Printing B&W -- Preserving Details of the Negative

[brusby]

I understand you've never tried it.

All the best,

Erik.

Why would I want to try it if I don't like the results? Have you tried my suggestion?

BTW, I love some gelatin silver prints. Ansel Adams typically uses them and his prints are very full range and have plenty of sparkle. So, it's possible using that medium to get astonishing results.

 

[Harry the K]

This is my way of printing: Sparkle beats perfection. Viewing the negative I decide where to place the deepest blacks and the purest whites. The rest is calculated by the Heiland Splitgrade Module.

 

[Vince Lupo]

Sounds like a great exercise and well suited to an artist, but for a professional architectural/commercial studio we didn't have the luxury of the time or varied and costly materials. Plus most clients expected some level of consistency. I couldn't imagine handing the client a bunch of prints made on different kinds of paper stock with different textures and tones. We used almost exclusively a single variable contrast paper, whose grade was determined by filters. The selectable contrast was also factored into the mix of dodging and burning. Sometimes a shadow area was kinda underexposed and apparently lower in contrast than what the eye would expect to see. So I'd use a higher contraster filter for those areas. I got a different kind of education -- by learning to use what was at hand to make (hopefully) good prints.

Sure totally understand - I think the point I was trying to make was to find the formula that works best for your specific ‘system’ and then go from there, not to give a client a bunch of different options with a multitude of prints. Of course nowadays with digital printing it’s much easier to achieve consistency across prints.

Still, your suggestion is really interesting and I will definitely give it a try. Hmm don’t think this method would work for inkjets though, but only silver prints?

 

[brusby]

Still, your suggestion is really interesting and I will definitely give it a try. Hmm don’t think this method would work for inkjets though, but only silver prints?

I haven't tried it with inkjet prints but I doubt it would work since they use a different process than traditional silver prints made with an enlarger or contact prints.

 

[Vince Lupo]

Stupid question - when you were doing this printing, were they RC prints or FB prints? I’d think that with FB prints you’d have to also think about dry-down and possible shadow detail loss with that? And I wonder if the finish and / or thickness of the paper makes a difference?

I suppose with inkjet printing the best way to compare is to look at the image on your monitor and see if all the shadow and highlight elements correspond with the final print. I guess at that point (if the original image was a neg) we’d be introducing variables like the scanner etc, but now I think I’m going way too far afield from the original concept! Better quit now 🙂

 

[brusby]

When I was printing professionally at the studio it was early generation resin coated paper. It dried flat and on its own. But about the same time I printed my own prints that I'm pretty sure were fiber based because I had a large dryer used to dry and flatten them which could be used to give a glossy or matt finish depending on which side faced the chrome drum.

I think paper thickness is almost completely independent and therefor irrelevant to silver deposition and print density. But I have to admit I've never done any testing.

Normally it wasn't necessary to compensate for changes of dark tones when drying the prints. But highlights were different. It was considered an art learning to anticipate how much darker the highlights would dry down. So, we'd always have to print highlights to be a bit lighter in the wet developer than how we wanted them to end up because they always dried down a bit darker than how they appeared in the wet stage.

With inkjet it'd be easy to compare the shadow detail on a calibrated monitor to what's showing on the reflected light print. You'd be comparing one positive image to another.

But, much harder to do something like that with traditional negative printing, although if you're really good at evaluating negatives you'd have a good idea if there was detail in the shadows of the negative that was being lost in the print. You'd be able to see silver deposition in the shadow areas of the negative that didn't correspond to any detail on the finished print. Just requires a bit more work.

Good questions!

 

[Erik van Straten]

Brusby: "But if you look at white values in the borders, which are entirely possible to have in the print, there are none or at best very few in the prints. I would have been fired if I had turned in prints like that."

Is there a law that states that there must be pure white in a print? Have you ever seen a print of a photo in a book that contains pure white? Have you ever seen an etching that contains pure white? Have you ever seen a painting that contains pure white? Pure white does not exist at all. Pure white is an abstraction that occurs neither in nature nor in art. Even the sun is not white. Everyone can see that.
Maybe you mean unexposed white photo paper. That's enough in my example, around the photo you can see an unexposed edge. But why should there be unexposed white photo paper in a photo? That would be a dogma that I would never accept.

Erik.

 

[Dervla]

I feel very fortunate to be reading this discussion. Thank you Brusby and Vince. I have not been in a darkroom since before the pandemic; and, my skill is limited.

 

[Erik van Straten]

gelatin silver print (s skopar 50mm f2.5) nikon s2

Erik.

 

[brusby]

Brusby: "But if you look at white values in the borders, which are entirely possible to have in the print, there are none or at best very few in the prints. I would have been fired if I had turned in prints like that."

Is there a law that states that there must be pure white in a print? Have you ever seen a print of a photo in a book that contains pure white? Have you ever seen an etching that contains pure white? Have you ever seen a painting that contains pure white? Pure white does not exist at all. Pure white is an abstraction that occurs neither in nature nor in art. Even the sun is not white. Everyone can see that.
Maybe you mean unexposed white photo paper. That's enough in my example, around the photo you can see an unexposed edge. But why should there be unexposed white photo paper in a photo?

Erik.

All artwork is an abstraction that doesn't occur in nature. And pure white does occur in much artwork, particularly in b&w prints of many of the worlds greatest printers and many of your contemporaries.

In b&w printing pure white is only one of the many tones available to the printer. You have every right as an artist to chose not to use all the tones available to you and to have a shade of gray as the lightest value in your prints. My impression is that it gives the prints a dull, muddy appearance. I understand you see it differently.

