one ugly shade of grey

Hi,

 

I have recently started shooting B&W photography (Spotmatic F, no meter, Ilford HP5 film mostly) and I need help wrapping my head around something: Why do underexposed shots look grey and not black ? How do I attain dark blacks ?

If there is not enough light around the subject but enough to see the subject's face features, how come I cant get their face bathed in dark ? and not a grey veiled one instead like in the attached photos?

 

Thank you for enlightening me !

 

Pierre

 

 

Your negatives are thin because of underexposure.

Give more exposure somewhere along the line,

Of course, blown-out highlights are beyond recovery. Sometimes you can find a little detail in the shadow, especially in old Kodachrome slides.

I'll take a stab at this:

 

When your film is developed, areas that were exposed to more light develop more density. More density = darker on the negative. Areas that were exposed to less light develop less density. Less density = lighter on the negative.

 

How the print looks is essentially the reverse, since you are exposing the paper with light passed through the negative. You can expose that paper to produce a range of prints with more or less contrast, blacker blacks, whiter whites, etc. The difference between the areas of more and less density produce contrast.

 

With the whole negative underexposed, there isn't enough difference between the more & less dense areas to produce a print with strong contrast, especially if the print is being produced by an automated system that is aiming for a medium-gray midpoint. If it's a critical or irreplaceable picture, someone with strong darkroom skills may be able to produce a better print within the limitations of whats captured on the negative.

 

Here's a quick post process as a example of manipulating the contrast. It could probably be done better in a darkroom:

 

That's quite a lot better!

 

I assume you're scanning negatives? A very dark scene may be rendered as annoyingly grey because your software adjusted the overall brightness to a 'typical' value, whereas this isn't a typical scene. Avoid using any 'auto-adjust' control, and play with the response curves and/or the brightness and contrast.

 

Get a meter too, even if you have to use a digital camera as a meter. You will lose a lot of shots by estimating exposure all the time.

Underexposure is typical of B&W photography under artificial light. For one, the light is deficient in blue, so the same nominal light reading will produce less density on the film. Mostly, though, the light is very contrasty. Meter readings tend to defer to highlights, whereas you must expose for the shadows.

 

You have related problems when you print or scan B&W film. In a scene like this much of the scene is dark, hence the negative is thin. The scanning process tries to render the average density as grey (~13% reflectance), which washes everything out. You will never get anything better than ugly grey from a mini-lab. In the darkroom, you must choose a paper with suitable contrast, expose correctly, and make sure you develop for the full time (use a timer!).

 

Most of all, you need to use the correct exposure. B&W film is extremely tolerant of overexposure, but does not retain shadow detail well. Use an incident meter or measure reflectance from facial shadows. With the ISO limits of film, that will probably indicate a much slower shutter speed than you would like. So be it! Trust your instruments! Learn from experience! Learn to "read" negatives, and distinguish those that work from those that don't.

To get the black when you make print simply increase exposure to get it. In fact they look gray because the printer shorten the exposure trying to get it brighter.

There is very little contrast in the long heel of the B&W exposure curve. You have to expose more in order to place the shadows higher on the S-curve. It's easy to make the shadows black in printing, but that doesn't accomplish much by itself.

Not so long after I started in darkroom photography, I learned about grade 3 paper.

 

Not long after that, I learned about Polycontrast from my grandfather, and then inherited

his Varigam (said to work the same) filter set, and some Polycontrast paper.

 

While not as good as doing it right in the first place, many exposure mistakes, resulting in

low contrast negatives, can be improved with the appropriate paper grade or variable

contrast paper and filter.

 

When scanning, appropriate scanner settings increase the contrast in the same way.

 

Looking at the negative, you might be surprised at the detail in the result.