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Fun with Nikon Images

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Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Huyless, a question about your artistic choice if I may…


I note you flatten your B&W conversions to avoid true black by what appears to be a good 30 points, and also avoid pure white by maybe 15. To my eyes, I find the look a little soft leaving me wanting to see some pure black. I assume you have considered a more traditional processing that contains full blacks and whites and more relative contrast so and am curious if you could expand on why your preference is for the flatter rendering?
 

Floyd Davidson

New member
Huyless, a question about your artistic choice if I may…


I note you flatten your B&W conversions to avoid true black by what appears to be a good 30 points, and also avoid pure white by maybe 15. To my eyes, I find the look a little soft leaving me wanting to see some pure black. I assume you have considered a more traditional processing that contains full blacks and whites and more relative contrast so and am curious if you could expand on why your preference is for the flatter rendering?
I can't speak to artistic choices made by Huyless of course, but there are technical reasons to make exactly those choices.

Whether printed on paper or displayed on a computer monitor, values above about 246 will not have any significant detail. Generally it will be possible to see a difference between 246 and 255, but that's about it. In particular, hightlights on a face, if visible detail is desired, should never be brighter than about 246.

Blacks are a little less distinct, and vary a bit depending on the display. But roughly 20 to 30 is where detail is lost. Hence where visible detail is desired, the minimum value should be about 30.

At both extremes detail is lost because the "display" is operating in the toe of it's analog density curve.

I tend of want an image to be within that range before any sharpen or unsharp mask is applied. Either of those will put edges above and below those limits, but that's fine because there isn't any detail within the part of the edge that is affected.

However, another point worth mentioning is that, at least in my opinion, it has been rather traditional with BW to have blocked extremes of the contrast range. Most people like that, plus with the long toe of film it's the only way to even get anything near completely white. Less useful with digtial capture, and much less so with color.
 

Hulyss Bowman

Active member
Don't get me started ;)

Haaa ! This is a good question :) I have some issues with Black and White because I do not like true black and white. I work in conjunction with my printers and paper's Dmax and this is a long freaking war in my head and my studio to choose what I like the best and also what others like the best and also what printers/paper render the best.

Let say that when I shoot film, it had what I need for printing large, like grain (grain work as a sort of sharpening, thus no need sharpening). With digital, I replaced sharpening by grain as well and it work. For example, with long grain cooking pp, I do not need to sharpen a D700 file to print A0 (I will show examples later).

For the B&W I work with curves. Generally I open my tiff (scanned color film) or my Nef/Dng in ACR and just look at what it do when I switch auto B&W. I never like it but give me the visual start base. So I close the files and do other things for somedays, the time to think about it and how I will cook it. I think Black and white but shoot color for better nuances control.

Once I'm ok in my head I reopen the files and start work (when I do personal work... commissioned works are done in the day). I want my black and white to be "different", ethereal, unreal, showing things in a little weirdo way, not the reality. So I worked on intensity of the black point and white point. For exemple, the best white for me is 239/239/239. Don't ask me why, I simply enjoy this. For the black it depend.

You said "...leaving me wanting..." and this is exactly what I want, in all the aspect of the picture, from composition, attitude of the model, and final rendering.

Well...this is a mess; you do not want me to speak hours about it ;)
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Don't get me started ;)

Once I'm ok in my head I reopen the files and start work (when I do personal work... commisioned works are done in the day). I want my black and white to be "different", ethereal, unreal, showing things in a little weirdo way, not the reality. So I worked on intensity of the black point and white point. For exemple, the best white for me is 239/239/239. Don't ask me why, I simply enjoy this. For the black it depend.

You said "...leaving me wanting..." and this is exactly what I want, in all the aspect of the picture, from composition, attitude of the model, and final rendering.

Well this is a mess !
No it is NOT a mess, it is exactly why I asked you for your comments!!! Thank you for taking the time to respond, and honestly your answer is what I expected :D (It is beneficial for me to understand an artist's thinking regardless of the medium ;) )


PS: Floyd, I understand your comment and it is a good point, but on my monitor I can very clearly see a difference down to around 5 or 6 and up to 252 in blacks and whites. Perhaps I have a better monitor than most, but I suspect most photographers do use calibrated, wide-gamut monitors and color-managed browsers.

