how I get this grey tones?

Would the film also play a role? This was taken in 1965 so I assume the film characteristics back then were pretty different from the ones we have now.
 
I would say lower the contrast on a film by developing in Rodinal 1;100. Or if you wet-print, print at a lower grade
 
I agree, use a classic film emulsion.. not a TMAX...

Fuji Neopan 400, Kodak TRI-X 400,
Rodinal 1:25 Use ISO 320 though..
A yellow filter will give it pop, but, watch the shadow blocking
Use a Center Weighted Meter and make sure you have good representation in the center 12mm circle of the mid-shadow to highlight.
 
1) Leica M w/ 35mm f2 Summicron V1 or 35mm f2.8 Summaron
2) Place the highest values on zone VII-1/2
3) Tri-x developed in HC110/D76/ID11
4) Diffuser enlarger + lower paper grade
 
Kentmere 400 for 400 ASA Film D76
Efke 100 for 100 Asa Film in D76
or Fp4 in D76

Overcast sky might help

Dominik
 
Everyone has their own recipe...

BUT all agree on a Classic Emulsion and a Classic Developer...
BTW, try Kodak D76 1:1 and 1:3
 
My way is to find my OWN film speed, which is generally a stop less than box speed. Then I use a variation of the old 'exposure for the shadows and develop for the highlights.' I got my variation from D F Cardwell which is expose for midtones (easy with an incident meter), agitate for the highlights, and develop for the shadows:

http://www.apug.org/forums/forum216/69617-shaping-tone-curve-rodinal-negative.html

Forget about developers use any you like just be sure that it is dilute enough to give sufficient time to do minimal agitation for your highlights.

The reason, possibly, for the tone scale of the photos that you posted was because box cameras had to have a wide, very wide latitude film. Verichrome was an example of this type of film so it was easy back then to get great tones and still take the film to a drugstore to develop.
 
I've been searching for the secret of these grey tones and grey "colour" too, for almost forty years, with only partial success but a lot of enjoyment.

I first noticed and loved them in the photos of Cartier-Bresson but I soon realised that they were also present in many of the photos of other European and Magnum photographers, and I wanted to know how they did it.

Over the years I've found various clues. For example, "Photography Magazine (Great Britain) Ltd" used to publish an annual book known as "Photography Year Book 19xx" in which they printed selected prints from well known photographers of the year in question, usually about 200 mainly black and white prints. In an appendix the book would present thumbnail versions (about 1.5 x 2 inches) of each print from the main print pages, and adjacent to each thumbnail would be a short summary from the photographer giving fairly extensive technical details of the photo eg camera film, developer, paper, print developer, and probable exposure details. Not all these details were present in all cases (minimal for Cartier-Bresson for example) but most photographers tried to give as much as possible, probably because it was a requirement for submission for publication that such details were given, or at least guessed at.

Some years ago I bought the Year Book for 1960 in a second hand bookshop and was delighted to find a lot of useful information, often from very well known photographers of the period and well known names even now. The list includes: George Rodger (M3, Summarit, HP3 in Microphen), Rene Burri (Pentax or Leica M3 with Canon 35 and HP3), Alfred Camisa (Leica M3 Ilford HPS and Microphen), Robert Doisneau (Rollieflex, HP3 and Promicrol), Cartier Bresson (only the camera was mentioned unfortunately - M3), Bert Hardy (only D76 mentioned), Bill Brandt (the photo of Picasso in his villa near Cannes (Rollieflex, Tri-X in Microphen), Leonard McCombe (Contax and Tri-X), Frank Horvat (Leica, wide angle Biogon, HP3 and Promicrol), Willy Ronis (Foca camera with 28mm, Plus-X and Microphen), Inge Morath (Leica M3 with Summarit, HP3 in Microphen), Harold Feinstein, a good friend of Eugene Smith (Ansco Super Hypan in 777), Alfred Eisenstaedt (Leica MP with Plus-X), Jean-Philippe Charbonnier (Tri-X in Microphen), Ian Berry Leica (M3 with Canon wide angle and Gevaert 33 film), Denise Colomb, portrait of Marc Chagall, (Ilford HPS in Microphen), Jean-Loup Seiff (M3, Summicron, Plus-X in D76) Denis Thorpe (Rollieflex, HP3 in Promicrol), Edward Boubat (Leica, wide angle Summaron, Plus-X in Microdol), Larry Burrows (Leica M3 and wide angle lens, HP3 in D76), and William Klein (Canon camera, Tri-X in D76).

The 1964 Year Book included: Louis Stettner (Plus-X in Microphen), Graham Finlayson (Guardian newspaper in UK: M2 HP3, Microphen) and Frank Herrmann (Sunday Times in UK: HP3 in Microphen).

Of course these techniques etc are what the photographers say they used for the particular photos that were printed - they might have forgotten the details and simply guessed at what they used, and anyway the techniques may not have been typical of their work in general at that time. But it does gives us something to go on.

What's relevant here is that the print tones in the book were just like those we are are talking about in this post and what I was searching for, and this was true especially for the prints that used Microphen. Note how many photographers used Microphen at that time, partly no doubt for the extra speed but also I believe for those beautiful tones. The above are only a small sample: many others used Microphen too. Other developers that were often used were Microdol, Promicrol and of course D76 but Microphen predominated.

Some years ago (about 1973) I therefore settled on Tri-X (with the particular emulsion of that time of course) and straight Microphen, rated at either 500 or 650, and found that I could get near to the tones I wanted. I got the effect immediately, using the same equipment and lenses I had been using before, so in this case the developer made all the difference.

