BW film and developing with great tones throughout

Alan Klein · Feb 4, 2014

Which film and processing do you think were used by Peter Gasser? He seems to cover the midtones just wonderfully from black to white with no sharp transitions. You can click on the various indexes and then turn pages by clicking the bottom right corners.
Dead Link Removed

Thomas Bertilsson · Feb 4, 2014

It's more likely down to technique than what materials he used.

Anon Ymous · Feb 4, 2014

Thomas Bertilsson said:
It's more likely down to technique than what materials he used.

I'd also add lighting conditions. I had a quick look at the link and almost all of the photographs were taken in cloudy, even foggy conditions. No hard shadows at all, low contrast scenes.

MDR · Feb 4, 2014

Fog and overcast sky no extremes, any film should be able to handle these situations. I believe Peter Gasser used a 8 x 10 camera he did so in the past. As a side note he moved to digital printing in recent years. And promotes his piezographs as being equal to platinum prints in archival quality.

jp498 · Feb 4, 2014

Hard to tell from an online book simulation... But the consistency points to technique and probably 1 film. A film like Acros or Tmax would be good at the night scenes and I've seen some of those midtones on Acros100 but don't use it much, so if I were betting, that's what I'd say. I mostly use tmax400 and that's very versatile and could do similarly.

Bob Carnie · Feb 4, 2014

He has discovered the holy grail by being able to make inkjet's that equal pt pd.
Also the images are enhanced with some pretty strong sharpening.

MDR said:
Fog and overcast sky no extremes, any film should be able to handle these situations. I believe Peter Gasser used a 8 x 10 camera he did so in the past. As a side note he moved to digital printing in recent years. And promotes his piezographs as being equal to platinum prints in archival quality.

Trail Images · Feb 4, 2014

Thank you for sharing the link, Alan. Some really nice work on display. I do not shoot much B&W so I'm a real novice on that front, however, I fully understand your point about the mid tones apparent in a lot of the work shown. As we all know, light makes things happen, and his choice of foggy days helped a lot I suspect with those nice mid tones.

Alan Klein · Feb 4, 2014

Thanks everyone. I'm just starting out with BW having shot color beforehand. So I'll be shooting Tmax 100 and developing (in an outside lab) in Xtol normal. I'll try both flat and direct lighting to see what I get and can compare results. Good starting point.

I'll be scanning the film so I'll be able to see what I'm getting. Someone suggested to stay away from filters like yellow and orange as they increase contrast and supposedly will lessen the gradiation in tones I'm looking for. Does that make sense?

Anon Ymous · Feb 4, 2014

Alan Klein said:
... Someone suggested to stay away from filters like yellow and orange as they increase contrast and supposedly will lessen the gradiation in tones I'm looking for. Does that make sense?

Eh, not really. All these colored filters can brighten and darken different colors. A yellow filter will lighten whatever is from yellow towards red in the colour spectrum and darken whatever is from yellow to blue. Orange and red filters do something similar, it's just the threshold that differs and the effect is more dramatic. So, if you want to emphasise clouds against a blue sky, then a yellow filter isn't a bad idea. An orange will have a more dramatic effect; a red even more so. Also keep in mind that a film doesn't see colours the same way a human eye does. Most of the films are more sensitive towards the blue end of the spectrum, so white objects on a blue background aren't very "differentiated", so a filter would be helpful, if that's what you want to achieve. IMHO, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a yellow filter, the effect isn't very dramatic.

Gerald C Koch · Feb 4, 2014

Michael R 1974 said:
I didn't see anything that could not be accomplished with any general purpose film, developer etc.

Ditto

He seems to cover the midtones just wonderfully from black to white with no sharp transitions

Like the old vaudeville joke, "How does one get to Carnegie Hall?" ... In essence thoroughly knowing one's materials.

Thomas Bertilsson · Feb 4, 2014

Alan Klein said:
Someone suggested to stay away from filters like yellow and orange as they increase contrast and supposedly will lessen the gradiation in tones I'm looking for. Does that make sense?

Not quite. As mentioned above, they just change what color light gets through to the film, and how much.

Black and white film is (mostly) panchromatic, meaning it sees the color spectrum that the human eye sees.

Open the attachment, and imagine putting an orange filter on the lens. This will brighten anything in the picture that is on the full 180 degree half of the wheel that the orange color is on. The closer to the color orange you are, the more it will brighten.
Conversely, an orange filter will also darken its complimentary color - the color opposite orange on the wheel (blue), so anything of that blue tone will become significantly darker, and anything on the same side as the blue tone will become darker to some degree, again with increasing effect the closer to the actual color blue you get.

Now imagine what a green filter does, or a yellow, or a blue, etc etc etc. Any filter brightens the colors that are the same or similar as the filter itself, and darkens the ones that are opposite of them on the color wheel.

So it's false to say that a color filter increases contrast. It may, in fact, decrease contrast, depending on what's in the frame. All it does is change contrast between certain colors, but there is no guarantee that overall contrast will increase as a result.

Make sense?

