Digital BW, The Print

The first thing I noticed when I went to Borders to find this magazine  is that there is not only an "Outdoor Photographer" but also an "Outdoor Photography."  I wonder who is ripping off whom.  I used to subscribe to one of these, but cancelled it and some others because I got tired of looking at the same ads multiple times.  


Of course, the B&W cover picture told me which issue was the correct one.  In that regard, I was amused that the B&W cover photo was taken with Velvia.  I too have made B&W prints from medium format slides, but I sure would not recommend shooting slide film to someone who wants to make good B&W prints.  Slide film is the worst image capture medium I've used for B&W.

While the article on Buelteman took some shots at the zone system, he seems, in fact, to use it in the sense that he carries around multiple film magazines for different contrast scenes so that he can print on a single grade of paper.  

I was interested in his comment that when he returned to the High Sierra he used his meter a few times but once he got "dialed into what the lighting values were" he didn't need to.  During the Golden Trout photo workshop I had my 1 degree Pentax spot meter with me and found about the same thing, though I was shooting a digital camera.  With bright clouds and snow in the images, those highlights, in effect, set the exposure.  As with slide film keeping the highlights from burning out is the challenge.  Surprisingly, few of the shots needed more than a single frame.  The digital dynamic range was enough.  What also amazed me was that the "Sunny 16" rule held fairly well.  In fact, it often did better than the built in meter.  To be sure the highlights are not burnt out, Sunny 16 might be a very good check on the camera's metering system.

Some of the articles on workflows and new conversion tools reminds me that Adobe and others are making things much easier and, in some respects, more efficient when it comes to converting an RGB image to B&W.  However, what I've noticed with more than a few of these tools is that they are basically selecting by color or density range and then applying a curve or other adjustment in that selection area.  There is significant risk with this approach that you'll have haloing artifacts at the boundaries of the selection areas.  You might not see this on a small image on the monitor, but in a large print you might have some unpleasant surprises.

I still simply split the channels to see what information is in the R, G, and B channels.  That's all the information we have.  ACR has no magic that can put a darker filter on the original image capture.

As an experiment, I took an image where I'd want to use a red filter to increase the blue sky to cloud contrast.  The digital sensor has a red filter over 1/4 of the pixels to generate the red channel.  So, I used that as my baseline "red filtered" image.  I then use Lightroom 3's sliders to match that sky contrast.  I enlarged both images on the monitor side by side and looked at the a sharp border between the blue sky and a mountain.  The LR3's conversion showed a halo.  The red channel was essentially free of artifacts.  So, even where the contrast of the sky was not taken to more than what we have in the image file to start with, their system is introducing artifacts.  The new tools are fast and "powerful" but they are not magic nor artifact free.


Phillip Kimble <grimmieoldfart@...> wrote:
>
>... still chewing on a letter to teh editor asking how they 
> could dedicate an entire issue to B&W 
> and not even mention MIS, Piezo, QTR, ...

We're gnats, and did any of the small companies buy advertising space?

I think of what I do now as more like an "alternative process" type of printing.  The OEM printer companies and other large commercial interests have moved into B&W and have most of the market.  Like the B&W conversion tools, their solutions are probably more than adequate for most users.  

I, personally, get satisfaction from the knowledge that my 100% carbon pigment prints have a delta-e from light fade that is about 1/3 that of the OEM solutions (see http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/).  When I look at the extremely low cost of the Carbon-6 that is in my 7800 (see http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Ink-Mixing.pdf) it makes me even happier. 

I think of the 100% carbon pigment print having about the same relationship to an Epson ABW print as the platinum print has to a silver print.  Being outside the mainstream can add value to the prints and be a source of satisfaction.


Paul
www.PaulRoark.com