About Dynamic Range?

<p>This was a huge disappointment. The scene was utterly fabulous by eyeball, and a disaster on film. The sun was setting to the right of the bridge. There was a lot of definition to the clouds, and a great reflection on the water. In the foreground, there is a water canal left to right just back of the bright weeds in the immediate foreground. The stuff in the f/g has tuned to muddy I don't know what. The bridge highlights were very bright yellow'ish white.<br>

120 Tmax 400.<br>

Is this an example of too much range to capture?</p><div></div>

<p>B&W film can record plenty of range. I'm betting the negative contains what you saw when you snapped the shutter. The tricky bit is translating it from the negative to the print.</p>

<p>Are you developing the film yourself? Scanning or printing in the darkroom? Doing your own scanning and printing or relying on a lab?</p>

<p>Hi Mark, the image looks incorrectly exposed to me but that is very hard to tell without seeing the negative. Your lab could tell you if the neg is properly exposed. If so, you may have reduced dynamic range by not making a correct exposure. I do think it's possible that you have more range in this image than your film can record though. If I had taken this shot, I would have used a 2-stop nd-grad to hold detail in the bank of the river and sky. It also matters how the film is developed. It is possible that the lab did not do the greatest job (old chemicals maybe). I would take the neg to a good lab and ask them if the neg is any good. Best, JJ</p>

<p>The neg was developed at my local camera store, which I would guesstimate is 1 step better than Walgreens. They seem slipshod and hurried and running late all the time. Most of what I get from them doesn't "look right." I scanned this on my Epson 4990 using Vuescan. (I'm going to try the scanning again)<br>

And because of all this..........I just ordered a kit of DIY stuff to develop my own film. At least then I can only blame myself!<br>

When I shot it I was really excited to see the image. It looked so great by eye, and I really felt that the range should be possible. Seeing the neg I was pretty disappointed.<br>

I don't have any ND filters, graduated or otherwise. Sounds like something I might want.</p>

<p>You don't really need density filters - neutral or graduated - to get good results with b&w film. Save the graduated density filters for color slide film or situations where you cannot realistically exert any influence after the exposure has been made.</p>

<p>With b&w film all you need is good exposure and basic developing techniques. Do that and the negative will contain the photo you imagined when you snapped the shutter.</p>

<p>The rest is down to your technique in either darkroom printing techniques (contrast filters - if using variable contrast papers - dodging/burning, etc.), or digital editing after acquiring a good scan.</p>

<p>The photo you imagined when you snapped the shutter won't magically appear most of the time. Occasionally, sure. But like anything in photography at least half the work comes after you've snapped the shutter.</p>

<p>And I can tell just from looking at the small JPEG you've posted that there's plenty of room to interpret that photo to your satisfaction. So don't lose hope. I can see some detail in the bridge highlights, the sky contains plenty of detail that can be tweaked to make the clouds pop, and the midtones in the foreground can be tweaked to enhance the tonal separation.</p>

<p>But plan on digging deep into digital editing techniques once you've got a good high resolution scan. There's much more involved than any of us can explain in a discussion forum. We'd just be rehashing everything already covered in the tutorials included with most digital editing programs, and countless books, online tutorials and videos.</p>

<p>If it'll help encourage you I'll be glad to take a whack at it. But I won't bother with a low resolution JPEG, it'd waste your time and mine - there isn't enough data to edit. Make a reasonably high resolution scan, at least around 2000x2000 pixel rez. Don't make the scan too contrasty - check the histogram. A little flat is better than too contrasty or clipped. Save it as a TIFF or JPEG with no compression (100% quality), and either attach it to this thread (it'll appear as an attachment) or use a free web host and post the URL here (mediafire, yousendit, etc.).</p>

<p>Hi Lex -<br>

Good offer. I have been using Bibble 5 Pro as my digital darkroom. Admittedly, I am only into it now for a month or so. I have been unable to tweak anything decent out of the f/g. Attached is a small JPG of my best effort to edit this photo in Bibble. I'll re-scan as you suggested, and be delighted to see your results! Here is all I could do.</p><div></div>

