Digital BW, The Print

Ye Old Codger, Your opening statement is provocative  but so very close to
false as to be incorrect. RAW does not give you anything. It is a file
format of the exposure and if your exposure is crap so will the file be. A
bad exposure is a bad exposure. It is true more can be done with it, but
garbage is still garbage.  We can all agree that,  intent and vision,  pre
and post exposure control, are important to good imagery. Lightroom can not
create detail where there is none, even though it can reveal some that might
otherwise be lost. 

 

Lightroom is but one of many RAW processors, and much like Kodak, Agfa,
Ansco, Fuji et la are to the aqueous based images; a means to an end that
has certain predispositions to that end. Full toned images are not so much
flat as expanded to a point that much more is visible producing lower
localized contrast throughout the entire image.  

 

Eric Neilsen

Eric Neilsen Photography

4101 Commerce Street, Suite 9

Dallas, TX 75226

 

www.ericneilsenphotography.com

skype me with ejprinter

 

  _____  

From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Robert
Johnston
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2009 10:47 AM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: photos by Jean-Michel Berts

 

  

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

________________________________
From: Jacob <jacob@photo3dart. <mailto:jacob%40photo3dart.com> com>
To: DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@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.photo3da <http://www.photo3dart.com> rt.com

---

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]