Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/04/18

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Subject: [Leica] Pictures from an exhibition
From: nod at bouncing.org (Philip Clarke)
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:45:29 +0100
References: <a2f8f4470904171447x4b9bba4fl90e4a9adb9f2b1c5@mail.gmail.com> <49E901D6.2070007@bouncing.org> <30db39f20904171936x73194efal6a6c5b2819ae6070@mail.gmail.com> <49E98A80.2090800@bouncing.org> <a2f8f4470904180720i5a2b0b31w6d54a2ab2e3d16ea@mail.gmail.com>

I didn't think with that quality of imagery, that the printing was poor
at the exhibition, I reckoned it was something to do with the
digitizing, my wife wants me to put my old work up (what little remains
as a) I destroyed a lot of it b) I worked for agencies that retained the
images) but I found it easy to shoot fresh on digital than to struggle
trying to reproduce the range of tones I have in the prints.


Daniel Ridings wrote:
> I should probably explain.
>
> These are the tiff:s after they have been 1) resized and 2) sharpened
> for printing ...
>
> At the time I was printing with Paul Roarke's process for MIS
> Associate's carbon pigment (black) inks and an Epson printer.
>
> I didn't want to lock the tiffs into that particular setup, so There
> was one more step before the actual prints were made. I would load
> them into Photoshop and apply a customized curve for Epson Archival
> Matte Paper (in this particular case, there were other curves for
> Hahnem?hle Photo Rag and yet other curves for paper I didn't consider
> using).
>
> When I was goofing around with the Netgear NAS (2 terabyte disks in a
> RAID (redundant) configuration) I ran across a directory for
> "exhibit".
>
> I just let Lightroom import that directory and upload the selection
> directly to my web-server (Lightroom login in and transfers the files
> unattended).
>
> So all of the files would have been tweaked a final time before the
> actually prints were made. At that point the contrast would have been
> finally adjusted and the relevant curves would have been applied. That
> wasn't done for this web-upload.
>
> That's also why there are some duplicates. Some of the duplicates were
> for the exhibit while the other half was for a little pamphlet
> (differently sized tiffs for two different purposes).
>
> The ease of uploading to a server through Lightroom is amazing.
>
> The Nun (from Zimbabwe, not Malawi) is in color. Those didn't need
> final curves before printing. Only the black and white shots did.
>
> Most of them can be seen in my previous years' PAW:s, and then, even
> with correct contrast and levels. This was just done for the fun of
> it. At the time someone asked me if I had the exhibit on-line, and I
> didn't. Lightroom wasn't around back then.
>
> Best,
> Daniel
>
> PS: Thanks all!
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Philip Clarke <nod at bouncing.org> 
> wrote:
>   
>> No because the night time ones and the tree on the first page are
>> spot-on. Pages 3 and 4 also all tend to be better (in my opinion with
>> regards to "printing") than 1 and 2, I do like quite hard images though,
>> I used to use Neopan 400 processed in ID-11 or Rodinal (if it was
>> pushed) and I'd be printing at grade 4, and Neopan had an exceptionally
>> good tonal range . I don't have a recent version of photoshop but one
>> thing that always surprised me was that there was no "hard/ soft" button
>> so that you could knock and image up and down the scale rather than
>> fiddling with contrast. In my vesion (7.0) you can adjust a colour cast
>> separately (with a slider) for the highlight, mid-tones and shadows, but
>> not the contrast, although I admit I may not have found the right button
>> or menu as I can work with curves.
>>
>> Also photoshop is "wrong", in that if I were in a darkroom I'd have a
>> neg that would take 15 seconds for and overall print, maybe 7 second
>> holding back some shadow detail and an extra 15 secs burning in the
>> highlight. So that would be 50% of the shadows and 100% on the
>> highlights. Although photoshop was supposed to ease the conversion from
>> the darkroom to digital if you ever burn in 100% on the highlight and
>> doge the shadows by 50% it looks abysmal. I believe this maybe that
>> digital is a straight line even if you have bumpy levels whereas paper
>> had an exposure curve so could be pre-flashed to make it act in a more
>> linear fashion. Also intensity of light from a darkroom enlarger works
>> that the intensity drops off in a 1/r squared fashion (buggered if I can
>> remember the would might be /reciprocal///)// as you move the head up
>> (with r being the radius of a projected circle). Digital is a strange
>> beast but then so is analogue, you half the amount of light by stopping
>> down which is turning the aperture dial to the next value in a
>> progresion of doubling root 2 (1.4.1, 2, 2.82, 4 etc...), sorry
>> wittering now.
>>
>> Anyway the Missionary Nurse in Malawi in colour, she is spot on on my
>> monitor, the habit is white and detailed, she is "black", but the man
>> sitting in the bar, he is dark grey almost "black", yet the night and
>> snow shots are certainly "black", so I think my monitor is pretty good
>> and it maybe personal preference.
>>
>>
>> Robert D. Baron wrote:
>>     
>>> ===On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Philip Clarke <nod at bouncing.org> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>>>> These are very good a little lacking in contrast for my personal taste
>>>> but that may be the conversion.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> I wonder if your monitor could be a bit off.  They are spot on for me.
>>>
>>> Excellent work.
>>>
>>> --Bob
>>>
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>>>
>>>       
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>>     
>
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>   


In reply to: Message from dlridings at gmail.com (Daniel Ridings) ([Leica] Pictures from an exhibition)
Message from nod at bouncing.org (Philip Clarke) ([Leica] Pictures from an exhibition)
Message from rbaron at concentric.net (Robert D. Baron) ([Leica] Pictures from an exhibition)
Message from nod at bouncing.org (Philip Clarke) ([Leica] Pictures from an exhibition)
Message from dlridings at gmail.com (Daniel Ridings) ([Leica] Pictures from an exhibition)