Printing a sky - What would you do?

[Pieter12]

One of the hardest lessons I had to learn (took many years in fact) was to not let my expectations regarding weather or subject matter ruin a day of photographing.

There were so many times where I'd want sunshine and it would rain, or I'd want fresh snow on the trees and it would drop off first thing in the morning. One of my best photographs was taken on a day I didn't want to go because of forest fire smoke. My reward for forcing myself out the door that day is a forest image which everyone misinterprets as being taken on a foggy day...hey...who am I to tell them what to think!??!

Congratulations are on order for your determination; it'll lead you to many unforeseen discoveries

Occasionally, I will use a graduated filter to darken the sky above the horizon, either an ND grad for color (and black and white) or a yellow-orange grad to darken the sky a bit while bringing out the clouds if there are any.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

... The sky is the way it should be, some people cannot deal with that.

Yep. If you don't like the sky, don't make the image.

Of course, knowing what is possible and how to manipulate the contrast in the sky is valuable knowledge too. Everything from filters when exposing to split-grade printing and flashing techniques can help achieve the image one has in mind.

And, knowing what's impossible helps too.

And, as I mentioned earlier, I like blank, white skies for some images. Work with what you have.

Best,

Doremus

 

[Daniela]

Congratulations are on order for your determination; it'll lead you to many unforeseen discoveries

Others might applaud the use of the large empty informationless negative space that is swallowing the emptiness of public transportation ( it takes up almost half the image area, must be significant!) And so on.

Chuckled when rereading this as we prepare for the 3rd transportation strike of the year tomorrow!
Joking aside, it's lovely to read your thoughts!

The lion is on a break. Two pretty frustrating weeks in the darkroom with burned lightbulbs, broken enlargers, etc. I was able to plug in the Kaiser one (thank you @cowanw and @MattKing !) , only to find out that the filter rollers were not that smooth and the enlarger head dropped at the slightest movement (which explains why someone had tied it to the stand with wire LOL)

Anyway, thank you @Sirius Glass @Pieter12 @oxcanary for split-grade printing suggestion. I'm enjoying it and today I was able to print an image I had abandoned because I didn't know what to do with it...

Before and after

Any ideas about what to do to the street lamp above the umbrella? I burned the bejeezus out of it to no avail...

 

[cowanw]

Did you burn it with a 0 or a 5 grade setting. That needs a zero and you can open the lens a stop to double the effect. you might get away with not much of a ring around the light because the area around it is dark and so not to much affected by a 0 grade burn. or use a rectangular opening and then any darkening of the window behind the light will look natural.
Way to bring out the detail in the shadows. Really well expressed cobbles and rain!

 

[pentaxuser]

Daniela these 2 "before and after" pictures are great examples of what split grade printing can do

It clearly works and yet something inside me says that the argument that split grade printing is only a way of getting to the right part of the right grade to make the same print. That is to say: the better picture such as your one might be also be achieved by, say, grade 3.3

OK only half grades can be achieved by Ilford filters but any grade can be achieved by variable filters of either Y or M. This may in fact be a more complicated way and split grade may be simpler to do

So for all of those out there who know a lot about split grade printing are there in fact things that you can do with split grade that cannot be done with infinitely variable colour filters

Thanks

pentaxuser

 

[koraks]

So for all of those out there who know a lot about split grade printing are there in fact things that you can do with split grade that cannot be done with infinitely variable colour filters

Much of the point about split grade printing is burning and dodging during the separate exposures. You can't do that in a single-filter exposure, obviously.

 

[pentaxuser]

Much of the point about split grade printing is burning and dodging during the separate exposures. You can't do that in a single-filter exposure, obviously.

Thanks. Maybe this is the main if not only advantage over the use of the infinitely variable filter? Dave Butcher, an Ilford Master Printer, does what may be a variation on the dodging and burning at different grades in that he makes a test print at grade 2.5 to establish the best strip and then divides that best exposure into 50% at grade 0 and 50% at grade 5. If he finds that the contrast too low then he changes the grade ) for a higher grade such as grade 1. If his shadows have lost too much detail he decreases the exposure at grade 5

What he doesn't cover is situations where there is the need for additional improvements by dodging and burning and neither does he even hint at this being necessary

Maybe most split grade prints are fine with the additional steps in my last 2 sentences in the first paragraph or maybe this video was just to teach you to "walk before you can run"

I don't think I have ever seen a video that moves beyond this with a negative that needs alteration of either grade 0 or alteration of the exposure at grade 5

Daniela, if you haven't seen this Ilford video here it is in case it is of any help



pentaxuser

 

[MattKing]

Much of the point about split grade printing is burning and dodging during the separate exposures. You can't do that in a single-filter exposure, obviously.

