What's Wrong with This Picture, or Lack of Contrast in My Life

[len_mo]

<p>I started to develop my own film recently, and I am getting more and more frustrated with the results.</p>

<p>The problem is, I am not getting enough contrast. It's all gray and boring, and requires a lot of PS manipulation. I do everything by the book - temperatures/times/agitation intervals/etc, or at least I think so. And then something like the shot below comes out.</p>

<p>At this point I am not even sure where the problem lies - the capture itself, or the processing, or scanning. I suspect processing, because I feel like I was getting better results when I developed at the lab.</p>

<p>This was shot with Minox 35 ML, new TMax TMY 400, developed in TMax 1:4, scanned on Dimage Scan Dual III.</p>

<p>All advices are welcome, including something like - "You may want to take Photography 101 at your local Y, son".</p>

<p>Thanks,<br>

Len</p>

<div></div>

[sattler123]

<p>Do you have a different camera to try this out? The Minox cameras are known for unreliable shutters - you might just be over exposing dramatically. Scanning is also a science in itself. Try scanning your B&W negative as a color positive, adjust the black and white point in the scanner software and then invert the scanned image in PS - see if that changes your results.</p>

[frank.schifano]

<p>That looks like some veiling flare up near the top of the frame. Prevent it by using a lens hood or some kind of shade. Anything to keep glancing light from hitting the lens. Looks like the sun is directly overhead - mid day. Probably the worst time of day for photography in genera. I think it's worse with B&W. Fix it by burning down the top part of the frame. It's not too hard with Photoshop, or even the humbler Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, or even GIMP.</p>

[russ_kerlin]

<p>I think something strange is going on since contrast at the bottom of the picture actually looks pretty decent. This almost suggests uneven development which implies an agitation issue.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>If you're planning to scan and edit your negatives digitally rather than print them, you don't want excessively contrasty negatives. Overdevelopment and excessively contrasty negs are difficult to scan and grainy. I see plenty of indication in that sample photo that your exposure and development technique are appropriate for scanning. Just work on your digital editing skills.</p>

<p>If printing conventionally it might be appropriate to use selective application of contrast filters along with dodging and burning. Use the equivalent techniques in digital editing.</p>

<p>As Frank noted, there appears to be some veiling flare toward the top. That's another issue that should be controlled with a better lens shade or improvised shading (a hat or other object).</p>

[mjferron]

<p>Agree with Lex. You don't need to test the limits of your scanner with high contrast negatives. Enough exposure to open the shadows and a development time a bit shorter than recommended scan nice and and are easily fixed. Just create a new levels layer in PS and pull those left and right sliders to the edge of the histogram and you see things richen up quick.</p>

[mjferron]

<p>Len here is your shot with a simple levels adjustment.</p><div></div>

[jpo3136b]

<p>I don't know about the TMax developer because I don't use it. If you want blacker blacks, like in the photo they adjusted for you above, just use a higher contrast developer. I use hydroquinone developers, and you can burn that thing black as toast if you want to. In fact, I have to stop down when printing, or one of my recipes will generate something that looks like it was a graphic design litho print.</p>

<p>First, congratulations on the Minox. I have been interested in those; but never got around to it; also, congratulations on developing your own Minox film. I saw some reels on eBay; those are pretty rare. I've often wondered if I could just run some of my 16mm movie film stock through a subminiature; but I suspect that is actually 110 size film. No matter.</p>

<p>I agree about the bottom of the photo. When you said it was too gray, first thing I thought was, Is there any black? Yes, there was. You do have some black, and plenty white. The remainder of the print looks way too gray to me, too.</p>

<p>Do you mix up your own developers from scratch? If you do, try my Plain Jane Beta Chi, it's a Borax recipe. I tried it and ran it on some prints recently, and I loved it. It is similar in performance to Dektol, but a little stronger. If you want that 1950s, stronger black-to-the-photo look, you need a hydroquinone developer. [Also, consider D-76; or, how about something European to develop the Minox film in. Aren't those people Swiss? Well, wouldn't they use their local developer? Why would they formulate their film to work best with T-Max, a proprietary solution from a company half a world away?] Use the Beta Chi, it will solve your contrast problem. Trust me on this; long story, but it works.</p>

