One thing that tonality is not is a reference to a range of tones. Instead, it is a reference to how the tones progress through that range.
There's an Oxymoron in that statement Matt, because for tones to progress through a range, that is a range of tones. Perhaps put a better way what I think you mean would be, similar to what I meant when saying: "essentially how many discernible shades of grey we can see between white and black".
Tonality is a reference to the range of tones, and more specifically the discernible incremental steps and visible changes as the tones progress through that range, which we refer to as Gradation.
Matt: you have previously posted elsewhere an image you took of a fern(?) leaf, that is a image I would hold up an having excellent tonality.
What an interesting topic.
I had always interpreted "tonality" in a black and white print or scan to be a mapping - a function if you will, mapping the colours and luminosity in the scene seen, which is always in colour, to a set of greys.
In my view, the choice of this mapping is entirely personal, artistic, and (mostly) controllable: as the world is in colour, there is no universally 'correct' greyscale mapping of it. There are however, mappings that are possibly more pleasant than others for a large majority of the population (I wonder if there is perceptual research backing this) and so perhaps the expression 'good tonality!' means, for some:
'Hey! I intuitively like how you chose to map the colours you saw in the scene to this particular distribution of grey scale values = good tonality!'.
Importantly, in my (no doubt personal) interpretation, this mapping is not about the absolute "range" or 'completeness' of tones included. That is, 'good' tonality is not necessarily about how many shades of gray I can fit in. In fact, as suggested by others, smooth tonality ("many shades of grey", ie distribution of tones in the histogram that tends to uniform) might fit some images whereas 'high contrast' (very heavy tailed histogram, loads of density in peaks, heavy tails of near blacks and near whites) might fit another image.
In my understanding, tonality refers instead to the choice of exactly which particular grey level in the available range should the photographer pick to represent any chosen colour "items" in the scene.
Eg let's think for simplicity at a discretised grayscale palette. Let's say we have a scanner able to digitise at 14bits/pixel. This gives us 16,384 values to chose from as the destination grey, with 0 being absolute black and 16.383 being absolute white.
We take a picture containing a red apple and a banana. Our task is to map the red and the yellow to pleasant grey values in the [0, 16,383] range. How do we pick? We have a few variables at hand
With these tools at hand we can then take a decision on how to map that red and that yellow to some grey between 0 and 16,383. Do we want
- lighting of the scene
- any filters?
- film
- developer
- exposure time
- exposure methods
- processing time
- processing temperature
- choice of scanner/enlarger head
- choice of paper
- ...
I believe the outcome of the decision leading to the mapping of those colours to certain grey shades will be relevant to the viewer, who will then express a judgement on a 'good/poor tonality'. I believe we carry expectations on what shade of grey should most objects be represented with to be vaguely 'correct'. I think the brain strives to look for correctness even when evaluating a BW image.
- the red to be very dark, much closer to the black background than to the yellow? [eg apple= 200, banana= 6000]
- the red to be a very similar shade of gray as the yellow, both far from the black background? [eg apple= 4560, banana= 6000]
- the yellow to be very fair, close to white, as far as possible from the black? [ eg banana= 12000]
- both objects to be very fair as far as possible from the black background? [eg apple = 10235, banana = 12000]
- something else?
So perhaps 'poor tonality' in the example above would be an image in which the banana grey is very close to the apple grey, as our brain struggles to fit that against a colour representation of the scene (we know that a red apple is extremely different from a yellow banana in the real world).
A few examples from flickr
example 1
example 2
example 3
example 4
example 5
There are two images here that I would consider prime examples of 'poor tonality'. The remaining three I would pick as examples of good tonality. Would be interesting to do this properly and perform some kind of blind rating to see if we reach some sort of consensus.
Yep - and thanks - be sure to click on the thumbnail.
I have always wanted to take a photo with that sort of tonality, but have never achieved it. Craig Richards and Allan King also have some very nice tonality prints.
I think you'll need to strip off a bit more than that. Besides, you'd still have to define both of the other concepts if you choose this approach. Especially the latter may prove more fickle than it seems at first sight.