Alan Klein · Feb 6, 2014

Well I've started scanning my test shots. Overall contrast between yellow, orange and no filter are about the same. However, you lose tonal values within certain areas as can be expected. It was particularly noticeable on bricks on a house where the different shades of red and orange bricks blended more with the orange filter than with the yellow or no filter. I haven't scanned the red filter shots yet. More to follow.

I've been scanning BW 16 bit with my Epson V600 flat bed scanner. Everything flat. For some reason I cannot see the histogram in the scanner before the scan with BW only if I set it for color. Any suggestions?

Thomas Bertilsson · Feb 6, 2014

Alan Klein said:
Well I've started scanning my test shots. Overall contrast between yellow, orange and no filter are about the same. However, you lose tonal values within certain areas as can be expected. It was particularly noticeable on bricks on a house where the different shades of red and orange bricks blended more with the orange filter than with the yellow or no filter. I haven't scanned the red filter shots yet. More to follow.

I've been scanning BW 16 bit with my Epson V600 flat bed scanner. Everything flat. For some reason I cannot see the histogram in the scanner before the scan with BW only if I set it for color. Any suggestions?

You're on the right track with the color filters. Once you try green and blue on the same brick wall things will really start to click.
Now imagine what filters such as these do to skin tones, eye color, color of clothes, skies, etc. It can be very useful as a tool, for sure.

Alan Klein · Feb 7, 2014

OK. So I got back two rolls, twenty pictures from the outside lab. They developed the Tmax 100 in Xtol normal. I either didn't read my meter right. Or all the pictures were underexposed at least one stop. Funny that when I shoot Velvia chromes, I seem to do better. In any case, here is one taken with a yellow filter. I underexposed by what I thought was -1 stop so it appears "normal". Below are the flat scan shot out of the V600 flat bed scanner. The second photo is post processed and my interpretation. Comments on either or both would be appreciated. What looks good and what looks bad? I think I'm going to shoot real shots using my meter at 50 ASA then bracket ojne stop above and below (after adjusting for filters as well). Oh one thing, The red that the manufacturer says in a factor of 5 (about 2 1/3 stops) seems wrong. They were really dark so I'm going to use 3 stops or factor of 8. Comments?

Flat from scanner with yellow filter

Post processsed

markbarendt · Feb 8, 2014

Alan, negatives work differently. Thinking about negatives like you think about Velvia/chromes is a recipe for failure and disappointment.

Hitting the "exact exposure placement" you wanted in camera, as you need to do for your Velvia, is much less relevant for a negative.

The printing process defines the final/exact placement of subject matter for the positive/the print, the exact exposure the negative only needs to be within a usable range. If you can adjust the printing process to print what you want, the negative is fine.

Consider for a second how disposable cameras work, they have a fixed aperture and use a fixed speed, exposure is simply allowed to float depending on the scene. A typical roll of negatives from a disposable may get exposed anywhere from EI 50 to EI 800 on whatever film is in the camera. Generally decent prints are very possible across that whole range. Disposables typically use ISO 400 or 800 films.

I'm not suggesting that you should be sloppy about exposure because there are real benefits in getting close, it really does make getting better prints easier.

So, to judge under-exposure you look at the detail available in the shadows, generally if the detail you want to print is visible there, the negative isn't under-exposed.

Thomas Bertilsson · Feb 8, 2014

Alan,

All color filters will necessitate more exposure.
Usually as follows, roughly:
Yellow 1 to 1.5 stops
Orange 1.5 to 2 stops
Red 2 to 3 stops
Green or blue 1 to 1.5 stops
Should say in the instructions how much the filter slows you down.

Rolfe Tessem · Feb 8, 2014

To what has already been posted above, I would only add that the Gasser book was clearly shot on large format -- somebody else said 8x10, but that is certainly not detectable from the web posting.

What may not be obvious to the OP is that when working with sheet film, one can customize the development of each sheet depending on the subject matter. This can lead to a more consistent printed look, which is what the OP commented on...

Alan Klein · Feb 8, 2014

Maybe someone can check on the following. The first picture I posted above is directly out of the scanner - flat, no adjustments. The second is with PP. Below I superimposed the histograms.

Is the histogram about normal for what you would get with a flat bed scanner for normal exposed negatives? Or should I expect it to be further to the right?
Flat from scanner - no adjustments

after post adjustments

Regular Rod · Feb 8, 2014

Alan Klein said:
Which film and processing do you think were used by Peter Gasser? He seems to cover the midtones just wonderfully from black to white with no sharp transitions. You can click on the various indexes and then turn pages by clicking the bottom right corners.
Dead Link Removed

Lovely photographs ruined by publishing them spread over two pages!

RR

Mr Bill · Feb 8, 2014

Alan Klein said:
Oh one thing, The red that the manufacturer says in a factor of 5 (about 2 1/3 stops) seems wrong. They were really dark so I'm going to use 3 stops or factor of 8. Comments?

When you say "the manufacturer says..." I presume you mean the filter manufacturer? If so, they should not be the one to state the filter factor, as they don't know the characteristics of the materials you are using. Ideally, you would get filter factors from the film data sheet (if your filter is not equivalent to one of the listed filters, then no luck).

