Found a way to shoot in bright sun without a hood or filter

I kept blowing out highlights at the beach near Santa Cruz, even at f/16 with 400 speed film. Then I tried metering the shadows and pulling back one stop on development, which sounds backwards but gave me way more usable negatives. Anyone else tweak their developing times to fix exposure mistakes instead of just adjusting the camera?

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troy_owens25d ago

But does pulling development one stop actually save the highlights, or does it just flatten the whole negative so you have to fight harder in the darkroom later? I've heard that trick works best for contrasty scenes, but I wonder if you lose too much shadow detail on the other end. Seems like gutting the film speed might be a better long term fix than changing the soup every time you shoot near water.