opiate wave

I haven’t touched film in two months.  I’ll blame that on work.

Dug out a box of color photos, some of them really old, and selected three to post on my photoblog.  Looking through the pictures I recalled each time I took them.  There was an idea brewing in my noggin’ which either worked or didn’t.  This was me, the amateur, shooting.  Some of the photos came out real cool thanks to the equipment.  Others not so cool.  Back then you had to wait an hour to a few days to see how well you shot it, and there was no ‘delete’ button.

Anyway, I still shoot every now and then.   Mostly through my cell phone because summer in the City is lively and I can shoot and Twitter at will.  Last week while toying around with some swag from last month’s Comic Con in San Diego, I took this picture of a glow in the dark Icebat:

that's one ugly vinyl, no?

I had to use the monopod and the Night Setting on my G10 to take it.  One of these days I’ll try it again using the Holga.  Just for the hell of it.

Interested in digital black and white?  Want to create contrast to make your subjects pop?  You don’t really need a thorough understanding of the Zone System to make tonally dynamic black and white photographs.  Using my PowerShot G10 I can demonstrate the virtues of proper metering for black and white photography.  First, here’s the original, full-color shot:

full color shot of kamagong wood water buffalo figurine

Couple things to note …. I’m using Macro focus and Auto White Balance settings to take this series of photographs.  For the black and white photos below, I set my ISO to 400 because of the low indoor lighting.  I metered all of the photos using the camera’s default Evaluative Metering setting, and set the shutter speed and apertures myself using Manual Mode.  Finally, using the Preview program on my iMac, I sized the photos down for web viewing.  I did not Photoshop them!  (I don’t even own Photoshop – it’s too darn expensive!!)

So anyway, you can see that there are two different colors of wood at work here – the cherry desk and the mocha brown figurine.  Plus I’ve got a white textured background.  My water buffalo features some cool carved grooves on its back that I’d like to showcase, and I love the reflection it casts on my (somewhat dusty) desktop.  With all that in mind, I’m ready to start.

TEST SHOT #1 – Metering the Water Buffalo

This is what happened when I metered the body of the water buffalo figurine:

Metering the Figurine Body 1/20 @ F2.8

An okay photograph.  You can distinguish between the two wood surfaces, and you can just barely make out the carved grooves on the water buffalo’s back.  There’s texture on the wall, however, the wall looks more gray than white.  How did that happen?  Well, the wall got gray because my light meter determined that there was not enough light to render my water buffalo figurine “visible”.

We all know that most light meters measure the amount of light reflecting off of the surface of a metered subject.  Darker colors absorb more light than lighter colors.  So a dark surface reflects less light than a light surface and requires a longer exposure in order to become “visible”.  Because I metered a dark wood body, my camera’s light meter recommended a setting that will adequately expose that particular body.  That setting, 1/20 of a second at F2.8, resulted in an adequately exposed dark water buffalo figurine but an overexposed white background wall.    (Remember, I’m shooting in Manual Mode so there’s no automatic exposure compensation at work here)

Overexposure “burns in” the tones of gray, making them appear darker than normal.  Burning is okay if you want to express textural detail on a light surface.  But you have to sacrifice the light tones.

TEST SHOT #2 – Metering the White Wall

You’d think that I could correct the gray wall problem by metering the wall, but check out what happened when I did just that:

Metering the White Wall 1/30 @F2.8

Utter catastrophe!  Not only did I lose most of the textural detail on the figurine but the white wall got even darker.  Why?!?  Believe me when I say this, but my light meter did its job as promised and recommended a setting that will adequately expose the metered white wall.  Unfortunately this recommended exposure, 1/30 of a second at F2.8, underexposed the wall and everything else in the frame.  The textured white wall reflected a lot of light back to the meter, so in order to be “visible” some of that light had to be taken away through underexposure.  The compromise was a loss of detail and an overall darker appearance to the entire photograph.

By the way, Test Shot #2 proves what a lot of black and white film photographers know about light meters:  they tend to recommend exposure settings that will render the metered surface as close as possible to a middle, 18% gray tone. Don’t believe me?  Look again at Test Shot #2.

This phenomenon is a bit complicated to explain, and I’d recommend reading other photography reference books for a thorough technical explanation.

TEST SHOT #3 – Metering the Desk

Okay, so I fibbed a little.  You do need to know one thing about the Zone System in order to make tonally dynamic black and white photographs.  I’ll explain below.  Here now is the result of metering last remaining surface option, the cherry desktop:

Metering the Desk 1/10 @ F2.8

Aesthetically, this photograph contains everything I wanted to represent – the texture on the white wall, the carved grooves on the back of the water buffalo figurine, the reflection on the surface of the cherry desk.  You can even see the shadows and highlights better.  Even the water buffalo’s right horn is distinctly visible.  Most importantly, there’s a nice tonal distinction – a pronounced contrast – between the light wall, the dark desk and the even darker figurine.

A poor man’s Zone System, I know.  But it worked.  Without Photoshop I might add.

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** Again, if you’re curious I’d recommend reading other references to learn more about the Zone System.  Don’t let it baffle you, though, because it really boils down to your metering skills.  The Zone System for black and white photography is only as good as your knowledge of lights, darks and how to properly expose for them.

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[Edited to add]  See a larger-sized version of Test Shot #3 in my photoblog.

I shoot film.