Talking about the 'tonality' of an image is not talking about the subject of the image.
So 'tonality' is the photograph minus its subject. It's sort of a Zen thing.
I don't see any oxymoron. Tonality isn't about having the full spectrum from white to black ( the size of the range if you like) but rather the progression through the tones that are present - recognizing that there may be a very small range if we measured it with a densitometer.
Perhaps put another way, if there are 256 shades from black to white and of the shades the image encompasses, they progress one shade at a time. So if the shades are #36 to 122, the discernible gray shades are #36, 37, 38 etc on an image with good tonality. On an image with poor tonality, some of the shades will not be present, so it might go 36, 39, 44, etc.
Matt: you have previously posted elsewhere an image you took of a fern(?) leaf, that is a image I would hold up an having excellent tonality.
That depends on how you delimit the concept of 'subject'. And also 'photograph'. The problem with your definition is that it works for your implicit views of how those concepts are defined. As such, your definition is an idiosyncratic one. It seems to work perfectly and be very elegant, until it's confronted with views other than your own, and then it turns out to be not so clear-cut at all.So 'tonality' is the photograph minus its subject. It's sort of a Zen thing.
I thought that was mostly paper and gelatin.So 'tonality' is the photograph minus its subject.
See - I told you it was a 'Zen thing.'... your definition is an idiosyncratic one. It seems to work perfectly and be very elegant, until it's confronted with views other than your own, and then it turns out to be not so clear-cut at all.
Assessing tonality requires great peace of mind?Now to tie 'tonality' to motorcycle maintenance.
I'm not sure if it relates to tonality (because of my uncertainty about what the definition of tonality is), but the only picture I didn't like was example 5. Example 2 was a borderline case. The other three were good, at least to my eye. I'm not referring to subject matter, but just how the way the black, gray, and white looked in the images.
@MattKing This photograph should be made a "sticky" post to show how one can control tonality with the right choice of film, exposure, and development. It reminds me of the photo on the cover of the 1980 paperback edition of Ansel Adams' "The Print," except I like it better.
Tonality, as a perceptual construct, is an illusion (some even call it a hallucination). It's an illusion that most of us share, but most of us share it differently, hence the lively debate in this thread. It has a physical manifestation, typically represented as tone reproduction analysis, and a psychometric one, typically represented as a stimulus - response curve. Both have been studied extensively, going back to the 1940s (see the images below). As part of photographic practice, that reality / illusion has been represented by the Zone System, the Beyond the Zone System, and all of their variants over the years. In fact, each photographer has their own unique way of seeing tonality and reproducing it, be it on paper or screen.
View attachment 323507View attachment 323506
See - I told you it was a 'Zen thing.'
But, to restate the thesis: Tonality is what is left of a a viewer's reaction to a photograph after you remove the viewer's reaction to the subject matter. In all the photographs posted to this thread nobody has commented on the composition or their emotional reaction to the subject.
And as to 'Zen' - this thesis is of no practical use, just a wry observation. Silence is the sound of one hand clapping - and so what.
Now to tie 'tonality' to motorcycle maintenance.
* * *
All statements worth their words have something in them that the reader can't quite wrap their head around.
Isn't that often true of color? When one looks at a beautiful sunset, something they've seen a million times, they say "wow". It's just the colors. Nothing new about the subject. Well, it's just the tones.
See - I told you it was a 'Zen thing.'
But, to restate the thesis: Tonality is what is left of a a viewer's reaction to a photograph after you remove the viewer's reaction to the subject matter. In all the photographs posted to this thread nobody has commented on the composition or their emotional reaction to the subject.
And as to 'Zen' - this thesis is of no practical use, just a wry observation. Silence is the sound of one hand clapping - and so what.
Now to tie 'tonality' to motorcycle maintenance.
You will notice that the film manufactures do not use the term tones, they describe what most folks refer to tone as contrast. In terms of a print, toning usually refers to changing the color of print, or the contrast with a dye of some sort. Seliumum (sp?) toning darkens or "deepens blacks" depending on strength and time in the toner use can also warm a print up. (?) Might miss recalled warming, I only use it for short times for permanentancy.
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