Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/05/24

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Subject: [Leica] IMG: B&W vs Color, Help!
From: jbm at jbm.org (Jeff Moore)
Date: Sat May 24 14:02:00 2008
References: <200805241803.AQP82065@rg4.comporium.net> <440b792d0805241106t66753c4dhb6f46345a76793ba@mail.gmail.com> <200805241947.AQP88290@rg4.comporium.net>

2008-05-24-15:47:40 Tina Manley:
> Thanks, Mehrdad.  Do you not like the brown tint to the BW?  I 
> usually like a warmer tone for people but could do a totally grayscale, 
> too.

If I may wade in...  I must confess I almost never like B&W which has
been obviously warmed up.  You present a lot of your photos -- great
photos, by the way -- particularly ones from Guatemala or Honduras, it
seems -- in a tone so warm it pretty much has to be described as sepia.
I haven't spoken up because, well, I don't want to be that guy; you know
your personal preferences and your market.  But my reaction (there are
no absolute universals here, but *nearly* always) when I see something
so heavily brownish-toned, is to be put off by it.  It seems
sentimentally gimmicky.  For me (and perhaps just for me), it takes an
exceptional image to be strong enough to get past the impediment of
having a "look" I associate with a particular trick -- and sepia-toning
and obvious IR photos tend to fall in those categories.

Now, your photos are generally strong enough to bear the weight of the
gimmick and still survive for me, and for others perhaps the tone is a
plus.  I just don't know.

> http://www.pbase.com/tinamanley/image/97561062
> 
> That's with an Alien Skin Exposure 2, TriX 400 filter.  No brown 
> tint, but it looks pretty sinister to me.  What do you think?

It does look a little sinister compared to, say, this one:

  http://www.pbase.com/tinamanley/image/97553687

...but I don't put it down to the cooler tone.  The contrast and shadow
characteristics are all different, as well.  In this one

  http://www.pbase.com/tinamanley/image/97561062

you have darker eyesockets, and different sculpting of facial features,
due to the shadows' having been pulled closer to black, and, yes, he
does look more implacable than kindly in this rendition.

Then again, the other version's warmth is more subtle than many examples
I've seen, and doesn't bug me -- it's more like a warm-tone paper than
full-on sepia.  I'm thinking that 97561062 is just fine, but if you can
replicate the the contrast characteristics of 97561062 wiht a little
cooler tone it'd be interesting to see, and more of an apples-to-apples
comparison.

 -Jeff

Replies: Reply from images at comporium.net (Tina Manley) ([Leica] IMG: B&W vs Color, Help!)
In reply to: Message from images at comporium.net (Tina Manley) ([Leica] IMG: B&W vs Color, Help!)
Message from msadat at gmail.com (mehrdad) ([Leica] IMG: B&W vs Color, Help!)
Message from images at comporium.net (Tina Manley) ([Leica] IMG: B&W vs Color, Help!)