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Thread: How to separate shades of grey?

  1. #11

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    Re: How to separate shades of grey?

    Jp, I knew that there could be a great scale of possibilities, especially with darkroom work, but I haven't had the right idea and I didn't make a photo this day - I wish I made one.

    Michael, in saying Potassium ferrycyanide, did you mean the Farmer's weaking solution ?
    I have had that in my mind, but I have only little experiences with Farmer's, except with the Q-tip technique.
    Now I really miss a negative of this scene for trying out some things, but I'm sure that this special weather situation will come back, because it's often misty and foggy here.

  2. #12

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    Re: How to separate shades of grey?

    Basic sensitometry: Increasing development increases the contrast gradient on the negative and separates the grey tones more.

    If you haven't tried plus development for scenes like this, then you're missing the low-hanging fruit. Longer development plus a higher paper grade is the next step. After you've tried all that, you can explore (in order of difficulty) dodging/burning, selenium intensification (really easy and gives +1/2 -1 Zone more contrast), bleaching with ferricyanide to bring up the whites, bleach-redevelopment in a staining developer to increase contrast, masking, etc., etc.

    Really, I don't see why you state that "Changing exposure and development times wouldn't spread the grey tones, in my opinion..." That's the most basic way to increase separation...

    Best,

    Doremus

  3. #13
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    Re: How to separate shades of grey?

    Having made a quite a few images on foggy, misty, days I've had this dilemma a few times. The logic is to increase development and if necessary cut exposure slightly to boost contrast however I found that killed the atmosphere I wanted to capture. So now I meter and process as normal, and the negatives print easily with plenty of detail.





    Ian

  4. #14

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    Re: How to separate shades of grey?

    Thanks, Doremus,

    sorry for my confusion.
    Bleach-redevelopment in a staining developer to increase contrast is knew to me.
    After practicing black and white photography the recent 5 years, I have further to learn a lot, and from time to time I get some difficulties, like in this example.
    Every suggestion will help.


    Quote Originally Posted by Doremus Scudder View Post
    Really, I don't see why you state that "Changing exposure and development times wouldn't spread the grey tones, in my opinion..." That's the most basic way to increase separation...
    Let's say, the snowy wood comes in Zone VII, but the background comes in Zone VII, too - I can't see the advantage of basic sensitometry here.
    Maybe I'm wrong, so my initial question could bring some missing informations to me.

    In my understanding, I could shorten the exposure time, and this would give me a total Zone VI; I could extend the development, and this would give me Zone VIII.
    But I wanted to spread the tones from this snowy, grey wood and the grey background ; I didn't want to increase the dark sides of the wood in relation to the grey tones.

    So in saying "I don't believe in success of dodging/burning" I probably failed more than in saying "basic sensitometry will not help" ?

  5. #15

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    Re: How to separate shades of grey?

    As already explained, underexpose a bit and overdevelop a lot - basically, if the contrast is as low as you say, you would like to develop to maximum gamma i.e., greatest contrast without fogging the film and then print on the hardest grade paper you have. Selenium toning the neg can add a wee bit. You can try masking techniques but most masking techniques rely upon the density differences in the negative and if there isn't much there to begin with, these techniques may not help you too much. I understand that many modern emulsions do not give you as much ability to push process, although TMax 400 was/is a notable exception.

    At the end of the day, if there isn't much out there, there isn't much you can get on the negative - you are working with a physical medium. Extremely low contrast scenes can be difficult to work with. Our eye-brain system tricks us into seeing greater contrast in the world than there really is - the neural connections have many inhibitory characteristics designed to extract contour lines - in other words, our minds make up a lot of stuff to make us 'see' things that are not really there, such as edge effects.

    Some other thoughts for consideration. 1) Have you considered color? Color carries information separate from luminance. 2) Rethink the visualization of the scene so that you have a greater range of greys to work with. Fog can be a tricky devil because everything in the middle distance and beyond (which can be much of the picture plane) goes to a uniform shade of grey. The only way to not make it look like a fogged piece of paper (there is a reason we call it fog) is to have a strong visualization - often, some element in the foreground such as a tree or rock that retains local contrast and provides a counterpoint to the uniform grey everywhere is necessary to make the image work. 3) Can you adjust the lighting to increase local contrast - maybe reflectors or flash? 4) Enjoy the experience and forego the photograph - photography is a physical medium and can only do so much. Not every experience can/must be recorded. I don't mean that in a smart-aleck way. Cultivating this attitude freed me up quite a bit - I did not feel compelled to record everything and berate myself when I could not. More to the point, it has made me more present to the act of photography - if it works as a photograph, I make a photograph. Otherwise, I am happy to enjoy the experience and let the photograph go, knowing there will be other good photographs to be made. Some years back, I wanted to work on snow and ice in the winter months. The challenge was that on cloudy days (of which there were many), there would be no local contrast in the snow - the print would either have blank white areas or dingy grey areas. Snow (to look like snow) requires those specular points of reflection in areas of just off-white. It took me a long time to realize that I was seeing things that film could not see. That realization made me more productive because I could now look for other visualizations or other subjects and I started making photographs and having experiences again - those other things had been around me all the time but I didn't see them because of my tunnel vision. Trying to solve one problem, in some ways, blinded me to many other photographs I could have been making.

