hey all. Strange, I've never in my life pushed film, so I've never had the need to find out. Anyways, i don't feel like spending 2 minutes searching google for an answer, instead forcing the knowhow of the group to come to me with explicit answers. Why push film? Why not just buy 400 instead of pushing 200 to 400? What happens when you push film in its varying degrees? how do you develop pushed film? Can you "pull" film (meaning shoot a roll of 400 as if it were iso100)? , and if so, why, what happens, and how to develop? How far can you push the "Average" film? I know mitch shot something like 100 as if it were 3200, and that sounds like a little much... Main reason I ask is beacuse it matters for the mo'. I shot a role of Fuji Superia 200 as if it were 400, because I wanted to shoot a dark metro station and i felt like pushing the film to see what happens... and also because im going to bed and it would be cool to find an answer when i wake up instead of having to look through a google search that would return nothing but porno...

hmm... search for "push processing" gets porno... rushes off to google... Sorry, Slynk, cannot be of much help. I used to push B&W, but then it was using special developers (like acufine). It was done then because ISO 400 was about as good as it got, and sometimes needed ISO 3200 to deal with darkness. Folks talked about pushing color, but it was mostly wishfull thinking. One suspects there have been some improvements, (where's Dobby when we really need him...). Best guess here would be to ask your semi-pro lab what they would recommend for this specific case, (pushing Superia by one stop). If the color goes strange, there's always photoshop. Please let us know results. Post examples! As for "pulling", with B&W, in general longer development times give (somewhat) increase in exposure, but lots of increase in contrast. Shorter development times give (somewhat) decrease in exposure, but noticable decrease in contrast. Changing the development time is therefore more useful as contrast control than as exposure compensation. Folks like Ansel Adams used this a lot to fit wide brightness scenes into limited film range. Useful if developing individual sheet film shots; less useful with a whole roll under varying conditions.

When you "push" film, it's left in the developer for longer than the normal amount of processing time. The result is an image that, although now correctly exposed and processed, has much more contrast and grain. This is done for several reasons - not the least of which is the reason you stated...it was the only film you had with you and you needed something faster for the subject at hand. Some people like the super-high contrast and grain (although to me, these look like a first year photo student's attempt at an "artistic" experiment....but that's just me (please people, no hitting)). I used to shoot high school football games for the local paper here, and I would shoot T-Max 3200 rated at roughly 25,000 (1/500sec @ f5.6 at night with high-school field lighting). I'd process the film for about 20 minutes in T-Max developer - and it actually looked pretty decent (looked a lot better than attempts with a flash, in my opinion). Anyhoo - hope this helps.

Just in case anyone was curious what 25,000 film looks like,,, (I like it better because it doesn't black out the background like a flash would have)

Slynky - Wolf explained it pretty well. When you take your film to be developed, tell them to push it 1 (since you went 1 stop from 200 to 400). And yes, you can pull film too. Many people I know pull Provia 100 to EI 64. or rate Velvia 50 at EI 32. You just need to make sure that your developer knows what you did and be prepared for a little more cost to develop the film (some places don't charge, others will charge a single fee for "x" amount of rolls developed in the same rack). Many people pull film to increase saturation. By pulling it, you are basically slightly overexposing the film and then developing for less than normal time to compensate. In both pulling and pushing, you are effecting the contrast of the negative. You can generally push/pull print film a lot more than slide (print has a much greater latitude than slide). But you need to watch how far you push or pull it. Talk to your lab as they may not be able to develop it (when I shot Ilfored Delta 3200 at EI 12500 I had to take it to a different lab for hand processing). As for how far it can be pushed/pulled, every film has its own characteristics. It also depends on how it is developed (time, temp, developer, etc.). I've seen some b&w pushed only a stop and developed to have grain the size of freaking golf-balls and I've seen some pushed 4 stops and having small, fine grain. It just depends. Best place to see what a film can do is to go to the manufacturers website and download the datasheet on the film. -=>Donald

cool beans, thanks all.

WOW cool photo Wolf Bsteph

A lot of people shoot Velvia at ISO 40....supposedly to up saturation even more with no grain at all....never done it myself and really don't see why I would need to. That B&W roll I shot was at 6400 from ISO 100....a pure accident...still can't figure out how the hell I hit that button. Still disgusted over it too.

I am, therefore I create.......
--- michelleamarante.com

Your going to hate this Slynk, But my mates digi SLR has film speeds from 50 to 1600 asa at the push of a button every frame. Even I hate him rich B***d!. :0)

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. Salvador Dali