<p>Lex,<br /> Here is the scan. Enjoy.</p>

<p>Well, that didn't work. I'll try it again...</p>

<p>Sorry again. The attachment kept crashing. Here is a link to mediafire.<br>

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?l5ew15g03xj9hwf<br>

Thanks Lex.</p>

<p>Bibble is a terrific raw converter and tweaker for ingesting mass quantities of photos from digital cameras for global editing. But it ain't what you need for this job.</p>

<p>You really need something like: Corel Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements (on the cheap end of the scale); Full blown Photoshop (overkill, really); or The GIMP or Paint.net (good freebies).</p>

<p>Those editors give you the ability to not only mimic darkroom tools such as dodging wands, masks, etc., but also the ability to work in layers to tweak certain parts of the image as desired, then merge or blend them together. In some ways digital editing is much easier than the conventional darkroom. For example, contrast masking in the darkroom is hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing stuff. Not so much difficult as mind numbingly tedious work. In a digital editor unsharp masking can emulate contrast masking, and some editors have simple "clarifying" tools to simplify the process. Add HDR or tone mapping and you can really tease out not only faint shadow detail from underexposed negatives, but also squeeze highlight detail out of badly blocked up negatives (the main challenge with the latter is getting a scanner capable of blasting through that density).</p>

<p>By the way - and not to discourage anyone from enjoying b&w film - but if you prefer to scan and edit digitally, to be honest... you'll get better results more easily using chromogenic monochrome films like Ilford XP2 Super and whatever Kodak is calling their C-41 process b&w film this month. Great stuff, scans beautifully, all you need to worry about is exposure. A good lab will deliver moderate contrast negatives with lovely tonal range and no grain to fuss over during scanning.</p>

<p>Okay, Mark, I downloaded the large version of the photo. I can tell you already that if this is your best scan you'll want to scan it again. It's badly clipped on the highlight end. I can't do anything to salvage the highlights on the bridge. And it won't be possible to feather gradation between the lightest clouds and sky.</p>

<p>It's not much better on the shadow end either. There's no possibility for gradation in the shadow area of the creek or shadows between the foliage. All the darkest areas read R=5, G=0, B=0.</p>

<p>Try again with Vuescan - it's a great utility and if I'm recalling correctly it should have settings optimized for some popular b&w films.</p>

<p>Lex,<br>

I have Photoshop CS2 (on Mac), GIMP and BIBBLE on Linux. I was trying to use one program that could both catalog and edit. Normally, I am not doing compositing with my photos, so I was trying not to use P'shop. In my color stuff, I found Bibble to have what I needed. But I am taking your point - - thanks.<br>

Yeah, the scan is no good. I am right now trying new scan settings to see if I can get a better scan. I (ten minutes ago) got my new lightbox in the mail, so I was actually able to get a decent eyeball look at that negative, and I think it's better than what I am showing in the scannner. So, I am now hopeful!<br>

Also, good tip on the C-41 B/W films. I have some for my 35mm. I sent it off a month ago to an "unnamed" developer and when the stuff came back I tossed it in the garbage it was so bad. So, I got off using it, thinking it was crap, or a gimmick.<br>

New scan coming in a little bit. I am experimenting.</p>

<p>It's way past midnight for me...and the pills have started to work..but in the last dying gasps of this last day, I still wanted to 'play'. Here is a PN regulation sized dispay. In the last moments I had to decise what I wanted to choose to focus attention most. I chose the bridge..... Good Night!</p><div></div>

<p>Looking at the uploaded version, I notice lots of other things that could/should be done to improve the overall image. Rerduce noise and snoothen the clouds, get rid of the dust specks from the scanner bed, amonfst other things, but wastaking shotcuts... Tell me what you think.</p>

<p>That's not bad, Mike.</p>

<p>I'm seeing what looks like some st-st-stuttering artifacts from the scanner. Those regularly spaced vertical lines that appear like texture? Is your scanner emitting any chattering noises during film scans?</p>

