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Post by belgiumreporter on Aug 19, 2016 7:08:44 GMT -5
Last week i was on an assignement to make some photos at a local event. A colleage and friend of mine was there to (not on duty) he had his leica M6 loaded with kodak T-max 3200ASA with him to do some personal research. When the pics were developed he showed them to me, i wasn't very inpressed save for one pic wich had that gritty 70ties style oozing out of it. Then i tought why not process some of my files in PS to see how far i could go in re-creating that old grainy high contrast look. Admittitly it's all "fake" grain and B&W but how far would you go to get a specific look? By the way, have you heard about that new silly leica M with no screen on the back, so you would get that "film shooting experience" it costs 600$ more than the same camera with a screen!!! Someone suggested leica may want to make special memory cards that will release the recorded files after you waited a week so to simulate the time you needed to wait in the "old" days to get your prints back from the lab, LOL!!! those memory cards would offcorse cost ten times as much as a regular one, but will have a red dot on them. Here's my fake seventies look pic, made with the D300 ans some PS.( didn't get my hands wet on developing this one)
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Post by raybar on Aug 19, 2016 11:35:43 GMT -5
Some of the "grainy high contrast look" was intentional but a lot of it was the result of incorrect exposure and/or poor darkroom technique, and especially the use of condenser enlargers. Collimated light is scattered much more when passing through high density areas of negatives than through low density areas, resulting in increased contrast in the print compared to what's really on the negative and accentuating graininess and dust.
Ansel Adams, The Print, Morgan & Morgan, 1968, page 42-43
Fred Picker, Zone VI Workshop, Amphora, 1974, page 62
My prints were dramatically and effortlessly improved the moment I removed the condenser head from my enlarger and installed a diffuse "cold light" head. I had previously done film speed and development time tests. I was producing good Zone System negatives that made lovely contact prints, with Zone 1 printing just a bit lighter than clear film printed for Zone 0 and Zone 8 printing just a bit darker than the Zone 9 white of unexposed paper. But enlarging was a nightmare until I switched to diffused light. Suddenly the tonal range of my prints matched what I saw on my contact sheets. I quit wasting time and paper making "test strips" like all the "how to print" books suggested and (after doing tests to establish exposure time and f/stop for each print size on normal contrast paper) just made a test print at my standard settings.
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