<p>Short version of the recipe: (all ingredients in order listed; don't be a dummy in the lab, etc.): <br /> 350 mL warm water, 60g sodium sulfite, 24g hydroquinone, 24g borax, 50g sodium carbonate. Could probably go to 60g on the last one to keep it easier to remember. Borax, (go mule team!). If you need something stronger than that, I've got a couple of variants on file. I'll attach a photo I did with this at the end.</p>

<p>Okay, it's a Minox. They should all come packaged with a date with Jackie Kennedy a la 1960-whenever she took that trip to India with the Minox. Meanwhile, it's a camera, like any other. If you want more contrast out of your black and white pictures, how about slapping a filter on that little beast? I know it doesn't have a filter ring. Neither does my old Yashicamat, for the filters I have. How about, hold the filter in front of the lens with your fingers and hands? Works well. As long as you keep the filter up against the camera, and don't have it far away enough to start casting reflections on the glass, holding the filter in your hand works great. So, this was a brick building. You wanted to emphasize the bricks, right?</p>

<p>Any other camera, that you were "supposed" to mount a black and white filter on, and it would have been orange filter, automatically. Maybe a blue or cyan if you had it, to blacken those orange-y bricks up. Point is, how are you going to control contrast in the field without a filter? You're not. Use filters. Even though it's a Minox camera.</p>

<p>I bet you're slapping your forehead right now! You have never put a filter in front of that Minox lens, have you? I bet hundreds of Minox users never filtered their black and white shots. Ansel Adams filtered. C'mon, now! Let's get some filtration for contrast control.</p>

<p>Okay, so we've touched on contrast increases with filtration and chemistry. How about printing. Filter again. The filter kits for printing are notoriously cheap. I picked up one kit, used, that had lain ignored on the used equipment shelf of a camera store for who knows how long. $10. For ten bucks, you can filter those prints. You want variable contrast printing. Admittedly, by the time you get to this stage, it is actually possible to "over-filter" and overwork the image. Many of the better images will have these edits either subtly applied, or not all of them applied. But, how about something like that.</p>

<p>Also, I noticed in your post you wrote that you do everything by the book. The book is written to provide midrange results; not high contrast photos. Walk on the wild side a little. Blow the density range. Be a man. Knock back a beer, invite women to make bad decisions, and power up some contrast gusto in those prints! Black blacks; white whites; you don't have to namby-pamby around with "exquisite shadow detail" all the time. If you want to lay a black shadow in there, do it. Overexpose like hell. Burn it in. Underexpose in artificial light; let's see some film noir. C'mon, now! But, none of those things will be done by explicitly following the manufacturer's directions. The directions are good; the materials they build are great. But, they would also like to keep the consumer complaint hotline from ringing off the hook. So, they don't include the psychadelic directions with the color films; and their plan for black and white should land you smack dab in the middle of average.</p>

<p>Be bold. Pretty much none of the steps "by the book" are going to yield "exciting" images. "Exciting" means the lawyers beg to outlaw risk; and the accountants predict bankruptcy. There's no way a major corporation like Kodak or Minox would ever publish directions for "exciting."</p>

<p>Lastly, you got an image there. If you've got the image, in negative, it can be fixed. Count your blessings; it's not a bad photograph. By just making the picture with a Minox and developing it yourself, you are ahead of hundreds of millions of people. This is your great chance to use the Minox. Fire that puppy up, and get back out there again! You can do it!</p>

<p>Example photo print-developed in Plain Jane Beta Chi, below. Good luck. Keep on, keepin' on. J.</p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>Forgot the picture. Here goes. And most of the black and whites in my portfolio are done with homemade developers, if you are interested. It's so easy, a caveman can do it. </p><div></div>

[jpo3136b]

<p>Hey, I re-read my recipe, and I forgot to mention, <b>top off to 500 mL of water. Dilute 1:4.</b> Important point there; or you really will burn it black as toast. </p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>That solution is for prints; I have not yet tested it on negatives; but, my previous experiences with hydroQ-only developers says, base development times of D-76 for the first run, and then tinker from there. D-76 times will usually be good enough. You can probably cut a stop, though, easy.</p>

