Dec 11, 2018
adventures in pushing
by matt
I wanted to try ‘pushing’ some black and white film. Pushing film is when you intentionally underexpose the film then overdevelop it to compensate. This usually results in an increase in contrast as there is more separation in the tonal range, which gives you brighter whites and darker darks. Lots of different black and white film stocks are renown for being able to handle quite a lot of manipulation (and abuse!), whether it be vast amounts of over exposing, under exposing and over developing, over exposing and under developing (known as ‘pulling’), etc. Even shooting black and white film at at many times faster than it’s rated ‘box speed’ then compensating for this in development can be done (for example – shoot ASA 400 speed film at ASA 3200 then over develop it). The resultant increase in contrast from pushing film is liked by a lot of photographers, but there is also one big bonus when pushing film – that is, you can shoot with a faster shutter speed. This has the obvious advantage of being able to take photos in low light conditions, give you more control over the aperture (if desired) and still be able to freeze motion in low light. I experimented pushing with two different black and white film stocks – Kodak Tri-X and Ilford HP5. Both rated at ASA 400, ie their ‘box speed’. Now I never shot any of these films in low light for my ‘pushing project’. For me, this experiment was just about seeing if I could get some nice contrast in my shots. It was probably a foregone conclusion that it would work, but I wasn’t sure until I got my scans back. Since then, I’m the proud owner of an Olympus OM-2n and I’ve recently sent five rolls of Ilford HP5 taken with it off for development, and in those rolls are photos I’ve taken in low light, photos that I’ve intentionally over exposed and I’ve asked AG Photolab to overdevelop them all by two stops (pushing). So I’m quite excited to see those results, particularly as I’ve tried to use some street-photography techniques in them too like pre-focusing the lens. We’ll see the results in due course… But for now, what follows are some of my favourite shots from some pushed HP5 and Tri-X film. Hope you like.