Re: I like toes and shoulders

Shannon wrote:

> For some reason prints from TMX and TMY negatives look funny to me.
> They look sort of...too perfect or modern or something. Maybe this
> is because of the absence of toe and shoulder characteristics you are
> talking about.
>
> I remember going to a show of landscape photographs here in Houston.
> They were lovely, but they had this quality of being sort of too
> thin-looking or something. IT's hard to describe. I thought, "I bet
> that's T-max," and then found out it was.

When one uses more of the print density scale for the shadows, thus better
separating the dark values, it leaves less of the scale for the mids and
highlights -- the lower-mid areas are lighter that they would be if the
shadows were compressed. This is actually more consistent with human
visual perception -- we differentiate tones better in the mid-range than in
the shadows or highlights [more so in the case of shadows than highlights],
so we can tolerate less contrast in the mids than in the shadows. But
whether this look suits any particular artist's conception is another
matter entirely! The good news is that if one learns sensitometry and
conducts experiments, it is possible to create a wide range of "mappings"
from scene luminance values to print density values, including ones that
have the look of old materials.

You can experiment with this using the "levels" tool in PhotoShop, which
applies a three-point curve. If the "grey" slider is right between the
"black" and "white" sliders, the scale (contrast) is linear from black to
white. If you slide it toward the "black" slider, you increase the
contrast of the values [in the original] from black to mid-grey, and reduce
the contrast of the values from mid-grey to white. Sliding it toward the
"white" slider does the opposite. By moving the "black" and "white"
sliders, you can change which tones in the original (if any) go full black
or full white, or (if not) come closest to full black or white. This
adjusts the overall contrast range and is similar to adjusting exposure
(black slider) and development (white slider). Once one sees clearly how
this works, the "curves" tool can generate more sophisticated curves with
multiple inflection points.

Best regards,

etienne
Received on Thu Sep 29 15:29:48 2005