day at the races

[tim power]

Spent this afternoon at first day the Aintree meeting (Grand National is on saturday)
thought forum might enjoy?

[stuny]

Tim -

Excellent series, angles and composition. I suggest some post processing to make them appear less flat or less dull.

[tim power]

thanks for your prompt, though somewhat mixed, review. roguewave said similar thing about my two Devon pics, creamteas and headshop. here's the prob: I am terribly conflicted about digital file-fiddling. its just not the same as cropping, burning and dodging. maybe it should still all be in B&W. so, here, courtesy of the grayscale button, three postprocessed pic. aintree_1.jpg

aintree_3.jpg

aintree.jpg

hopefully these are now in B&W? whaddythink?

Flickr: Photos from gonzopix

[tim power]

you berk timothy. here they are again. this time, if i have mastered the intricacies of PSing into B&W files, they are grayscale and which are not that bad. pic two, eat yr heart out muybridge

[stuny]

Tim –

I used to think the same way as you do regarding manipulating digital images. However, I came to realize several things: What I do digitally is very similar to what I did in my wet B&W darkroom. That included changing exposure times under the enlarger, changing development times, cropping, selecting different grades of paper, and some dodging and burning. Only about three times in several decades did I combine images or parts of images from more than one negative. One example was combining a shot of thin parallel lines, full frame, with a detail of architectural decoration. An architect used that image on a brochure and a campaign to restore a historical building.

I bought my first digital camera just over four years ago. In digital I do much the same things as in my B&W wet darkroom, have not yet combined images from more than one file, but also do some sharpening, and when necessary, clone out spots on the image caused by dirt on the sensor (akin to touching up spots and lines from dirt and scratches on negatives).

On March 13th, Forum member and excellent photographer Wilfredo posted a set of unprocessed digital photos asking other members to have at it (see the thread at this link: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-...formance.html). Some of us just did corrections as I describe above, and others reinterpreted the images – something Forum members Carolina and Caryl do frequently and do well digitally, as did Man Ray in wet darkrooms. The general consensus was that regardless of the source of the digital files (M8, DMR, D-Lux, V-Lux, C-Lux, D2, D3, D1, or scanned from film or slides) nearly all images can benefit from at least a little bit of adjustment.

I encourage you to experiment, to consider the similarities of these actions to wet darkroom actions, and to consider putting aside your personal barrier to doing these things. I think in the long run you will be more satisfied with your own work, which is already very fine.

[tim power]

Stuart, thanks for your encouragement. Yes, you're right, I am conflicted about actual film versus virtual files. In truth I am really a B&W photographer at heart. Yet owning a decent didgie camera makes me loath to throw away so much info, making it redundant, in order to turn DNGs into monochrome: the shiny, shiny colours do seduce one into neglecting monochrome and treating full colour as default. And there's the danger: a quick scroll through the forum's posted pics will show quite a few colour files which have been, imo, overprocessed: colour too saturated, contrast bumped up too high, etc.
In wet processing the parameters were very much more limited whereas in PS they are vast and people do get carried away into false colour. I appreciate this is old, well-trod ground but I don't think this debate will go away. In fact, as film gets harder to acquire, the issue will become more urgent. Of course, some might say that scanning negs in order to upload and to print pictures digitally makes for an equivalence between negs and DNGs and this is a very fair point.
As to the flatness of pics I have recently posted, this fact may be relevant: like many M8 users, I suspect, I tend to under shoot with exposure settings of -1/3 to as much as -1. The reason? The M8 is such a good lightcatcher that it can still produce marvellous detail even when under-exposing. And, like that subjective, ephemeral thing, bokeh, undershot scenes have a texture which I like. (Dutch interior versus pointilist, say?) But I take your point and went back to these files - above - to see what harm it might do to use the brightness slider etc. None at all as it turned out. Provided it is done with proper restraint. cheers. tim power
(p.s. cant find the Wilfredo thread from that link)

[andybarton]

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-...rformance.html

My advice when going to B&W is to not just desaturate, but work those levels and curves.

[flatfour]

Tim - another tweak in PS