[Leica] The "Light quality" phenomenon

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

On 8/21/05 12:35 PM, "Steve Barbour" <kididdoc@cox.net> typed:

> On Aug 21, 2005, at 9:23 AM, Walt Johnson wrote:
>> B.D.,
>> 
>> . I have a lot of respect for your opinion and am always flattered
>> when you comment nicely on my photographs.
> 
> this was so well and appropriately said by Walt...said better than I
> could say it.
> 
>> Walt
>> 
>> p.s. I'm curious if there is even such a thing as correct color. I
>> pay considerably more attention to light quality  than color
>> temperature.  The bottom line is the image and what it communicates.
> 
> amen
> 
> Steve
> 


What is "light quality"?

In the twenty odd years I spent much time color balancing standing next to
and getting advise from professional custom color printers at the correcting
table with the special corrected florescent lights built into the top and
all the color balancing swatches laying around it was never expressed to me
"now when you think a print is too magenta Mark, before you start dialing
that magenta in don't forget "light quality"  which could have you
inadvertently doing the wrong thing despite yourself.
This "light quality" phenomenon or effect or what ever it is just never came
up.  They weren't perhaps going to let me in on that one.

Color printing which is in a large part color balancing would seem at first
printing session like an anything goes crap shoot unless we can run back to
the scene of the crime with the print. Or be working with a still life at
the "studio" setup near where you're doing the actual printing. Hold the
print up to the vase with the flowers and gasp - when you thought you were
close to nailing it. You're not even close to being close to being close.
I've done that.

Much of the problem in COLOR printing with the inkjets or the darkroom is
that just about anything you do looks "good enough' certainly color wise.
Call the rest - the "gap" "creative license".
It looks like now it's being called "light quality".
That ephemeral "je ne sais qua" which allows you to print something down two
stops and call it "art". Just cold tone it, dry mount it cut a window mount
on 100% rag sign it and put it under glass.
Fill a room with it you're ok
just don't have some well printed prints right up next to them.

As I got into it over my first years of bad color printing in the late 70's
I realized watching the custom printers that when you compare two prints and
you are close; one would have a veiled quality. It will appear less "clear"
than the other. The "clearest" one being the one closer to being nailed.
It may seem like there is far from an objective reality in color printing
and we can get away with a lot.  Custom color printers don't have the luxury
of that viewpoint. And being around them makes you less sloppy even if your
printing a wedding reception. I've also had to print plenty of product work
in which things had to match up within two points or less. (the cyan magenta
yellow dials on the color printing head have numbers which are referred to
as points)

This is this "clear to veiled" effect which you are dealing with if you are
working intensely enough and kind of makes you feel less alone in an open
field when color printing. The more you strip away that what almost looks
like a gel coating the closest you're going to get to something which really
approaches an objective reality in color printing. When you then bring your
original object (subject of the print) up the the clear looking print you're
going to be only a couple of points away.

I suspect many an most of us Luggers print by the "gee that looks pretty
good on the the next one" method. And I suspect that many of us are on to
the next one before the present one even comes out. Only doing a reprint
under the direst of circumstances.
Your first print out many call a "work print".
Or the first one out of the darkroom you let anybody at all see.
It could be best lived with a week or so before tweaking. If it was close
enough to begin with.

In darkroom printing we'd be doing this. We'd be doing a lot more testing.
Both in color as well as black and white.

Inkjetting made myself and many others I've seen more indiscriminate as to
color balance in my color printing and contrast and densities in my
monochrome. Part of the reason is it takes so damn long for the print to
crawl out. The other is its much more likely to be closer first time out.
I've shown plenty of people first outs and called them final prints. Whether
I'd come out with a term to justify this new found casualness I don't know.
I guess I call them first experiments in Inkjetting. Although God knows I've
been doing it for five years I'm having to come up with new ones. "New
printer" I've used a lot. "new profile". "new paper" is my current one as
I'm just recently shifted to using premium papers for everything having to
feed the thing from the back. (of my 2200).
Printing on what you'd have to almost call "exquisite" paper  (the Epson
Velvet or Hahnem?hle photo rag smooth) can make you sloppy because it all
looks good no matter what you do. It's 100 percent rag having gone through
brass 400 year old dies. (whatever that is!?)
I've never gotten better blacks with silver.
Print them down a stop or so they look like platinum prints.
And they blow any darkroom color print right out of the water.
Much of it may be the surface. A thing which makes a black and white
darkroom fiber print blow away an RC. Behind glass they are identical.
Though a color inkjet behind glass could easily be better than identical.


Mark Rabiner
Photography
Portland Oregon
http://rabinergroup.com/