Anyway, since you're using T-max 100, check Kodak's data sheet. On page 5, it gives factors for a handful of (Wratten) filters, including 25 (red). In daylight, the factor is given as 8X (3 stops), or for tungsten light 4X (2 stops).

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/f4016/f4016.pdf

Alan Klein · Feb 9, 2014

Bill: Thanks for you response but it's not that easy. I'm using B+W Schneider filters that are not listed in the equivalent Wratten numbering equivalent. B+W has two red filters- a light 090 filter factor 5 (the one I used) and a dark red 091 filter factor 8. Wratten if I recall correctly was a Kodak owned filter. Or at least it's been a standard. Therefore Kodak would know their filters and provide the factor in the Kopdak film spec sheets for it. But it's the filter manufacturer that provides the factor. Since they test their filters, they would know how much light their filters block? Hense they provide the filter factor in their spec sheets as follows:
light red https://www.schneideroptics.com/Ecommerce/CatalogItemDetail.aspx?CID=675&IID=3255
dark red https://www.schneideroptics.com/Ecommerce/CatalogItemDetail.aspx?CID=675&IID=3256

markbarendt · Feb 9, 2014

Alan Klein said:
Is the histogram about normal for what you would get with a flat bed scanner for normal exposed negatives? Or should I expect it to be further to the right?

I believe your still thinking "positive" in your new "negative" world.

The first histogram is fine, the hump isn't bumping the edges. Basically it's telling you is that the scanner got a fine picture of the negative and you have what you need to move forward into post. That is all it's telling you.

With negatives the norm is that you need to adjust things to get the positive you want.

The histogram doesn't tell you if your exposure was right, to judge if the negative got enough, or too much exposure, you look at the shadow and highlight detail and ask "is everything I need there?"

So Alan, is the whole range you expected from the scene there in the scan? (I'm not asking if you like the shot or the tones, just if there is detail in the shadows and highlights where you expect it.)

Alan Klein · Feb 9, 2014

Mark: Thanks. I suppose I got all the info I needed from the scan. That's why I posted the final adjusted version with it's histogram. I did bump the blacks a little so the shadow area shows a little darker than it actually is. But I like it that way.

So if I understand you correctly, as long as the image in the histogram falls within the limits without clipping at either end, I should have the range in the negaive to get a good picture after post processing???

Alan Klein · Feb 9, 2014

markbarendt said:
I believe your still thinking "positive" in your new "negative" world.

The first histogram is fine, the hump isn't bumping the edges. Basically it's telling you is that the scanner got a fine picture of the negative and you have what you need to move forward into post. That is all it's telling you.

Please clarify. The histogram I posted is showing the results from the darks on the left to the lights on the right. It's providing results of the negative already converted to a positive. In other words if the histogram was bumping to the left, I clipped the blacks. Correct?

Mr Bill · Feb 9, 2014

Alan Klein said:
Bill: Thanks for you response but it's not that easy. I'm using B+W Schneider filters that are not listed in the equivalent Wratten numbering equivalent. B+W has two red filters- a light 090 filter factor 5 (the one I used) and a dark red 091 filter factor 8.

Alan, it IS that easy, in this case. If you can find your way to "Filter Handbook; B+W FILTERS," on page 35 you'll find these two line-items, which seem to link the B+W numbers (090 and 091) to the Wratten 25 and 29 respectively.

"B+W Light Red Filter 090 (25)", and
"B+W Red Filter 091 (29)"

Knowing this equivalency, you can use your B+W 090 according to the Kodak Wratten 25 factors, which I just listed (post #22).

ps: You can find the "handbook" here: https://www.schneideroptics.com/pdfs/filters/BWHandbookFull.pdf

Alan Klein said:
But it's the filter manufacturer that provides the factor. Since they test their filters, they would know how much light their filters block? Hense they provide the filter factor in their spec sheets as follows...

Well sure, they (ought to) know what their filters block. The problem is that they don't know what photo materials (and light) YOU are using.

Let me demonstrate why this matters. We now know that your B+W 090 (light red) is equivalent to Wratten 25, right? Looking at two Kodak film data sheets, T-max 100 and the obsolete Tech-pan, here are Kodak's filter factors:

Wratten 25 (red), Daylight: T-max factor = 8 (3 stops), Tech Pan factor = 3 (1.6 stops)
Wratten 25 (red), Tungsten light: T-max factor = 4 (2 stops), Tech Pan factor = 2 (1 stop)

So Kodak, who ought to be the most knowledgeable about their own films and filters, have the filter factor for this one specific filter anywhere from 2X to 8X. In other words, the exposure correction should be somewhere from 1 stop to 3 stops, DEPENDING on the film and light source. THIS IS WHY THE FILTER MAKER CANNOT PUT A (reliable) BLANKET FACTOR ON THIS FILTER. (If your only data is from the filter maker, intial exposure tests are probably worthwhile.)

BW film and developing with great tones throughout

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