Creating A Dense Negative?

[Josh Holland]

I have read this phrase a few times on this site and I wanted to understand what it means. Does it involve hard light and saturation? I don't know what the benefits of this means to a project. Are most movie negatives less dense?

[Brad Grimmett]

"Dense" refers to exposure. For example, a negative that is a little overexposed would be called "thick" or "dense". A negative that is underexposed would be considered "thin". Of course there are varying degrees, depending on how far you've gone one way or the other in regards to exposure, but that's basically it.

[David Mullen ASC]

On a negative, the bright areas in the image are the darkest areas of the negative -- i.e. the densest (most silver if a b&w negative.) And the darkest areas of the image is the most clear areas of the negative -- i.e. the thinnest.

 

The more you expose a negative, the denser it gets after processing, the more silver that gets developed (converted from silver halide to silver). Or the longer you process a negative beyond normal, which is called push-processing.

 

Denser-than-normal negatives -- more exposed than normal -- need to be brought back down to a normal look in brightness when correcting the image. When printing, this means printing "down" at a higher set of numbers (more light is needed to pump through a denser negative). Negatives that are printed at a higher set of numbers tend to have better blacks in the print, which also improves contrast and saturation. Within limits. Way too much overexposure and more of the picture info is exposing on the top shoulder of the characteristic curve, which is flatter (lower in contrast) so the picture starts to wash out and have poor highlight detail.