negative to show full textured detail.

One solution to this problem is to overexpose your film so the film’s shadow

areas get more light, leading to more density and textured detail in the developed

negative. However, overexposing the film also will make the highlight

areas denser—possibly too dense. If you then underdevelop the film, you will

reduce the highlight density without appreciably affecting the shadow areas,

which are controlled by exposure, not development. The net effect will be reduced

negative contrast with sufficient shadow detail.

There are several ways to overexpose film, but one easy way is to set the light

meter for a lower film speed. This will signal the meter that you are using a

slower (less sensitive) film than you are, in fact, using, so the meter will suggest

f-stop and shutter speed settings that allow in more light than they otherwise

would, which will overexpose the film.

The amount of increased development you will need can vary widely, depending

on the decrease in film speed you want, the type of film, and the type

of developer. These are general guidelines for pulling ISO 100 film:

Pulled speed means you are therefore

rating . . . overexposing by . . . underdevelop by . . .

50 1 stop 10–20 percent

25 2 stops 25–30 percent

Thus, if your meter indicates an exposure of f/11 at 1/500 with ISO 100 film,

you can set your ISO at 50 and use one stop more light—perhaps, f/8 at 1/500

(or the equivalent)—and develop for 8–9 minutes, instead of the normal time,

say, 10 minutes. Or, you can set your ISO at 25 and use two stops more light—

perhaps, f/5.6 at 1/500 (or the equivalent)—and develop for 7–71⁄2 minutes.

You can also use the same guidelines when pulling with a different-speed

film, for example, rating ISO 400 film at 200 (a 1-stop pull) and underdeveloping

by 10–20 percent, or rating it at 100 (a 2-stop pull) and underdeveloping

by 25–30 percent.

Pulling film by 1 stop usually provides enough of an increase in shadow detail

and reduction of contrast in most situations. A two-stop pull is for more