+1
To construct a notional example, use split grade to achieve something akin to grade 2.5 in the middle foreground.
Then combine spit grade and dodging to achieve grade 3.25 in the shadowed closest foreground.
Then combine spit grade and burning to achieve grade 2 in the highlighted background.
Split grade + burning + dodging allows you to achieve different contrasts in different parts of your subject.

 

[Daniela]

Did you burn it with a 0 or a 5 grade setting. That needs a zero and you can open the lens a stop to double the effect. you might get away with not much of a ring around the light because the area around it is dark and so not to much affected by a 0 grade burn. or use a rectangular opening and then any darkening of the window behind the light will look natural.
Way to bring out the detail in the shadows. Really well expressed cobbles and rain!

Thanks! I did the burn with the 0 filter on. And I stopped trying when I reached 5 times the original print time. I'll try opening the lens and see what happens!

Much of the point about split grade printing is burning and dodging during the separate exposures. You can't do that in a single-filter exposure, obviously.

And, for me, the beauty of it is that this organizes the process. If I'm working on the highlights, I can focus on that until I'm happy and then move on to the rest. When using one filter, I tend to get lost in the process.

Thanks. Maybe this is the main if not only advantage over the use of the infinitely variable filter? Dave Butcher, an Ilford Master Printer, does what may be a variation on the dodging and burning at different grades in that he makes a test print at grade 2.5 to establish the best strip and then divides that best exposure into 50% at grade 0 and 50% at grade 5. If he finds that the contrast too low then he changes the grade ) for a higher grade such as grade 1. If his shadows have lost too much detail he decreases the exposure at grade 5

What he doesn't cover is situations where there is the need for additional improvements by dodging and burning and neither does he even hint at this being necessary

Maybe most split grade prints are fine with the additional steps in my last 2 sentences in the first paragraph or maybe this video was just to teach you to "walk before you can run"

I don't think I have ever seen a video that moves beyond this with a negative that needs alteration of either grade 0 or alteration of the exposure at grade 5

Daniela, if you haven't seen this Ilford video here it is in case it is of any help



pentaxuser

Thanks for the video. It seems like it could be more efficient and save time and paper. For the moment, I think I need to stick to one thing until I get the hang of it; but it's good to know that this wealth of information from a master printer is available!

+1
To construct a notional example, use split grade to achieve something akin to grade 2.5 in the middle foreground.
Then combine spit grade and dodging to achieve grade 3.25 in the shadowed closest foreground.
Then combine spit grade and burning to achieve grade 2 in the highlighted background.
Split grade + burning + dodging allows you to achieve different contrasts in different parts of your subject.

That's just way too advanced for me at this point. Looking forward to rereading it in the future!

 

[MattKing]

That's just way too advanced for me at this point. Looking forward to rereading it in the future!

Understood!
But it won't take too long before you will encounter a print where you will think something like:
"I wish I could have more contrast in this part, and less contrast in that part."
And if you recall this thread, you will realize that there is a way to get your wish!

 

[warden]

... he makes a test print at grade 2.5 to establish the best strip and then divides that best exposure into 50% at grade 0 and 50% at grade 5.

I've never warmed to that approach fwiw. Even if I get a passable initial exposure at 2.5 contrast and then divide by two, I have yet to make a split grade print where the individual exposures happen to be the same, so I don't bother with that step.

My most recent print was 20 seconds with the 00 filter and 5 seconds with the 05 filter for instance, so I prefer to just get the 00 contrast correct on a test strip, and then add the 05 on top of the 00 on a second test strip if that makes sense.

 

[pentaxuser]

I've never warmed to that approach fwiw. Even if I get a passable initial exposure at 2.5 contrast and then divide by two, I have yet to make a split grade print where the individual exposures happen to be the same, so I don't bother with that step.

My most recent print was 20 seconds with the 00 filter and 5 seconds with the 05 filter for instance, so I prefer to just get the 00 contrast correct on a test strip, and then add the 05 on top of the 00 on a second test strip if that makes sense.

