For my portraits (especially of women), I use Adox ATM49 (now Atomal, I think): beautiful tonal scale, sharp but not too sharp, fine grain.
For my portraits (especially of women), I use Adox ATM49 (now Atomal, I think): beautiful tonal scale, sharp but not too sharp, fine grain.
Last edited by Philippe Grunchec; 14-Jul-2010 at 10:00. Reason: typo
"I believe there is nothing more disturbing than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept!" (Ansel Adams)
https://philippe.grunchec-photographe.over-blog.com/
------------------------Originally Posted by Ken Lee
Isn't it possible these opinions are based on one aesthetic viewpoint? Not a bad viewpoint, but just one of many creative possibilities.
I'm thinking back to some of the old portrait films that had a very pronounced toe and shoulder. There were many hundreds of thousands, or millions, of wonderful portraits built on that arguably "distorted" tonal rendition. Many of them had a wonderful tonal quality that was the result of developer and film and lighting, and could not be easily achieved using film and developer to produce a linear rendition.
Tonal rendition is a creative choice, not a mechanical recipe. I'm not saying I don't like the linear or literal rendition, just that it is only one way to see. Photography is, or should be, a creative medium.
Since photographing anything changes it, one cannot really reproduce an original. The only possibility is to select a rendition that matches your intent.
Photography does not really allow literal rendition; it changes things in many ways. Photographing anything flattens the 3D world into 2D. The three dyes or single tone of B+W further reduce the world into an abstracted rendition. The loss of shadows below threshold and the loss and or flattening highlights beyond the limits of film and paper is a further change from the world of reality. Whatever tonal curve shape introduced by printing paper and the print developer abstract things more. Burning and dodging etc. take one further away from the impression of literalness.
The only possibility is creative choice. Photography is selecting which distortions, changes, or renditions that are appropriate for one's intent.
Ken,
It seems you're assuming everyone's goal is maximum realism and a literal interpretation, but that's not always true for everyone, and it's rarely true for a portraitist. A portraitist's stock in trade is interpretation, and the best among them consistently render sensitive and original interpretations of their subjects, whether revelatory or flattering, or both, and not an objective, 1:1 reproduction.
While characteristic curves representing film/developer combinations can be informative, the kind of article you linked is a lot to ask for in a reply to a forum post! Example images show the characteristics of a film/developer/lighting/subject combination, and so are more intuitively interpreted, and I would say, more relevant, since H&D curves tell us nothing about grain or sharpness, and nothing very useful about gradation. H&D curves tell us about film speed, contrast, and curve shape, but that's far from a complete picture.
Rick,
I think you might be confusing gradation and acutance. Gradation concerns the way tones in the scene are rendered on the film and print, while acutance concerns the way edges are defined on the film and print. So, a negative/print can be both sharp-edged, and rendered with a long tonal scale. I think your statement, " When developing film, keeping grain to an absolute minimum with slightly soft tonal shifts (as opposed to crisp, hard edge shift) is desired...", is far from a universal consensus. For many photographers, grain is a part of their pallet, and not something to be eliminated, or even minimized.
Portraits represent a unique subset of photography, with its own specialized tools and techniques. There are portrait lenses, portrait papers, portrait films, portrait film developers, and portrait print developers. While there are few, if any unbreakable rules regarding portraiture, there is enough regularity to evolve a loose set of standards. Portraits are usually made in controlled lighting, even when made on location, in available light, since unlike many types of scenes, portrait subjects are generally portable, and can be moved into suitable lighting, which most often means normal to low contrast. Portraits are generally made with wide lens apertures to minimize subject movement, and portrait lenses are designed to render smooth tonal transitions. Portrait films are typically S-curve films, like TXP, with long toes. Portrait papers are typically warm tone, with matte surfaces. Portrait print developers are typically soft working and often formulated to produce warm tones on portrait papers. It seems reasonable that a portrait film developer should compliment the above set of conditions.
Traditionally, portrait developers were energetic, and soft working often based on pyro, glycin, or the MQ pair, though more exotic agents were used, too, and used a moderate to high sulfite content. Seasoned and replenished deep tank developers were popular among many portrait studios.
Most of us don't process enough film consistently enough to warrant the use of a large tank, replenished developer, so we're left to approximate the best qualities of these developers using one-shot development. In my experience, 510-Pyro and GSD-10 compliment the portrait imaging chain. Printing stained negatives on VC paper can be complex, and so I recommend the inexperienced use graded papers with staining developers, and non-staining developers with VC papers.
Pyro does have some toxicity but it is not caustic at all. The toxicity is an issue if you inhale the raw developer in powder form, or if you keep your hands soaking in the stuff for hours at a time. The simple solution is to wear gloves when handling pyro, just as you should when working with a metol/quinone developer - extended exposure to m/q developers will cause skin rashes and possible allergic reactions that can become permanent, preventing you from being able to use them again in the future. If you can refrain from soaking your hands in pyro, eating after use without washing your hands, or otherwise consuming the developer, it is no more dangerous than (and quite a bit less dangerous than some) most other darkroom chemicals.
CG,
it seems we were typing simultaneously. I could have saved a lot of time and simply written, " I concur".
Jay,
We have related but distinct points. Before all else I'm concerned about a tendency to define the range of acceptable photographic solutions too narrowly.
What I'll call a purist viewpoint - for lack of better words - produces wonderful work, but it is only a small subset of the vast potential of photography. One of the things I love about photography is it's limitless set of ways to see things. I'm not willing to give all that up.
Why should just one way of seeing be approved? To restrict photography to a small slice of it's entire potential seems a straitjacket and a loss. I suspect that a more or less rigid technical and craft based approach offers a comforting (and illusory) sense of control over process and results, but at a cost of losing a much larger and richer set of results.
C
I agree completely.
Wow! I need to try that!
Don Bryant
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