Silver

[retinax]

But it does it by raising the contrast of adjacent tones.

Like an unsharp mask!
I'll concede that it does produce something that resembles a good silver print in that contrast in the mid-tones can be high while keeping highlights and shadows in check. But the means that this can be achieved with in the darkroom, dodging and burning, or good lighting before that, are also available in a digital workflow and using them manually rather than letting a algorithm apply something all over the picture usually gives better results.
To me, pictures with significant "clarity" added (as well as darkroom prints with excessive unsharp masking) look quite unpleasant. HDR has the same issues. Hard to put into words, but some of the things it does for my perception: Destroy the "rhythm" by giving contrasty detail everywhere rather than just in specific areas, putting too much detail in shadow or highlight areas that should be low contrast, halos, unnatural look to specific things like faces, even toned areas get gradients, depth perception from haze in the distance is taken away... these things become painfully noticeable once your vision has learned to detect them. Of course tiny amounts of it can be acceptable, that's like sharpening or the differences between a contrastier and less contrasty lens.

 

[sojournerphoto]

Like an unsharp mask!
I'll concede that it does produce something that resembles a good silver print in that contrast in the mid-tones can be high while keeping highlights and shadows in check. But the means that this can be achieved with in the darkroom, dodging and burning, or good lighting before that, are also available in a digital workflow and using them manually rather than letting a algorithm apply something all over the picture usually gives better results.
To me, pictures with significant "clarity" added (as well as darkroom prints with excessive unsharp masking) look quite unpleasant. HDR has the same issues. Hard to put into words, but some of the things it does for my perception: Destroy the "rhythm" by giving contrasty detail everywhere rather than just in specific areas, putting too much detail in shadow or highlight areas that should be low contrast, halos, unnatural look to specific things like faces, even toned areas get gradients, depth perception from haze in the distance is taken away... these things become painfully noticeable once your vision has learned to detect them. Of course tiny amounts of it can be acceptable, that's like sharpening or the differences between a contrastier and less contrasty lens.

This exactly. A little bit goes a long way. As I said earlier, I think of it as correcting the losses in scanning or from a Bayer matrix - like sharpening.

 

[kbb]

I get that "silver look" by making gelatin silver prints.

gelatin silver print (elmar 50mm f3.5) leica 1a (1928)

Erik.

Ha! This is the true answer!

 

[Oscuro]

Darlings,
I seem to be do what many have say. Because one of the wonders of B&W is the range, I broaden contrast by reducing it and then recover the extreme by setting black point carefully (some photographs do not have absolute black/darkness, yes) and watching highlights also carefully. Adobe, Snapseed, Gimp, etc, etc, etc, all have different ways for doing this. The ‘clarity’ and ‘ambience” controls are useful. Sometimes in conversion you can use Simulated orange, red, green, filters…and then play from there. This old lady like detail in her blacks and I think to start with an image that is nowhere touching the right side of the histogram. Too hot is always too hot.

Funny! When we shooting Tri-X we tried to (my husband expression) “hit it harder” by sometimes a half stop or more. No longer! Nothing looks worse than blown highlight in digital!!! Maybe a few thing but not many!

Ciao,

Mme. O.

 

[Hans Berkhout]

imghansberkhout531 by hans p berkhout, on Flickr

35mm HP5+ , D23 1:1, scanned with Epson V750, Epson driver, no lightroom, photoshop or whatever.