 Joel Black-Beatty |
too much gray. Hey, I recently went out to do some street photography with Black and White, for the first time. I was using Ilford FP4 (125 ISO) and exposed it as though it was 200 ISO, and then asked the photo store to push the film by one stop. I forgot to ask what process they used to develop it. I've never done any of this before I just wanted to see what would happen. It was a cloudy day and I was shooting at shutter 125/1, and roughly f8, sometimes going to f11 or f5.6 accoring to the in camera light meter. Then when the pictures came back there were very little black and white tones, which I wanted, and instead there was just a whole lot of gray's... Is this what the Ilford film does, or did I do something different? how can I make them more black and white, less gray? thanks
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Maynard McKillen |
Dear Joel: When you surrendered your film to the photo store, you introduced a plethora of variables. Was it developed onsite, which would give you a chance to quiz the people who developed it, or was it sent out? Here are just a few variables: 1) How old was the film developer? How much had it been used? How many rolls had it processed already? (What kind of developer is it?) 2) What time/temperature combination was used? 3) What kind of agitation was used? 4) What kind of paper was it printed on? 5) Was any filtration introduced during the printing process? 6) How fresh was the paper developer? 7) What time/temperature and agitation combination was used to develop the paper? The film might, I stress might, have been underdeveloped for the ISO you chose to shoot at. To gain an appreciation for the variables in exposing, developing and printing black and white film , you may want to read up on the Zone system, a systematic approach to controlling all these variables to produce the image you imagine. You may find yourself developing film, experimenting with different times, temperatures, agitation methods, different developers, and documenting the results to achieve more control over the finished image. It's quite an expansive topic, so I've skimmed it, but it's one possible direction you may choose in your quest for better B&W images...
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Joel Black-Beatty |
Hey, thanks a lot. Your respnse was helpful. I've read about the zone system online, but I wasn't really thinking about it when I shot the film, because it was on the street, and pretty fast. no tripod. Not much metering. Where can I learn about the developing processes? I thought of getting Ansel Adam's book The Negative, and The Print but I just wanted to take some pictures first. The pictures were printed on Kodac Royal paper, which is what they print my colour slide prints on... Would they look better on black and white paper? Thanks,
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Maynard McKillen |
Dear Joel: I can say with absolute certainty...maybe. If you borrow a darkroom and print them on multigrade paper using a #4 multigrade filter, as a starting point, you may notice more contrast. Then, too, you could scan the negatives and tinker with the image in Photoshop...
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Joel Black-Beatty |
Hey, thanks again... I really don't know anything about darkroom and printing. How do prints look when they're made from scanned images? Would there be a loss of quality if I scanned the negatives and then put them on a CD for the lab to make prints from? joel
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Maynard McKillen |
Dear Joel: Scanners and scanning methods vary in the extent to which they faithfully capture the information stored in a negative. However, they have reached a level of quality such that your question may really be, "When will I notice a loss of quality?" As an experiment, scan a negative at the highest capture/quality level available on the scanner, burn it onto a CD, and ask for one 4x6, and one 8x10. See if you feel the particular combination of scanner, software and lab produce acceptable prints and enlargements. I suspect you may react favorably...
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