Pushing and Pulling effect on tone curve?

[Bill Burk]

I had to edit my PUSH drawing to put the FLARE influenced shadow on the curve... I wanted to explain that every point MUST be on the curve, the edited illustration shows that better.

So printing with a pushed negative, if you thought of printing on Grade 2, because the range is the same, some unpleasant things happen to the picture. Her bright dress gets dimmer and the grass gets darker. Nobody cares about grass (that's OK), but the dress is important in the shot, so I would bet you print on Grade 3 to get the dress looking good... Now her bright skin, instead of having texture, will block up.

Shadows lose detail when you push, and people expect that, but the push development are tough on highlights.

[Jac@stafford.net]

It is important to note that when appropriate, Sturges used flash fill. Do it right in-camera.

[ryanmills]

It is important to note that when appropriate, Sturges used flash fill. Do it right in-camera.

As far as I know, jock has never used a flash... He does use reflectors a lot.

[JimDrakeOnline]

Not everything he shoots is at magic hour…

http://lamodelamour.files.wordpress....-sturges11.jpg

http://image.invaluable.com/housePho...-L00418037.jpg

Huge brightness range in these two shots. Again, metering for the highlights on the skin and compressing the tonal scale in development. And since he's always making pictures of pre-pubescent, lily-white nudes in mostly magic hour lighting, I'm not surprised he finds no need for the light meter. There's a reason DP's sometimes refer to it as "stupid hour"

Are both of these shot by Sturges? The top one I've encountered before, but which collection is the second link from? Just when I thought I knew Sturges' work...

[sun of sand]

Isn't that
Young subjects
What he's truly known for

What a first post


I was going to mention the mortensen article
If you want to be good you have to experiment
No amount of forum reading will do it

[Peter De Smidt]

Ryan,

You might take a look at Fred Picker's Zone VI Workshop, http://www.amazon.com/Zone-VI-Worksh.../dp/0817405747. The tests aren't hard to do, and it would save you a lot of time in the long run.

[Lenny Eiger]

I think that Push and Pull are terms we should dismiss outright, and never use again. I can't tell you how many photographers I've spoken to think you can take your film to a lab and push it, and get the same detail in the shadows as you would without doing so. It's ridiculous, and the terms offer nothing but distraction from the truth of how things work.

For all practical intents and purposes, exposure and development have nothing to do with each other. The statement "expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights" is the most correct, altho' it doesn't contain the actual meaning of the phrase. It's obvious after you understand what it means.

The long and short of it is that film has a speed, a quantifiable relationship of how sensitive it is to light. The reason I rated TriX at 200 or so all those years ago is that Kodak was stuck in their "Moments of Life" mentality, with a very commercial look, that didn't include much shadow detail. It was clear that they were after a different result than I was, and many other people working in the landscape arena.

These days I shot Ilford Delta 100, a film with far tighter grain than Tri-X ever had. I use it at 100. I'd recommend it. I develop in Pyrocat HD, which is far superior to many of the other choices mentioned. It's similar in many ways to TMax... just cheaper, and I happen to like Ilford better than Kodak.

If you want a full range of tonalities, you have to expose well and develop well. One gets good shadow detail from getting the exposure right, and the contrast is controlled by getting the development right. If you want smoother tonal range, you have to develop less (or less than people who want a more contrasty print). It's just that simple...

[Drew Wiley]

Agreed. It's common to see the terms "push" and "pull" adopted by beginners who are accustomed to using the services of a lab with automated process lines. But
it's really E6 color film vocabulary.