Am I too stupid ??

exiled4979

exiled4979

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Well, before you all answer "yes", let me clarify a bit...

I love B/W film, love shooting it, love manual rewinding, love developing, love looking at wet negatives, love the look and feel of B/W film photographs, love printing, so, yes, everything... but, I also love digital photography, digital PENs, some things are simply necessity for commissioned work... so, I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to post-process my digital files to be at least acceptable when compared to real BW shots, and, I'm lost... I'm not talking about sharpness or noise or whatever, but tonality, contrast, depth of blacks, but still keeping mid-tones...

I've tried everything and I just don't know how to get "that look" in street shots of, for example, Tri-x, or Delta100 pulled to 50ASA for portraits. I'm using Adobe Lightroom 3, so, please share your thoughts and preset-tips if you have any how to get realistic digital B/W :)
 
If you have the capability to use film and print, just do it. Its is probably easier than digital to get it to the way you like it. Good website BTW...
 
You can get good digital BW but it takes practice with the channel mixer and curves. The easy way is to use a plugin for photoshop. I like Alienskin Exposure, which is very good for color to BW digital conversions (just turn off the fake grain it adds, YUCK!).

gas-station.jpg



ora-church.jpg



room2.jpg



outhouse.jpg


All shot with a digital SLR and converted in Photoshop.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
You can get good digital BW but it takes practice with the channel mixer and curves. The easy way is to use a plugin for photoshop. I like Alienskin Exposure, which is very good for color to BW digital conversions (just turn off the fake grain it adds, YUCK!).
Click to expand...

I admit, this looks really nice! I can get pretty decent results, but it takes too much time and fiddeling with 50 different options, almost impossible to get consistent and fast workflow...

I've tried pretty much every plug-in there is, and still not happy compared to film. I do like presets in Lightroom, but they're far cry from real thing. Biggest problem is that most digital B/W shots look either like over-exposed film, or too dark if I try to match darkness of the real thing.
 
You might want to look at Mitch Alland's 'Bangkok Hysteria' book project for some samples of beautifully rendered digital BW pictures.

Mitch described his workflow in his Ricoh GRD3 review. Scroll down to 'Postscript: Processing GRD3 files' for his PP description.

************

I recently read something here on the RFF about how Daido Moryama processes many of his BW film street photos: He often overexposes the film and subsequently overdevelops it for stark, dramatic contrast and tonality. You can emulate this kind of treatment on a digital level:
  1. Do your BW conversion, using your favorite method.
  2. Open a 'levels & curves' gradation curve step and pull the middle control (gradation slider) to the left. This effectively simulates overexposure by making midtones much brighter.
  3. Open another 'levels & curves' gradation curve step and apply an S-shaped curve which increases midtone contrast. Play with how you position your 'S' on the graph: Moving the 'S' to the right increases contrast in the upper midtones and produces rich, full black shadows. If you move the 'S' left, then you increase contrast in the lower midtones, blowing out brighter lights. Experiment with this setting - it lets you determine where exactly on the tonal scale you want to have high contrast.
 
exiled4979 said:
I admit, this looks really nice! I can get pretty decent results, but it takes too much time and fiddeling with 50 different options, almost impossible to get consistent and fast workflow...

I've tried pretty much every plug-in there is, and still not happy compared to film. I do like presets in Lightroom, but they're far cry from real thing. Biggest problem is that most digital B/W shots look either like over-exposed film, or too dark if I try to match darkness of the real thing.
Click to expand...

The secret is that after you do the conversion, the images always look flat and muddy, so they need a curve adjustment to bring the contrast up to normal tonality.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
The secret is that after you do the conversion, the images always look flat and muddy, so they need a curve adjustment to bring the contrast up to normal tonality.
Click to expand...

that's just it... too much guessing and adjusting by feeling, there's just no straight way, and certainly not consistent one for getting same tonality and looks .

I don't mind if it looks flat, it works sometimes, but if I up the contrast, I reduce overall dynamic and tonal range, so I lose like half of tones if I just try to get more blacks in shots.

That's what I miss the most, deep and rich blacks with the rest of the range present... I'll upload couple of examples later to show exactly what I mean...
 
