I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

[Tin Can]

Where do we see yours?

Name it.

Web images are like wooden nickels. Been there, done that. Waste of time except for nominal subject matter. Want to learn printing nuance? Look at real prints instead.

[Drew Wiley]

I had quite a nice website up for 15 years, with feedback from the majority of countries on earth. But web sufers surf; print buyers buy prints because they see and want the real deal. Of course, it's now possible to do a much better job with actual image presentation because web speeds have increased so much, but it's still a very crude visual medium. I still have my domain, and even have a new deluxe copy stand set up with a pro DLSR. So it should be possible down the line for me to post token informational images if necessary. Everything is calibrated. But beyond that, it's a low priority at the moment. I've got a lot of printing and drymounting to catch up on the upcoming seasons. The color printing in particular can be quite involved. Then there are those travel episodes which are an amenity of now being retired. The web is like McDonald's. Billions are served. But it's no place for a gourmet.

[Corran]

Well there's always this.

Nothing is gone forever.

[Drew Wiley]

Interesting. I don't know what they term those tracer pages. I knew they were there. I hated the way subtle color images were incapable of being represented, so never included any. They were all small files due to the constraints of the web back then. I can't get any of the black and white pages to come up. But note how the page background is itself a faint black and white image of a reflection in a lake. The color equivalent appeared on the now-missing home page. The contact page image still appears; that image alone paid for the entire overhead of a one-man exhibition within the first twenty minutes of it opening.

[interneg]

In the other side linearity in the highlights can be an additional complication in the optic printing, too high densities are achieved easier and pulling highlight textures can be a mess.

For optic printing, IMHO a linear film may be really good for scenes with a dynamic range that fits in the paper range. For scenes with a higher dinamic range a photographer may take advantage of a film with S curve response, not linear, to craft a negative that's easier to print.

You've got this backwards. The more pronounced an S-curve's shoulder is, the more it compresses the highlights & makes it harder to burn them in while maintaining good separation. The more linear the highlights can be kept, the easier they are to burn in while maintaining good separation. These differences are rather obvious to anyone with more than the lowest level of darkroom experience. That all said, it's the fundamental aesthetic of the film that matters, not how easy it is to print.

[Corran]

I said something similar, or perhaps it was in the other thread about T-Max 100, and have been wondering if someone was going to bring that up. I know that sometimes, when printing from "traditional" films, highlights burn in to just a very light greyish tone with no separation. Interneg, can you expound on this with the different curves, and especially in relation to VC papers that have their own characteristics when it comes to burning in highlights, as opposed to graded papers?

[Drew Wiley]

I got tired of beating a dead horse, so didn't want to bring it up myself. VC papers can be printed just like graded if you wish. I learned on graded paper, so learned to develop my negs so all of them would print well on the same grade (3). I find that most VC papers land around that same range with plain light, at least with all my enlargers. But VC papers give me a lot of liberty to tweak things easily. Sometimes I deliberately dev negs very thin, then print through deep blue light for maximum contrast. This is related to how the differing emulsions in VC paper often tone differently, and I do this to dial some specific toning effect I wish for. All kinds of options. Highlights are easy to burn in using green or yellow light. Certain negs which were hell to print on even premium graded papers are easy on VC. But the more linearity there is in both shadows and highlights, the easier it is to get tonal separation in the extremes, if that is what one wants, esthetically.

[Pere Casals]

I said something similar, or perhaps it was in the other thread about T-Max 100, and have been wondering if someone was going to bring that up. I know that sometimes, when printing from "traditional" films, highlights burn in to just a very light greyish tone with no separation.

Bryan, let me say my personal view:
(Disclaimer, I'm still a rookie wet printer)

when we burn on a VC paper we may place the contrast grade filter we want while we are burning, so we can adjust the tonal separation (contrast) in those highlights to exactly nail our taste.

Usually we burn highlights with filter 00 or 0, but we may also burn with 2.5 or even 4. The higher the grade the higher the tonal separation.


When we scan, taking all negative range in the histogram, in PS we may need to compress highlights and shadows to allow enough range for the mids by bending the curve to an S, in the top of the S we give more or less gradient-range to the highlights, this is no secret, of course...

Then... when we select a filter grade for burning highlights we also adjust that gradient in the highlights, like in Ps.


The same with shadows, we usually burn shadows with filter 5, but we also may influence separation by using a lower grade.

_____


Traditional films have a natural tonal compression in the highlights from shoulder, if we develop with an staining developer then the stain+VC combination adds an additional tonal compression in the highlights, so we may require to burn highlights with a higher filter grade. The film shoulder + the Pyro/VC compressions may be too much when added.


A bit it's contradictory wanting the TMax linearity in the highlights and later having to use a Pyro+VC paper to emulate traditional films that have that shoulder in the highlights yet.


Of course TMax films are absolutely impressive, but praising linearity and later prasing Pyro is weird, we praise one thing and the counter. IMHO the film linearity in the highlights is a "pitfall" that can be solved with Pyro+VC, or simply we end in what a traditional film was doing with highlights: shouldering.


Like when we S shape curve of an scan in PS, when wet printing we also may require that compression. We can do it in the film shoulder, in a compensating processing, with a stain+vc interaction, with intermitent water bath paper development... Our mileage may vary.


Beyond art, IMHO it's about controlling (enough) the medium we work with, not much more.

[Pere Casals]

VC papers can be printed just like graded if you wish.

Not at all, Drew, not at all.

Since early 1980s VC changed the game.

My "guess" is that linear films like TMax started making sense since VC paper became better and popular, because the additional flexibility from VC papers allowed to solve the complications in the printing from linear captures.

VC paper allows to burn highlights or shadows or dodge/burn any area in the print with any specific grade.

You don't have that flexibility with graded papers. Masking is also powerful, but's not the same: A regular CRM or SCIM applies the same tonal transformation to the full framing, while we may be burning with with an specific grade in an specific area.


What is true is that Masking is able to make powerful tonal transfomations that would emulate many responses we may want, but this also is a severe complication in the workflow.


I was pleased to see the Burkett's youtube video showing his masks, he does not say it, but beyond shading it may add USM to the print. I'd like to own one of those ilfochromes !

[Drew Wiley]

Again, Pere, I do this all the time; and the outcome is hundreds of very successful prints. I'm equally at home printing VC or graded papers. I do it with equal ease using a cold light, a subtractive CMY colorhead, an additive RGB colorhead, or via split printing using deep blue versus green glass filters. And don't lecture me about masking either. I've made thousands of them. Now as per Pyro, it's not just about highlight holdback due to the proportional stain, but certain pyro formulas might be chosen with respect to how they control grain structure, edge acutance, related micotonality etc. This is in itself a complex topic that has been discussed and debated (sometimes hotly) on this forum many times before. The effect of pyro stain on TMX100 is modest but real. It's a little stronger with TMY400. But in no way does it transform the result into something resembling a conspicuous shoulder, but just a minor reduction of the gamma in the highlights, depending of course on the specific pyro formula and how close to the realistic upper limit of the film you are, which can differ with personal exposure style. This is one reason why I prefer to take advantage of the available real estate at the bottom end of the curve rather than risk overexposure at the top in high contrast scenes.