Along this line, if I take Huyless' above image and do a levels adjustment to 5 and 252, then bring the gamma up to match his midtones, the result is a significantly different effect than what he's posting -- and clearly it does change the feel of this image dramatically; and obviously to the point where he as the artist doesn't like it. But with his permission, I would like to post a version of what I am talking about as a learning experience for all of us…
 

Hulyss Bowman

Active member
Yes you are right. But in my area, since I start to show more my work, this B&W rendering is identified as my B&W rendering; no other work this way. So it give me a sort of mojo and after roughly 2 years (that is only 3 years I do photos, I'm a noob) I decided to pursue in this direction. More and more ppl identify my work by my rendering. Some do not like and some like but I do not care anymore (otherwise I can't work).

This is different with clients because I do what they want, not what I want.

There is also another parameters with the latests photos I posted. My new model (who is not a model at all, this is my friend) have some anatomic particularity who are well suited for some of my projects. For this shoot I wanted to represent Gunnm. Gunnm is a female androïd Manga character and this Manga is B&W only. Before photo I was drawer/oil painter and I'm in love with charcoal. This love with charcoal orientated me in my actual rendering but not that much because there is a lot of ppl who use charcoal rendering (it became a sort of fashion here in France and I do not like mainstream things as well as peoples).

It give you more info about the complexity of my rendering (who is also dependent of the Dmax of my papers).

Well... this is a mess :D

Interestingly, Floyd on his post above is pretty spot on in his answer !!
 

Floyd Davidson

New member
PS: Floyd, I understand your comment and it is a good point, but on my monitor I can very clearly see a difference down to around 5 or 6 and up to 252 in blacks and whites. Perhaps I have a better monitor than most, but I suspect most photographers do use calibrated, wide-gamut monitors and color-managed browsers.
It is true that you can "see a difference", but it isn't enough difference to make detail genuinely visible unless you have purposely adjusted the brightness and contrast of the monitor to make that so (and which will never be the case with a printed image).

It's hard to get the signficance across in few words. That is what I meant by you can see a difference between 246 and 255, but you won't see detail. A 10 point range at middle grey will have significantly more local contrast between any values separated by just 1 or 2 points.

Look at the density curve for printed papers to see what is happening. You might well have a monitor (high quality or not, and calibrated or not) that is adjusted to be less this way than prints. But for those whose primary target is a paper print, monitors are generally adjusted to be closer to what they get with a print.

I enjoyed the way Huyless described this, because it is obvious that he as worked it all out impirically to determine very critically what he likes and how to get it. His artistic eye has brought him to the exact same conclusions as those who are far less artistic and rely on technical analyses. That strikes me as very astute!

Along this line, if I take Huyless' above image and do a levels adjustment to 5 and 252, then bring the gamma up to match his midtones, the result is a significantly different effect than what he's posting -- and clearly it does change the feel of this image dramatically; and obviously to the point where he as the artist doesn't like it. But with his permission, I would like to post a version of what I am talking about as a learning experience for all of us…
You don't by any chance calibrate your monitor to gamma 2.2 and 6500K? I generally keep mine (a pair of NEC Multisync 2090UXi's that are quite good) calibrated for gamma 2.4 and 5,000K. It turns out that with your suggested curves adjustments but using gamma 2.2 and 6500K monitor calibration the image looks very similar to what the original does when viewed with gamma 2.4 and 5000K.

I used a threshold view to check, and the image as posted has no areas at levels above 244, only edges. And there are no areas below 38, only edges. It appears to be intended for printing, probably on a fairly contrasty paper with a fairly high Dmax.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
It is true that you can "see a difference", but it isn't enough difference to make detail genuinely visible unless you have purposely adjusted the brightness and contrast of the monitor to make that so (and which will never be the case with a printed image).
With Hulyss' permission and in the interests of sharing and learning, I am reposting his image and my re-worked version of it. In my version, there is one small group of pixels in the girl's boot-heel area that I've dropped from his lowest value of 32 to 2. There is a small specular highlight in the closest silver foil on her pant leg that goes up from 245 to 251. I then lifted the gamma by adjusting the center levels slider to 1.5 to balance midtones to a similar relative appearance to his original. The result is shown below. What I clearly see is more contrast with deeper blacks and teeny bit brighter speculars, but clothing tones and skin detail remain relatively similar, while clothing detail and skin brightness are slightly enhanced. What is most certainly lost IMHO is Hulyss's signature charcoal effect:

His original:


My rework as per above:
 

Lloyd

Active member
I can appreciated Hulyss' creative take. There is a charcoal quality to the image. However, I prefer your version, Jack. By comparison, there appears to be veiling flair in Hulyss' version. Or, in print terms, the print looks a little underexposed.
 

