>>4328981Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights.
-2 EI is generally how you would spot meter for shadows when shooting film if you still want to retain detail.
With 35mm you kind of have to deal with averages because you have 36 individual exposures instead of 1 sheet of 4x5+, so it can be tough. Generally speaking you would pull your film if you want to reduce contrast and try to preserve some highlights. Thankfully good quality b&w film is great at retaining highlight detail even if the negative is super dense. You just have to burn in the highlights like crazy.
Here is a somewhat extreme example of what b&w film can do.
Recipe: Contrast filter 0, 1:15 seconds, dodge bottom half for 45 seconds, 10 seconds at +4 contrast filter.
