dilemma

[Greg Heath]

Larry,

I'm going to read and re-read this to digest this. I sure do appreciate you letting me hitch a ride on your thoughts.
I am looking forward to today's darkroom exercises.
I will work on getting a meter. Any suggestions. Something simple but effective.
Maybe I could scan the negative for your advice.

I sure do appreciate your time...
Greg

 

[Greg Heath]

Ok, here is what the negative looked like

Larry this is the negative, and it's easier for me to refer to it onscreen and read your ideas.

 

[Greg Heath]

>> Print your roll so that the edge of the film in the center of the sheet merges with the black, but in the corner of the sheet the edge should be just barely visible. I'm assuming here that you will be making your proofs at say, f/8 where "cutoff" is no longer a factor. The principle here is that the center of the field is closest to the lens; the corner the farthest from. The difference in the distances equals lost light. By printing to this precise set of parameters, you can be sure that you are printing to full black, but not overprinting>>


-->> Print your roll so that the edge of the film in the center of the sheet merges with the black, but in the corner of the sheet the edge should be just barely visible.--

I don't understand this.. I can't physically understand what I am supposed to be doing with the negative at this point.

Can you explain this another way? Can you explain how you are doing this physically?

Observing the negative, it is overexposed. Too much density?

 

[edtbjon]

Just to assure you Greg, even though the procedure that Larry lines out does take quite some time to start with, you will learn and gain the most from following Larrys instructions until you get it right over and over again. It may seem (and feel) tedious right now, but you will find that along the way you start to understand what each and every step does to your picture. It does take a bit of patience, but the time is very well spent.

//Björn

 

[Greg Heath]

I don't necessarily think it's tedious at all. I am just trying to get my brain wrapped around this so I can digest it. It is sometimes hard for me to read something, and put it to action without thinking of it in a physical form. I'm hands on, so I have to envision what I'm doing and make sure I understand this line by line to imagine it. Once I have that down with an understanding of what the negatives are telling me, then I will be learning by leaps and bounds. I love this and it's exciting. I am a lifetime learner now. I regret not having the appetite for learning when I was younger and in school.

Greg

 

[Larry Bullis]

Larry this is the negative, and it's easier for me to refer to it onscreen and read your ideas.

What kind of film is this? Is it b&w scanned in RGB? Is it really THAT dense?

Looks a lot like it's something like 3 stops overexposed.

You NEED that meter!!!

 

[Larry Bullis]

Brad,

I've never found a really adequate book and I've not really kept looking - there may be something great that I don't know about. My students use London/Stone A Short Course.... What I like about it is that it is easy to find stuff in it, and it is simplified (opposite of what they get from me!). Barbara London and I shared a teacher, but she has vastly better organizational skills. I've also been favorably impressed over the years with Henry Horenstein. But, as I say, I haven't been very determined to keep up.

 

[Greg Heath]

Back to the batcave..

What kind of film is this? Is it b&w scanned in RGB? Is it really THAT dense?

Looks a lot like it's something like 3 stops overexposed.

You NEED that meter!!!

Looking back at the scanner is was a color scanned. I will rescan in 8 bit gray.

Then again it's a $99 lexmark...probably only worth about $4.

I'll try it again.

 

[Bob F.]

If the scanner is not designed to scan film (i.e. with a back-light) then you will have problems scanning it. In any event, looking at a scanned negative on different monitors will not tell you much - how can you tell if what looks like blocked shadows is on the negative or a consequence of the scanning?

I would agree on the KISS approach. Use the tried and tested "expose for the highlights, grade for the shadows" approach suggested above and things will fall into place.

Perhaps in this day and age, a pseudo-code explanation may be clearer...

1: Fit Grade 2 filtration
2: Expose for the highlight detail you want. Ignore the shadows.
3: Look at shadows
4: If shadows too light grey, goto 10
5: Else, if shadows too dark and blocked, goto 20
6: Else, shadows are where you want them, highlights are where you want them.
7: Now you can think about dodging/burning details.
8: DONE

10: Increase filter grade by 0.5
11: Goto 2

20: reduce filter grade by 0.5
21: Goto 2

Experience will let you guess the filter grade fairly closely from the initial grade-2 exposure but at first, it's worth creeping-up on the correct grade (and indeed, worth over-shooting it just to see what happens).

Have fun, Bob.

 

[Larry Bullis]

Experience will let you guess the filter grade fairly closely from the initial grade-2 exposure but at first, it's worth creeping-up on the correct grade (and indeed, worth over-shooting it just to see what happens).

Good. My preference is to use whole grades when beginning, so you can see clearly what the effect is. You can always interpolate. Same with exposure. I suggest that you make changes of one whole stop, rather than incrementing yourself to the nuthouse. It is important to learn what a full stop difference looks like, and again, you can interpolate - you'll have to, most of the time.

 

[Greg Heath]

the grayscale negative

This is the grayscale image.

The real image is purple in shade just exactly what I scanned in the first image, but it looks slightly different when you are looking at it versus light going through it.





Thank you for the flowchart, that's how our emergency checklists are written.
challenge response...
sort of...

 

[Larry Bullis]

This is the grayscale image.

The real image is purple in shade just exactly what I scanned in the first image.

It is also "that" dense.

Thank you for the flowchart, that's how our emergency checklists are written.
challenge response...
sort of...

Yep. Three stops. Get that meter! I don't know why it would be purple; anyone else got ideas?

 

[Anon Ymous]

Yep. Three stops. Get that meter! I don't know why it would be purple; anyone else got ideas?

It's a Tmax film (TMY2 IIRC) and it should have been fixed for a bit longer.

 

[Larry Bullis]

It's a Tmax film (TMY2 IIRC) and it should have been fixed for a bit longer.

Or given a sulphite bath. But even so, I have never seen it go THAT purple. Could there be an additional factor?

 

[Anon Ymous]

Or given a sulphite bath. But even so, I have never seen it go THAT purple. Could there be an additional factor?

The scanner! You can't trust a scan for faithful color reproduction, nor density. I've seen scans where the colors are nowhere near the original and after using different monitors too. They were just way off. After all Greg said it's a cheap flatbed...

 

[Greg Heath]

ok, here is a digital shot in subduded sunlight of the negative

the reflection to the left of his head, is the reflection of the canon camera face...
Still probably not like being here...but close

 

[Anon Ymous]

Much better

 

[edtbjon]

I don't necessarily think it's tedious at all. I am just trying to get my brain wrapped around this so I can digest it. It is sometimes hard for me to read something, and put it to action without thinking of it in a physical form. I'm hands on, so I have to envision what I'm doing and make sure I understand this line by line to imagine it. Once I have that down with an understanding of what the negatives are telling me, then I will be learning by leaps and bounds. I love this and it's exciting. I am a lifetime learner now. I regret not having the appetite for learning when I was younger and in school.

Greg

Yes, back to the darkroom and practice. It will become clear once you have tried it a few times. Just see to that you follow the instructions and all of these "notes" will turn into sweet music, which you are able to play yourself.

//Björn