Arjay said:
You might want to look at Mitch Alland's 'Bangkok Hysteria' book project for some samples of beautifully rendered digital BW pictures.

Mitch described his workflow in his Ricoh GRD3 review. Scroll down to 'Postscript: Processing GRD3 files' for his PP description.

************

I recently read something here on the RFF about how Daido Moryama processes many of his BW film street photos: He often overexposes the film and subsequently overdevelops it for stark, dramatic contrast and tonality. You can emulate this kind of treatment on a digital level:
  1. Do your BW conversion, using your favorite method.
  2. Open a 'levels & curves' gradation curve step and pull the middle control (gradation slider) to the left. This effectively simulates overexposure by making midtones much brighter.
  3. Open another 'levels & curves' gradation curve step and apply an S-shaped curve which increases midtone contrast. Play with how you position your 'S' on the graph: Moving the 'S' to the right increases contrast in the upper midtones and produces rich, full black shadows. If you move the 'S' left, then you increase contrast in the lower midtones, blowing out brighter lights. Experiment with this setting - it lets you determine where exactly on the tonal scale you want to have high contrast.
Click to expand...

I used to overexpose everything, especially if I was shooting under "bad" light which would produce very flat negatives... later I started developing films with a bit different temperatures and agitation...

anyway, I'll give this method a try, sounds good
 
exiled4979 said:
that's just it... too much guessing and adjusting by feeling, there's just no straight way, and certainly not consistent one for getting same tonality and looks .
Click to expand...

Thats the thing. Good quality requires WORK. There is no easy way, no push the button and its perfect automatic. You just have to do the work if you want the results. Sorry.
 
boris, the site and your pictures are very fine. I think it's interesting that no one here has inquired about what format you wish to see your film and digital reach parity in. On screen both printed digitally I suspect almost anything is possible. But if you want a digital image printed to look like a photographic print I don't think that's possible. If you had lots of money and staff you might consider doing what Sebastiao Salgado recently was reported as having said he does: since airport security rarely lets him take his film through without x-raying it and he travels so extensively he finally has begun working with digital cameras. Then the digital files go to some lab or other where they manage to put the images on film (how this is done I can't quite imagine) so he can manipulate them in the ways that he likes and is accustomed to. And so that they look right to him.
 
I have no helpful response to your initial question, Boris, but your work is so beautiful and has an amazingly good feeling to it—really wonderful.
 
You should be glad that you feel this way, once you learn the tricks of digital b&w you will never touch film again.
 
ebino said:
You should be glad that you feel this way, once you learn the tricks of digital b&w you will never touch film again.
Click to expand...

I went back to film and gave my digital SLR to my son, and I am better at digital BW than most. Quality's fine, but I hated the cameras. If someone would make a small, simple, manual focus digital that worked like an Olympus OM-4 or a Leica, and did not charge a fortune for it, I'd switch. The Leica M9 is the only possibility and it costs more than I earn in 6 months. Not even a remote possibility. I'm an artist, not a dentist. :p
 
Put me down as stupid too, then.

I just started printing in the darkroom and am finding that the more time I put in, the better my results. Sometimes with Lightroom I find the more time I put in, the worse the results.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Thats the thing. Good quality requires WORK. There is no easy way, no push the button and its perfect automatic. You just have to do the work if you want the results. Sorry.
Click to expand...

hmmm, I agree with you, and I really don't mind work, just the opposite :) I'm perfectly willing to spend entire night printing just one shot, but to print it just right (my ex-girlfriend used to say I'm totaly crazy, everything looked the same to her :)), and I don't mind spending any time on post-processing digital files, I consider it pretty much the same as developing and drying film.

Funny thing is, the longer it takes and harder it gets, I'm happier :)

but, the problem is - consistency! I can make (most) shots look nice converted to BW, and believable too, but I'm having problems getting 5 portraits taken with same setup (d700 + 85 1.4) to have same tonality and d.range, and not look over-processed. So, if someone who just started his/her interested in photography looked at those prints, I'm positive there's no way he/she would find any difference, but more experienced eye can spot it in a second...
 
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