    Cheers, DJ

  6. #16

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    Re: How to separate shades of grey?

    Ian, compared to my scene, you have a lot of contrast in your pictures :-)
    I agree, manipulating a subtile scene will destroy the mood in some case.

    At this point I feel real stupid; I didn't bring home only one negative, so I robbed myself the chance to improve my techniques...

  7. #17

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    Re: How to separate shades of grey?

    DJ, thanks for your thoughts given in 4); you are absolutely right, and today I am the best example - too much thoughts, but not only one negative...

    Considering colour concerning separation of informations ?
    I will try this next time in an identical case, and then I will compare with b/W. Good idea !

    I understand your ideas in point 2), and this describes the scene nearlly perfect - foreground retaining a little bit local contrast, background grey.

    Let me add a didital picture from today, just out of my window.
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	DSC02117.jpg 
Views:	59 
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    This scene often looks like a stage, with a lot of equipment in different areas; the lonely tree in front; behind the tree some bush, and in the third row a frame of trees.

    The last day, every part has been as white as the heaven, but trees in the background have been invisible because of the fog.
    Yes, my eyes said to me this all will come in Zone VII and would be boring a bit..

  8. #18
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    Re: How to separate shades of grey?

    Quote Originally Posted by plaubel View Post
    Ian, compared to my scene, you have a lot of contrast in your pictures :-)
    I agree, manipulating a subtile scene will destroy the mood in some case.

    At this point I feel real stupid; I didn't bring home only one negative, so I robbed myself the chance to improve my techniques...
    I think mist and fog can be very deceptive and what appears to be a very low contrast scene photographs far better than you'd initially think. I can assure you those photos were made in very heavy sea mist and the apparent contrast was very low, my experience is film sees through a bit better than we do.

    The beauty of using LF is you can process sheets individually, so shoot normally and one with extra development, you'd need to decide whether N+1 or N+2 development and the appropriate slight increase in effective EI.

    I've found foggy, misty days are quite different to the very flat dull over cast skies with very low contrast light we sometimes get here in Europe.

    Ian

  9. #19
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    Re: How to separate shades of grey?

    Quote Originally Posted by plaubel View Post
    DJ, thanks for your thoughts given in 4); you are absolutely right, and today I am the best example - too much thoughts, but not only one negative...

    Considering colour concerning separation of informations ?
    I will try this next time in an identical case, and then I will compare with b/W. Good idea !

    I understand your ideas in point 2), and this describes the scene nearlly perfect - foreground retaining a little bit local contrast, background grey.

    Let me add a didital picture from today, just out of my window.
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	DSC02117.jpg 
Views:	59 
Size:	16.5 KB 
ID:	158399

    This scene often looks like a stage, with a lot of equipment in different areas; the lonely tree in front; behind the tree some bush, and in the third row a frame of trees.

    The last day, every part has been as white as the heaven, but trees in the background have been invisible because of the fog.
    Yes, my eyes said to me this all will come in Zone VII and would be boring a bit..
    I'm working in a different way allowing foreground to appear out of the mist, I can see that in a case like this you probably need N+2 development and a drop in exposure. As you move in closer up the mist has less effect.

    Ian

  10. #20

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    Re: How to separate shades of grey?

    Plaubel,

    What you need to realize is that no natural scene is ever just "Zone VII" or whatever. Any area you read with the meter contains lighter and darker areas. These are simply averaged together by the meter (however your meter wants to work and even with a 1° spot meter). Extending development will separate whatever is there more than if you develop "normally."

    While we're discussing this, let's clear up the inherent misunderstanding regarding "expose less/develop more." Film speed does not change a whole lot when you change development time. You might get a 1/3-stop difference or a tiny bit more across a large range of film development times. What does change is where the most-dense areas of the negative end up. So, if like me, you meter a shadow value to determine exposure, and then see what the highlights in the scene are like to determine development time, you don't change the exposure by much, if at all. I support N-1 with an extra 1/3 stop and N-2 with 2/3 stop. N+1 gets 1/3-stop less and N+2, 2/3-stop less exposure.

    However, if you are basing your exposure on an average reading or a highlight, you need to think more in terms of "reducing exposure" when planning on developing more. You need to be careful, however, that you don't end up underexposing shadows this way.

    If you're using your in-camera meter to give you a basic exposure that you then adjust with exposure compensation depending on the particulars of the scene (as I would do when shooting 35mm), then, yes, by all means dial in less exposure for flat scenes that you plan on developing more. Just be aware that you aren't changing film speed appreciably, just estimating where the highlights will end up after development.

    Specifics to your example. A "snowy wood" may have an average of Zone VII, but it contains a lot of different tonalities (snow, tree trunks, etc.). The Zone System doesn't really apply here unless you can meter discrete areas separately. For example, you might take a reading from a tree trunk and then one from the snow and see what the difference is. I find this approach difficult and less useful when shooting small roll-film formats; I prefer to evaluate the scene, apply some exposure compensation if needed and fire away. Even a fairly flat scene will usually print an a higher paper grade with standard development. In your case, if the scene is extremely flat, you should try extended development. Be aware, though, that there are scenes that just don't photograph so well. Learning to recognize these times when making a photograph just won't deliver what you want is part of the learning curve.

    Best,

    Doremus

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