Digital BW, The Print

You can always get the detail in the area you want with correct exposure.  In RAW, you can get more than you can use in Lightroom or Print.  And proper post processing can compress zones to show all important detail in a long zone.  

Aim to print from no detail in zone 0 to no detail in zone 10 or put ONLY important detail in those areas.  One key is not trying to show detail in all these areas.  It gives you pure black in zone 0 and specular highlights in 0, with all other detail spread through the other zones.

It has appeared to me in a lot of BW work Ive seen, too many are attempting to get all the detail available in blacks even that which is not important.  That makes for a lot of flat images.  Allowing any detail to go black which is not important to the image makes for a better or more interesting image.  

One of my favorites is the one of the beach in my previous message.  With a long tonal range.  Not all images of a beach can look like this, but in this image the sand is actually Black volcanic sand which really shows of the zone system. 

It is not necessary to make HDR images to get a broad range.   In Lightroom you can use all sliders to place important detail in the zones where you want it.  Just learn to use ALL the features in Lightroom, beginning with WB and working your way down to HSL with individual colors, placing them wherever appropriate to get what you want.

"There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs." -- Ansel Adams

Learn your camera and composition like you know how to walk, and you will keep improving.  When you were a baby, you could not stand.  But, no one could tell you that you could not learn.  You practiced, fell, pulled yourself up, and kept practicing no matter how many times you fell.  You learned to walk, run, ride a bike, press a shutter, and much more.  Never let anyone convince you that you can not learn to make pictures like Ansel Adams or Edward Weston and those who followed them.  Only those who quit before they learn ever fail.  Before long, you will learn all you need.

Ye Old Codger



 


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From: Jacob <jacob@...>
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, November 15, 2009 7:40:13 AM
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: photos by Jean-Michel Berts

  
Andre, thanks for showing this site. It does give some technical info but it's all relevant to the film processing. I'm not going back to film just to reproduce this effect. 
I tried HDRI processing using Photomatix. I usually bracket, so I shoot 3 times which is what needed for Photomatix. I had to convert images to B&W before exporting them to tiff because Photomatix reads original raw without Lightroom adjustmetns.
Then I've made different HDRI images using different tome mapping, imported them back to Lightroom. After some adjustments (like fill light, blacks, clarity) I've got better images than before, smoother tones. 
They still don't look like Berts' but may be because he shoots at dawn  and his images are pretty dark.

It's amazing that with digital I need to shoot 3 times and HDRI processing to get little bit close to what he gets with one shot and special processing.

Jacob Mann
http://www.photo3dart.com

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