My advice would therefore be to try Microphen. I used it straight (Tri-X at 500 or 650, 7 mins at one minute agitation intervals at 20 C). I found that I had to use 7 mins with the Tri-X of that time - my simple mnemonic was 7 but not 8. I never got round to trying 1:1 on an extensive basis (I was emotionally well adjusted in those days and preferred to take pictures rather than agonise over technical details) but what little experimentation I did with 1:1 suggested very similar tones with slightly increased sharpness.

I must emphasise that I used Microphen just for the "colour: of the greys, not to get extra speed or for sharpness - in fact I actually got reduced sharpness over D76 1:1 and over the original Aculux from Geoffrey Crawley. Even now I prefer tones over contrast and sharpness as long as sharpness is good enough.

Over the years I've found that Microphen gets me as close as I can to those greys. I found that Microdol-X was close to Microphen but not quite as good and it loses speed.

I found that Rodinal can in certain circumstances have similar tones but only with Tri-X at 400, 1:50 with very gentle agitation (2 extremely gentle inversions) at five-minute intervals for 25 mins (yes 25) at 20 C. Of course with Rodinal one gets the amazing sharpness too. By the way, I couldn't get HP5 to work at all in Rodinal.

Incidentally I find that the prints of our colleague, Erik van Straten, are similar to the tones I'm seeking, and I believe he uses Ilford Perceptol and perhaps used Microdol-X in the past.

However, from research I suspect that, as suggested by BobYIL, the best method is to use Harold Harvey's Panthermic 777. I haven't tried it cos it seems such a fiddle to do properly, such as having to condition it first, only using very large tanks, and so on.

Of course there are other factors besides negative developer that can help get these tones: larger format films eg 6x6; lenses, their coatings and contrast; films and emulsion type; paper and paper developer if wet prints are made (I used to use Ilfobrom); whether the print is enlarged through a lens or scanned; the enlarging lens and its contrast; etc etc. For example, I find that my 35 mm Summaron 3.5 (M mount) gets me half-way to the right grey tones even if I'm using a film-developer combination that's not helpful in producing those greys. It’s an amazing lens for both sharpness and tones, and mine was made in 1954!

Anthony
 
Tri-X @ 250, ID-11 1+3, continuous rotary agitation 20m 20c.

attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • BW390_-10.jpg
    BW390_-10.jpg
    65 KB · Views: 0
Anthony Harvey said:
I've been searching for the secret of these grey tones and grey "colour" too, for almost forty years, with only partial success but a lot of enjoyment.

Anthony
Click to expand...

Very interesting and thorough post Anthony. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

I would have guessed that the OP's photo looks like plain TriX in D76. Having said that, it's clear that you have much more concrete information to back up what you're saying.

I still wonder though whether the use of Microphen was mainly to counter potential underexposure, and the resultant tones were just a byproduct, i.e. not the main motivation to use Microphen in the first place.

Cheers
 
I feel like I'm missing something here.

Is this just about shooting in the right light and perhaps over exposing/pulling the film a bit to cut contrast? Maybe use a filter to reduce the brightness of the sky and increase contrast where you want it? Maybe a little bit of dodging and burning?

If so, I'd wager the film/developer pair (and lens for that matter) isn't very important compared to getting the exposure aligned with the development.

This seems like classic, light weight zone system stuff.
 
all said already .. I second Tri-X in Rodinal unpushed or even pulled. Also the Ilford P3 I'm shooting in the moment gives that kind of grain look (XTOL).

APX100 also has a wide latitude but less grain when exposed right
 
Probably it is, basically. Shadow detail is the only secret, in my opinion. Then once you have the detail in the neg, you can do anything you want with it in printing--that's just printing skill. What you can't ever do is print detail that's not on the film--you can always throw it out in printing, though. You can push tones up and down, separate them, anything you want. If you convert your film to digital, the various possibilities are accessed even easier.

On my film, the only clear area is usually the border outside the image. This was something I picked up in a David Vestal workshop, about 40 years ago. His pictures were so creamy and full of detail they looked almost like roll film. Basically, he recommended over-exposing (by conventional thought) and pulling development a bit to be sure of capturing ALL the tones in the frame. I use D23 because it's inherently soft, anyway. As I said upwards somewhere, Rodinal has never given me (or anyone else, as far as I can see from posted examples) the shadow detail and softness that's needed for this way of thinking.

His point at the time was that we don't use all the potential highlight density that the film is capable of, yet we settle for empty shadows--in modern digital histogram terms, most people today expose film way to the left. By giving more exposure we can get shadow detail and still not lose anything in the highlights. One of the reasons I don't use T-grain films is that they don't have the highlight headroom of Tri-X.

Anyway, the bottom line is IF you have all of the tones rendered on the film, then you make anything look like anything in the printing, but you can never print what isn't on the film.


Brian Legge said:
I feel like I'm missing something here.

Is this just about shooting in the right light and perhaps over exposing/pulling the film a bit to cut contrast? Maybe use a filter to reduce the brightness of the sky and increase contrast where you want it? Maybe a little bit of dodging and burning?

If so, I'd wager the film/developer pair (and lens for that matter) isn't very important compared to getting the exposure aligned with the development.

This seems like classic, light weight zone system stuff.
Click to expand...
 
mdarnton, all true, I like my negatives just like David Vestal did. I was living in South America when I first read some of this essays (1970). They were a revelation, luckily I had a father that would buy any book I wanted and send it to me then. It was very much a treat to have his works sitting there and when bored I would pick one up and two hours later I was still reading. I lost one of his works, I think I'll go on Amazon right now.
 
charjohncarter said:
I use to use APX and liked it:

6906391131_68a483ed43.jpg


Can you get it anywhere now?
Click to expand...

looks good

it's available everywhere in germany and by far one of the cheapest films. they are still selling the last agfa batches, also rebranded as Rollei Retro 100
check fotoimpex.de or maybe macodirekt.de will ship worldwide
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom