Digital BW, The Print

I had hoped to use Polaroid's type 55 film to help me understand 
portrait lighting.  I have never really done these in a serious way and 
hoped to use the positive of the film to see the changes immediately as 
I changed the lighting.

The problem is that the contrast of the positive is drastically 
different from the contrast of the negative or any negative film that I 
shoot.  So what is in the deep shadows on the positive is barely in the 
shadows on the negative.

I thought polaroid film was used for proofing all the time -- is type 
55 wrong for proofing, do people compensate in printing, or was I just 
off base to start with.

Thanks,


--
Kevin Gulstene

Kevin - In my experience, Polaroid 55 has to used EITHER to make a good
print or a good negative.  Their exposure indices are really not the same.
I used the film for years (very happily) to make negatives of landscapes,
typically using an exposure index of 20 and a spot meter to place the
darkest areas of the scene in Zone III to retain some detail.  The prints
would be overexposed by a full stop; if I made the exposures for the prints,
the negatives would have been very thin.

Stephen Petegorsky
petegorsky@...
web site - www.spphoto.com