<p>Lex,<br>

I am using vuescan. I am not able to get a scan that doesn't have a clipped peak between 195 and 214. I uploaded on more to media fire here: http://www.mediafire.com/i/?8vap7o2tzn6ruyl</p>

<p>This histogram isn't clear to me. The vertical scale can't simply mean pixel count, that wouldn't make sense. It can't mean percentage, because you then couldn't have more than one bar reaching the top line. It doesn't seem possible to mean relative quantity, because again, multiple bars hitting the top doesn't make mathematical sense. I'm trying to hunt down the algorithm or the mathematical concept, but so far no luck.</p>

<p>Anyway, for now this is as good as I can scan it. When I load the file into P'shop I see no "stuttering" bars as shown in one of these renditions.</p>

 

<p>Mike S. --<br>

That's close in feel to what I wanted the picture to be.</p>

<p>I'd still look into Graduated Neutral Density filters. Not saying they're <em>the</em> solution, and they do add complexity to taking a shot, but they're one tool in the kit.</p>

<p>Hi Mark. I hope you don't mind if I took a shot at editing your pic too. My version is similar to Mike's, but with maybe a little less contrast. I tried to keep the bridge as bright as possible as I felt that this was the main focal point. Shots like this are what make me glad that NX2 has control point technology. I deal a lot with dynamic range in post processing my own shots. </p>

<p>Having to depend on someone else to process my film (and the wait and cost involved) is definitely something that I don't miss about shooting film. One of these days, I'm going to set up my own darkroom. Then I'll get back into shooting more film.</p><div></div>

<p>I used the rescan and got this out of P'shop. I didn't use anything very complicated. I shifted Levels, applied an "S" curve to the contrast, and I overlaid a graduated layer to darken the top of the sky. The grass in the near f/g was simply too fuzzy and seemed to greatly detract from the picture, so I re-cropped the square to about 75% of what it was to eliminate that OOF f/g. (I think I can do all of that in Bibble too, but I didn't try yet. )</p>

<p>It's not quite what I saw, but it is better for having played with the scan for an hour. I think I have better scan settings now for TMAX, and perhaps the rest of that roll can be salvaged now! Thanks to all for the helpful comments.</p><div></div>

The sky is usually brighter than it seems even when cloudy. After all, there is light shining through it. You have to use a spot meter to check what is going on. Your original photo is probably within the exposure ranges that were there. A spot meter might have shown zone 5 for the grass around the tracks, zone 9 for the bridge and zones 7, 8, and 9 for the sky clouds. That is what is in the photo.

<p>Well, well, well, well! I really thank you guys for so much input. It caused me to start from square one and really, REALLY look at those negs. Under the lightbox, I was seeing more range than these #@%$#@ scans I was getting. So, after 3 hours of VueScan fiddling, I decided to simply try Epson Scan as a reference. To see if my settings were goofy, or maybe even if the scanner was failing. WELL---the Epson scans are great. They have real contrast, real blacks and whites and vibrance that simply was totally gone in the VueScan version. The VS versions looked like the tone range had shrunk to nothing but a few mid tones, and very muddy looking.</p>

<p>Ok, I don't know why. Maybe I need to do something in VS that I simply don't know. BUT----for the moment, I am getting very happy that my BW negs really DO have some tone in them! Like day and night! I have about 60 frames to re-scan now. I am trashing everything I did with VS for now and re-doing in Epson.</p>

<p>I'll put one of the bridge up when I get to that part of the stack later. Again, thanks to all for giving me more things to think over, look at, test and retry!</p>

Yeah, when all else fails, look at the negative. That is what the image was captured on.

<blockquote>

<p>"Well, well, well, well! . . . etc . . .</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Aren't you glad you asked a new question? Hey!</p>

<p>WW</p>

<p>The age old problem is that negative films have astoundingly large brightness ranges, some as high as 200:1. The ointment fly, is the paper (and chrome stocks) only have around 40:1 rightness range. Basically this means we have to tailor our scene's contrast to fit the latter. In studio work, a high reflectance ratio, is tamed by a low light ratio. Out doors this isn't so easy. You either have to find a scene of suitable contrast, or tone it down via ND grads.</p>