When I look around me at things that exist in real space, I usually get the impression of very light areas that contain small areas of pure white -- things like specular highlights, some white paint or very light objects in sunlight, the lightest parts of some white snow, some areas in an outward facing window in sunlight, some backlit hair and much more. I think those things can best be represented by the whitest tones.

There is no reality in photo prints or other art work, there is only the impression or perception of reality we as artists choose to make. Using all the tools available to us, such as a full tonal range, helps make the job easier. To intentionally limit your range of tones seems counter productive to me.

p.s. And it's less about pure white than the range of tone which exist between the gray where your prints often stop and pure white. Those often delicate tones can and often do give a lightness and sparkle to prints.

 

[Erik van Straten]

To intentionally limit your range of tones seems counter productive to me.

Not at all, because art is not an imitation of reality. No artist tries to imitate reality. He is inspired by it, but he wants to make something else.

Erik.

 

[brusby]

Not at all, because art is not an imitation of reality. No artist tries to imitate reality. He is inspired by it, but he wants to make something else.

Erik.

Hmmm, be careful with such broad generalizations. I think the French Realists of the mid 1800's would disagree with you. And I'm sure there are many more.

But, I'm much more interested in whether you've tried the technique that is the subject of this thread. You seem hesitant. Why? It's not about changing anyone's style of printing. It's about knowledge. About finding out whether there are tones buried in the shadows. I"m just perplexed why anyone wouldn't want to know.

 

[Harry the K]

"I"m just perplexed why anyone wouldn't want to know."

Speaking for me: The Heiland machine does the job exceedingly well. The only times the shadows lack differentiation is when I made the mistake to underexpose the negative. And: Most of the time the prints are more as I like them when I print with a higher gradation as suggested by the machine. That means a loss of shadow detail, but the impact of the prints is stronger.

 

[brusby]

Speaking for me: The Heiland machine does the job exceedingly well. The only times the shadows lack differentiation is when I made the mistake to underexpose the negative.

Why do you need a machine? You've got a much more intricate and potentially sophisticated printing aid right between your ears.

And: Most of the time the prints are more as I like them when I print with a higher gradation as suggested by the machine. That means a loss of shadow detail, but the impact of the prints is stronger.

Pushing the shadow detail into pure black usually means the print has higher contrast. The overall impact may be stronger, but subtleties are lost. That's obviously an artistic choice. Whenever I see large expanses of black with no detail I immediately think poor printing technique. It is possible to have both impact and shadow detail, but it takes skill and practice.

 

[Erik van Straten]

Hmmm, be careful with such broad generalizations. I think the French Realists of the mid 1800's would disagree with you. And I'm sure there are many more.

But, I'm much more interested in whether you've tried the technique that is the subject of this thread. You seem hesitant. Why? It's not about changing anyone's style of printing. It's about knowledge. About finding out whether there are tones buried in the shadows. I"m just perplexed why anyone wouldn't want to know.

What are shadows? When the sun is behind a cloud, everything is in the shadow. You should be more clear about what you want to know.

Erik.

 

[brusby]

I think I've been abundantly clear Erik. I think you're playing with words now and being intentionally evasive. Just hold one or a few of your dark prints up to the light and look to see if the darkest areas contain detail that you can't see in the print by reflected light.. Jesus Christ . . . how much clearer do you need me to be?

 

[Erik van Straten]

Really, I never look through my pictures, I just look at what the effect of the tones is and whether they are too dark, too light or just right. In photos, there is often not much to see in the shadows. I'm only interested in what I see in the photos and not in their hidden content.

However, photographs cannot be enigmatic enough to me, in a poetic way or in the way of a cartoon.

Erik.

 

[brusby]

I'm not surprised Erik. It's just a tool to gain some knowledge about one's printing technique that many use to improve the quality of their prints.

You seem totally content with your print quality, so I completely understand the reluctance to entertain any thoughts about possible analytical aids that might lead to improvement regardless of how simple or effective they might be.

But despite your reluctance to even try the technique I'm posting about, you've come onto this thread, posted several images that have nothing to do with the subject at hand, and ranted about your split grade printing technique. If you're not even going to try this technique, why didn't you just spend your time and energy doing other things. Why piss all over this thread?

 

[Ccoppola82]

Useful tip. I will give it a try the next time I get into the darkroom. I split grade as well but I could see this method employed as a way to cut back my #5 filtration. Do you use a light table or hold it up to stronger light source?

 

[Harry the K]

Why do you need a machine? You've got a much more intricate and potentially sophisticated printing aid right between your ears.

That´s not true.
I always found the process of test printing extremely boring and was relieved when I got the Heiland machine, which is so much more precisely evaluating the negatives than the aid between my ears. I´m printing with the Heiland for 20 years now, and still find it a wonderful tool every time I switch it on. I don´t feel the need to play the master printer, it´s enough to have prints I´m satisfied with. And to get 8 out of 10 prints to my liking on a one-shot basis.

Pushing the shadow detail into pure black usually means the print has higher contrast. The overall impact may be stronger, but subtleties are lost. That's obviously an artistic choice. Whenever I see large expanses of black with no detail I immediately think poor printing technique. It is possible to have both impact and shadow detail, but it takes skill and practice.

Right, that is my choice, artistic or not. And I don´t have the impression my prints are lacking something, I get them exactly as I like them.
An example for a one-shot print (12 x 16 inch) from last weekend. It WAS dark under the bridge...