<p>That hinge foam is a "before" picture for another project I've got on the table. Foam is not supposed to look torn up like that. The camera needs a spruce-up. </p>

[bruce_watson1]

<p>You've got good shadow detail -- look at the ceiling inside the main entrance to the building. This tells me that your exposure is probably pretty good. You've also got a good range of tonality, from black to white. This tells me that your development is probably in the ballpark.</p>

<p>So... I submit that the problem isn't likely film or your exposure / development. It's more likely your scanning / Photoshop workflow. In particular, I suspect that your white point is off. Fixing that and adding a curves adjustment should get you most of the way to where you want to be.</p>

<p>Note also that people seldom get a scan to hit right on the numbers so that they don't need to make either levels or curves adjustments after the scan. Making these adjustments is an expected part of the scanning workflow.</p>

[lovcom_photo]

<p>A very low contrast negative is actually the best type to scan in. Often low contrast mean wide tonal ranges. A great place to start when one post processes. Levels and Curves will often make such pictures pop amazingly. During the capture of pictures I never even try to "get it right". Low contrast often mean better scans and better post processing and better results. Be happy your capture is blah, flat, and "boring". Seriously!</p>

[lovcom_photo]

<p>This from a low contrast, blah, flat negative (Tri-X 400, F8, 35mm, 1/1000s):</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Here's a quick tweak using my secret sauce - the clarify filter in an old copy of Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7. Best trick I've found so far for mimicking the effect of selective application of yellow/magenta filtration while dodging and burning. It neatly mimics the effect of micro-contrast, creating greater separation between tones in small areas. No amount of levels, curves and other global adjustments will quite duplicate this effect - tried it many, many times with high end software over more than 10 years. Note the separation in tone between the clouds and sky - this would be done using selective application of Y/M filters and dodging/burning in the traditional darkroom.</p>

<p>There's plenty of room in this photo for contrast adjustments. If I can do this with a low resolution JPEG you can do better with the full rez scan. Working from the highest possible quality scan will avoid the problems with grain, posterizing, pixelation and other flaws that become apparent in this edited version of a low-rez JPEG.</p><div></div>

[Paul Lewis1664881697]

<p>Since other people are showing good results manipulating your image, it could be a simple problem that your gain is set too high in your scanning software.</p>

[len_mo]

<p>thanks guys, that's a lot of information to digest.. John's posts alone will take me a few weeks (although John, i think i'll stick to ready-made developers for now, and probably won't invite women because of my wife's potential adverse reaction).</p>

<p>i'm going to print this out, highlight all the practical suggestions, and keep trying them as i go until things get better, from using hood to agitation to scanning to...</p>

<p>i am able to achieve relatively satisfactory results in PS from these types of images, but it just takes too darn long for my taste. i have to use curves, but only lightly or else lots of shadow details get lost, so i lighten the shadows, then go back to curves, then back to lightening shadows, etc, until the contrast is somewhat uniform and/or there are no big chunks of blackness.<br>

the results from the Jasc software look great, thanks Lex, i'll look into using it.</p>

<p>thanks again.<br>

l</p>

[rjjackson]

<p>len,</p>

<p>it sounds like you need to investigate the advantages of using layer masks. you can add an a new adjustment layer which comes with a mask then in that mask you can dodge some of that adjustment with the paint brush, for example, or use a gradient tool. this is pretty standard for making skies darker while keeping foreground light. you can selectively dodge or burn people or specific areas where you want to keep shadow details. or with ctl alt tiltda you can select highlights and make an adjustment only in this area. online there are numerous tutorials for this method, i think you'll see huge improvements and simplicity in yoru workflow if you create an action that sets up a number of curve, layer, and contrast adjusment layers then adjust and doge/burn as you want the image to look.</p>

<p>rj</p>

[jim_landecker]