And I shoot digital.  But not as much as film.  I do about 90% film and 10% digital photography, by choice.  Guess that makes me Old School.

“Throwback” is a better term.  I started shooting film in the 80’s, switched to digital in the late 90’s, then returned to film two years ago.  When I got my first digital camera – a 1.0 megapixel Olympus birthday present  – I shot till the batteries died, recharged, and then shot till they died again.  It was fun and easy, almost too easy, to shoot digital.  Maybe that’s why I reverted back to film.  It suits me, crazy antique freak that I am.

It’s interesting to read all the posts and message board threads debating the pros and cons of film vs. digital.  Most approach the debate from a technical standpoint – something I won’t attempt here – generously backed up with all sorts of tests, evidence, and convincing insight.  That’s all perfectly fine, the technicalities and finer details.  But I won’t talk about the physics and maths of photography. I’m more interested in creative expression and what tool is “right” for achieving it. So I like to think of the film vs. digital choice in the same way I think of oils vs. watercolors, or graphite vs. charcoal.  You can use any one of those tools to make an illustration.   The process and technique may differ.  The end result may differ as well.  But it’s your choice of tool according to your personal aesthetic that influences your way of expressing that illustration you set out to accomplish in the beginning.  And where aesthetics are concerned, you can’t really say that one tool is “better” than the other, right?

By the way, I think photographers should draw more often.  With anything – a golf pencil even.  When you’re forced to take time to really observe your subject, you start noticing things you would have missed upon initial observation.  Shadows and light.  Textures and tones.  Dimensions.  Shapes.  Relations of objects to each other.  So many variables to play with when composing or considering the correct exposure.

I’m not so much concerned about capturing a particular subject than I am in making sure that subject is captured the way I imagined it to be captured.  Follow me?  It’s not so much the black sweater draped over the wooden chair, but the textured knitting on the black sweater draped over the wooden chair.  It’s not so much about my dog’s smiling face than it is about how the light reflects off of his whiskers while he’s smiling at me.  I notice those kinds of things and I want to make sure I capture them in my photography.

That’s why I choose film over digital for the majority of my photographic projects.  Sure I can achieve a lot of the same creative effects with digital cameras.  But with film there’s a challenge involved.  Film slows me down, but at the same time allows me to really think through the process of taking a photograph.  Like I do whenever I want to draw something.  I have to look at it, carefully.  Deliberately.  Decisively.

Film slows me down … in a very good way.

Tried split filter printing for the first time on Sunday and it worked so well I swear I may never use just one filter to make a print ever again!

The problem was my snow scene:  a fissure in a field of white that revealed a creek with mirror-like water adorned with blades of grass.  Beautiful.  Mysterious.  A real challenge to print.  High contrast filters lost detail in the shadows.  Low contrast filters made everything dull.  Adjusting the exposure time didn’t seem to help either.  No matter what I did my snow came out gray:

Detail from the original workprint

I printed the above photo for 22 seconds at f11 using a #2 contrast filter.  While I like the dark hole and the shadow detail on the edge of the snowbank, the snow itself is too gray for my taste.  I can just barely see the blades of grass.   And nothing “pops” – not the grass, nor the mirror pool of water underneath.

That’s where split filter printing helps.  There’s a lot of useful information on the Internet that explains the ins and outs of this technique.  Many of them do a much better job of going into the details than I can.  In a nutshell, the technique works best with variable-contrast photo paper and is a great way to bring out highlights without sacrificing detail in the shadows.  For my part, I’ll just explain how I worked with it to create a winter wonderland photograph (Ansel would be proud!)

I started with a plan for printing the snow scene.  The water had to be dark – black even.  But it had to give reflection in certain places too.  The snow, of course, couldn’t be any other value but white.  Near paper white, to be exact.  Finally, the grass and the reflections had to display varying shades of gray for volume and shape.

With that plan in mind, I began my test prints.  Because the scene contained dark and light elements throughout, I opted to expose the entire frame as a test print instead of just a small section.  I used a high contrast #5 filter first, exposing five sections at 4 seconds apiece.  After developing, I looked at this test print under natural light to select the exposure time that would give me enough shadow detail without overly darkening the darkest parts of the scene.  Oddly enough (and I think it was because of the particular enlarger I was working with) that exposure time was a mere 2 seconds at f16.

Next, I used a lower contrast #2 filter on a different piece of photo paper to make a second test print.  Again, I exposed five sections at 4 seconds apiece.  Developed and determined that a favorable exposure time would be 4 seconds at f16.  That was the ideal exposure for the brighter parts of the scene.

Finally, I made the print.  Using a fresh piece of photo paper, I reinserted the #5 filter into the drawer and exposed for 2 seconds.  When the light went off, I switched the #5 filter with a #2 filter and exposed the same sheet of paper for 4 more seconds.  The developed print showed amazing differences:

Detail from the split-filter workprint

Notice how bright white the snow is.  But there’s still shadow detail on the edge of the snowbank to give volume and shape to the edges of the snow.  The water from the creek is jet black but you can just barely see a reflection of the sky above.  And the blades of grass look amazing.  They pop!

I’m thrilled with the results.   No more gray snow!  No more dull prints!  From now on, whenever I want to show sharp highlights against an abyss of black, I’m going to use split filter printing.  That’s using black and white film photography to its fullest expressive potential.