Arjuna

Member
Hulyss

My question would be, do the prints look like the images that you are posting here? It seems that you are saying that these files have been processed for printing on a particular paper, and I would guess that the printed versions looks different from the screen versions. I think that there might be an argument for having two versions of each file: one that is processed for printing, and a second one that is processed for screen display, that looks as close as possible to the print, and is used for posting.
 

Hulyss Bowman

Active member
When I started printing my work myself, in January, I bought calibration tools and printers. So my first try was color and I decided to chose Hahnemühle as my paper. I tested some papers and chosen one who suit me the best : Photo Rag Satin 310 Gsm. This is one tricky paper if you ask me.

Once all calibrated with profiles and all, I started printing colors shoots and was not that happy because of the lack of dynamic on the print compared to my screen display. I'm Gamma 2.2 - White point 5800K.

Here is one example where I was not happy with the print (but I rapidly found the trick).



Then I started printing Black and White and didn't had any problems (Black too Black and whites too white), that because of my rendering.

So yes the prints are less flat than the screen display because (and I may be wrong) I always shoot my work for printing ; not for internet display. For my clients who want web photos for websites and all (or weddings), I give them more contrasty photos, more saturated.

I understood that in Black and White, people are sensible to contrasty pictures, like Leica pictures, a mix of sharpness and contrast. So I did a sort of scientific test on a panel of 20 unknown ppl I chosen on my Facebook friend list (I never seen a lot of them so they are strangers), 10 ppl were between 16yo and 30yo and 10 ppl were between 35yo and 65yo.

What I found is very interesting :

The more the people are young (Male or Female do not mater but I may test it later) the more they do not care about what we are actually studying here. The 16 to 30 panel, who are not educated about photo art, this is important, found the pictures very cool, independently of their display device. They are asked to not be shy in their answer.

A part of the 35 to 65 panel vastly prefer the contrasty photo, and I may know why. The older ppl are more sensible to contrast and more you age more you like it. This is due, IMO, to a physiologic transformation or alteration at the optic level. I'm not brain doctor but I do not think yet this fact is linked to psychologic issues, like life experiences, knowledge and maturity but more related to the eye himself. More an eye age, more he need contrast ... that's my statement.

Be aware that I was ready (not really but I found myself obliged), by the end result of my test, to change completely my B&W rendering if the majority preferred the standard "contrast" version. Democracy voted so I'm safe :p and I must admit I was a tad lazy to work around an another way to find a "special" black and white.

Hope you do not find that too weird (sometime I think so !) and that helped you a bit :)
 

Hulyss Bowman

Active member
I can appreciated Hulyss' creative take. There is a charcoal quality to the image. However, I prefer your version, Jack. By comparison, there appears to be veiling flair in Hulyss' version. Or, in print terms, the print looks a little underexposed.
Yes dear Lloyd thats it ! That is part of what I want in my pictures, I do not like picture who show "reality". This why I'm done with foveon for now, It rammed to much crispness, micro-contrasts and reality in my optical nerves.

I want my picture to not show reality, never, like a memory from the past, something you dreamt last night, haloed. I try to go inside you (well... at a psychological level I mean :))

And I'm not yet satisfied, probably never. Hard to show what we think.

Here is a last contrast tricky one out of this afternoon shoot with my friend :

 
Yes dear Lloyd thats it ! That is part of what I want in my pictures, I do not like picture who show "reality". This why I'm done with foveon for now, It rammed to much crispness, micro-contrasts and reality in my optical nerves.

I want my picture to not show reality, never, like a memory from the past, something you dreamt last night, haloed. I try to go inside you (well... at a psychological level I mean :))

And I'm not yet satisfied, probably never. Hard to show what we think.

Here is a last contrast tricky one out of this afternoon shoot with my friend :

Very well expressed Hulyss. Super nice image by the way. Wonderful use of backlight incorporated to the subject.
 
M

mjr

Guest
Afternoon!

I've not had chance to photograph anything for the last week or so, busy rebuilding my house. Needed a break this morning so went down to the river, bloody cold at -20 degrees but beautiful down there.

This image is a stitch of 6 vertical shots with the Zeiss 135 at f4, the detail is just incredible. Anyway, as usual the jpeg compression has lost most of the beautiful colour in the sunlight but you get the idea.



Mat
 
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