<p>It's fairly well known that local or micro-contrast can be increased in photoshop by using unsharp mask, as is explained in <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast-enhancement.shtml">this tutorial</a> . This is probably what the "clarify" filter that Lex mentioned is doing, and I believe has been incorporated in Lightroom and ACR as the "clarity" slider.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>FWIW, my comments here are specifically related to editing of scanned b&w negatives. I don't use the same techniques for editing scanned color photos or digital photos...</p>

<p>I've tried the various unsharp masking tricks, combined with layers and other selective tweaks. It's extremely fussy and doesn't work quite as well for simple global edits as the clarify filter in the old Jasc version of PSP7, which doesn't create oversharpened artifacts - halos, jaggies, etc. It appears to primarily enhance local contrast, lightening light areas and darkening dark areas without any sharpening artifacts. Very different effect, clearly visible in large high resolution photos but not in small JPEGs like this. For example, I've never found any technique using unsharp masking that can create separation in overcast skies to sort out clouds from a white sky. The effect is closer to contrast masking than to unsharp masking, very different effects.</p>

<p>A similar effect can be achieved using certain brush techniques, but it's time consuming and the clarify filter often accomplishes the desired effect more simply and quickly. It doesn't solve every problem but does work better than most global one-shot filters I've tried over they years.</p>

<p>When taken to extremes the PSP7 clarify filter begins to cause some posterizing, which can be seen in the midtones of the low resolution JPEG above. It can also mimic HDR software, altho' it tends to produce bizarre streaking artifacts in large expanses of same/similar toned areas such as skies. It can also emphasize grain and every defect in the scan, such as dust spots, watermarks, Newton rings, etc.</p>

<p><em>Side note: Corel now owns Paint Shop Pro. The last version I tried was a then-new release of PSP X (around two years ago). I forgot to check whether it still contained the same clarify filter. I only recall being disappointed by the poor implementation of a raw converter, altho' I've heard that's since been remedied.</em></p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p><em><strong>Spoke too soon...</strong> </em></p>

<p>I should have read the web page Jim Landecker linked to more carefully before replying.</p>

<p>That particular unsharp technique does indeed come very close to the effects provided by the "clarify" filter in Jasc PSP7. The clarify filter, which provides only five one-click increments, is much simpler and quicker to use, but with some finessing the technique described on the Luminous Landscape site does come very close to accomplishing a similar effect. So far, I'm unable to accomplish the same type of separation in overcast skies using the unsharp masking technique, and the process takes much longer (more than a minute with high resolution files on my old PC; vs. only 5-10 seconds using the clarify filter). But it does seem to work very well. I'll need to try it on some high resolution scans of pushed b&w negatives to evaluate the effects on grain as well.</p>

<p>Thanks, Jim! Much appreciated.</p>

[len_mo]

<p>thanks Robert, Jim and Lex.</p>

<p>i do need to dive into PS a little (or a lot) deeper - haven't used neither Actions nor Masks.<br>

that Unsharp Mask filter tutorial looks very promising, can't wait to try it soon.</p>

<p>l</p>

[marc_bergman1]

<p>It is hard to tell if it is the processing without seeing the negative. Compare these negatives with ones you got from the lab.</p>

<p>I just used levels and the Shadow/Highlight adjustment in Photoshop. To better understand what each adjustment does, it is best to do one adjustment and write down notes as to what it does. Then you can look at your scanned image and see what needs to be done. Then you use the proper adjustment to perform that task. Otherwise you are just chasing your tail.</p><div></div>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>I took a quick shot at the unsharp masking technique as described in the page on the Luminous Landscape site. It's a definite improvement over the original and show some interesting variations compared with the clarify filter in Jasc PSP7, but I was unable to wring out much tonal separation in the sky using this global technique.</p>

<p>BTW, I also used a JPEG artifact reduction filter to minimize the artifacts. This wouldn't be necessary when working from a high resolution TIFF or other uncompressed file.</p><div></div>

[conrad_hoffman]

<p>I use the PSP Clarify filter a lot. You have to be careful if the shot has large smooth areas, since whatever the filter is, it has a *huge* radius and it will put various gradients where you don't want them. It's also easy to overdo it and lose the natural look. Used properly, most images benefit from it- I'd love to know exactly what the filter is (unsharp mask with a very large radius?) if anybody knows.</p>