What you do, warden, is what, if i recall correctly, Les McLean did and describes in his book very well. It might well be that Ilford decided the approach in the video was the best approach for a newcomer to split grade printing and that it intends to make another video on more advanced techniques later. As I said I am not aware it has made such a video as yet but it will be interesting to see it if it does

pentaxuser

 

[cowanw]

Keep in mind that 5 times exposure is just a scratch over 2 stops. Look to 8 or 16 times for 3 or 4 stops more.

 

[koraks]

he makes a test print at grade 2.5 to establish the best strip and then divides that best exposure into 50% at grade 0 and 50% at grade 5

That's an approach that relies heavily on a certain number of implicit assumptions about the nature of the filters and how the paper responds to them. In other words; it works as long as he uses the same kind of filters and the same kind of paper. Change either, and he'll run into differences. Swap out the bulb in your enlarger for a newer LED bulb, and the 50/50 approach suddenly doesn't work out the same way it used to. Might not be an issue for an experienced printer, but for a novice, this can be exceptionally confusing and frustrating.

Besides, I don't see the benefit in this unless he's also doing burning & dodging in the separate exposures - which I assume he really does, at least from time to time, even if he doesn't address it in a particular video.

maybe this video was just to teach you to "walk before you can run"

That's how I took it. And for the reasons I expressed above, it's not the didactic approach I'd choose. The generally accepted approach discussed earlier in this thread is more robust.

 

[cowanw]

Just to expand on the streetlight issue. When a highlight comes up at paper white, you don't really know if that if that spot on the negative is at zone 10 or 11 or 14. If you want to pursue this you could do a test strip with the lens opened 4 stops and see what the tone of the streetlamp comes up as.

 

[Pieter12]

Generally, when I make a test strip for split-grade printing, I try to have a 00 exposure that shows detail in the lightest area of the print. Even of that does not end up being the 00 time I use, at least I know how much to burn with the 00 to get there.

 

[cliveh]

You could always flash the paper.

 

[Pieter12]

I believe this was suggested earlier

 

[Daniela]

Understood!
But it won't take too long before you will encounter a print where you will think something like:
"I wish I could have more contrast in this part, and less contrast in that part."
And if you recall this thread, you will realize that there is a way to get your wish!

I'll certainly keep it in mind

My most recent print was 20 seconds with the 00 filter and 5 seconds with the 05 filter for instance, so I prefer to just get the 00 contrast correct on a test strip, and then add the 05 on top of the 00 on a second test strip if that makes sense.

There seem to be many ways of doing this! For now, I'm using one strip for 0, one strip for 5 and one for both together...I feel like I need to have the two single strips to go back to and reassess...

Keep in mind that 5 times exposure is just a scratch over 2 stops. Look to 8 or 16 times for 3 or 4 stops more.

Thanks for putting it in that context!

Generally, when I make a test strip for split-grade printing, I try to have a 00 exposure that shows detail in the lightest area of the print. Even of that does not end up being the 00 time I use, at least I know how much to burn with the 00 to get there.

Just realized that some people use the 00 and some just the 0...is there a reason for one or the other? I can't imagine there's much difference.

You could always flash the paper.

That's still on the "things to try" list.

 

[MattKing]

Just realized that some people use the 00 and some just the 0...is there a reason for one or the other? I can't imagine there's much difference.

Some filter sets have a 00. Some just have a 0

 

[Daniela]

Ha! Simple enough!

 

[warden]

Some filter sets have a 00. Some just have a 0

Mine go up to eleven.

 

[MattKing]

Mine go up to eleven.

If necessary, I leave it up to you to explain "Spinal Tap" references to Daniela

 

[pentaxuser]

Some filter sets have a 00. Some just have a 0

Yes the recent Ilford sets have both. Presumably it believes that on occasions a 00 filter is needed. I don't think I have ever seen pictures of prints of the same negative at all the 12 grades to see how much or little the print changes and where

pentaxuser

 

[pentaxuser]

Daniela, here's a different approach by Lina Bessonova that may be closer to what Koraks and others were suggesting. In this video she does show the prints from the same negative at all the grades so that's helpful and it is done in a straightforward, easy to understand way.

At the end she compares it to her best print at one grade and while the differences are slight, they are there

Here it is:

I hope this helps. She is a good presenter in my opinion who has done a number of videos on a range of darkroom matters

pentaxuser