My lab buddy said stop overexposing HP5 and my negatives finally stopped looking like mud

Grace Coleman · 2026-10-23T17:30:03.427856+00:00

I used to push my HP5 to 800 all the time and meter it at 640 because some forum post from 2011 told me to, and I thought the grain was just the look. A guy who runs a darkroom out in Sacramento looked at my prints back in March and said flat out that I was robbing the shadows, and that metering at box speed with a stop of overexposure in flat light would fix 90 percent of it. I tried it on two rolls around the Gold Rush town with my Pentax K1000, and my prints actually have real blacks now instead of that washed gray. Anyone else here shoot HP5 at 400 and just let the shadows live, or am I the last one to get the memo?

Babble Community

Loading…

My lab buddy said stop overexposing HP5 and my negatives finally stopped looking like mud | Analog Photo Lounge - Babble Community