I find that hybrid processing is convenient, fexible and easy, but a great wet result is another war. Now I try to learn the Karsh way in what I may be able, and this involves (imho) also mastering toe usage.
I guess that mastering toe usage was more important for graded paper... but simply it's a resource I want to learn well.
I want to learn how to make a scene we see, not only fit the film, but fit the final process. Each has its own limitations and so one of the links becomes the limiting factor in what one can do.
A lot of the problems people come up against that makes wet printing 'difficult' is understanding the impact of the paper toe & average gradient relative to the film toe etc. Easier to see than explain by printing the same negative on to a range of different papers, aiming to make the best possible print you can on each. The tendency of many photographers to underexpose & over process can make printing much trickier than it needs to be.Originally Posted by Pere Casals
Karsh's process was more about contrast (& creative) control by lighting than development or exposure - he used Kodak's Super Panchro Press Type-B for a lot of his well known images which (according to the available datasheets) had a softer toe & I can't see him risking underexposed negatives of important subjects - shadows with good exposure are always easier to print down than trying to open up underexposed ones.
I am not printing yet, but find this to be true regardless of final destination. Although, it is a bit tricky in digital world to rescue a highlight. It seems with film there is a conundrum, how to expose/develop to get a negative or positive that can readily be reproduced by any means for a final image.
It's less of a conundrum than it can seem - getting genuinely unprintably dense highlights on neg film is actually pretty difficult - the hardware limitations of consumer scanners are another matter! Making an actually easy to print negative is slightly different - but not hard to do. Essentially, expose the negative up to where the shadows give you the options you want when printing (depending on what & how you meter, the box speed should be regarded only as a starting point for your own exposure index) & adjust development time to place highlight density on the grade of your choice - then it should give you plenty of print/ scan options - compromising a negative for the Dmax of a cheap scanner is a bad idea.
The biggest problem is that we are dealing with the legacy of a massive consumer/ professional divide in terms of the quality/ abilities of certain production equipment & no one has yet managed to come up with a solution that closes the gap at an acceptable quality/ price point.
I was teached in this forum about Karsh toe usage. Often he placed hair, clothes, chairs (etc) in the film toe. This is documented in the 150,000 negatives he shot.
This important subject has clothes well in the toe:
I guess that in the Pre VC popularization era it was worth compressing shadows in the film toe.
We can compress shadows in the film toe or in the paper shoulder (or in Ps)... but since VC was popular we have new tools for shadows, like split burning with an arbitrary grade.
Anyway I feel fascinated from the way Karsh worked the toe, so I try to learn a bit that way.
OK, let's take this apart a little more - he was using films with a softer toe (think HP5+, TXP, not TMAX by today's standards) & thus your really deep shadows still have a bit of compression (ie, don't try & open them up as if they were on the straight line) - but if you can print them down on Fomatone or similar to be almost impossibly dark but with the right amount of detail. He used DK-50, so reckon on aiming for a curve with a bit on an upsweep.I was teached in this forum about Karsh toe usage. Often he placed hair, clothes, chairs (etc) in the film toe. This is documented in the 150,000 negatives he shot.
This important subject has clothes well in the toe:
I guess that in the Pre VC popularization era it was worth compressing shadows in the film toe.
We can compress shadows in the film toe or in the paper shoulder (or in Ps
Anyway I feel fascinated from the way Karsh worked the toe, so I try to learn a bit that way.
The neg of Churchill is often rather poorly represented in photographs of Karsh holding it - the one John Loengard shot of it has Churchill largely dodged above the neg's b+f - but the bit of Loengard's shot that isn't shows the shadows about where I'd expect them - and they're a lot more detailed than most would assume. Karsh's approach was pretty intuitive - he didn't seem to care much for meters for B&W (not totally surprising) - & once he had a lighting setup/ exposure/ process approach that worked, he stuck to it. Not for nothing have people referred to his subjects as having been 'Karshed' - and his high productivity would have put significant emphasis on negatives that printed easily. The bigger challenge is working out his lighting setups which are far more of the 'look'.
Super XX for the Calumet C-1 (made 1940-1992, a film with a long straight line) reportedly YK exposed "some" of those sheets. He developed by inspection. Stopping the ektars at 11 or 16. Shutter at around 1/10 in interiors, flloods and spot-lights, no strobes. Masking with a pencil for priting.
An straight recipe
Karsh.org says he formulated his own film developer.
https://karsh.org/developer-formulae/
Again, a fairly minimal toe, then straight line is not going to support 'exposing into the toe' - on that film, it would be almost all straight line, and then nothing as it fell into the toe. DBI is not surprising, nor is pencil retouching on the negative. Both standard issue fare for the era Karsh learnt his trade in. And the liking for DBI is likely why he didn't much care for the faster, more sensitive films introduced in the 50's - see https://www.flickr.com/photos/385528...7668554829308/ which gives a snapshot of Karsh's approach in the late 50's.Super XX for the Calumet C-1 (made 1940-1992, a film with a long straight line) reportedly YK exposed "some" of those sheets. He developed by inspection. Stopping the ektars at 11 or 16. Shutter at around 1/10 in interiors, flloods and spot-lights, no strobes. Masking with a pencil for priting.
An straight recipe
Karsh.org says he formulated his own film developer.
https://karsh.org/developer-formulae/
Those formulae are pretty standard - slight variations on Agfa/ Ansco 120/125 & the toner is Nelsons gold toner. Karsh was not above polishing his own mythos about his process.
YK 'exposing into the toe' is supported by the facts. Churchill's portrait is only an example.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks