James G. Dainis

ImagePro? What imagePro? I have my own web site and never even looked at or tried ImagePro. I guess there were some people who did use it. From what I see above it was not very good and was not used by many people anyway. I like complete control and placement of text and images including sizes. I like to start with a blank web page and use my own HTML to create what I want and need.

There are two kinds of photography. One is where it is a job or trade and the other where it is an artistic endeavor. Most of us who deal with the artistic side of photography indulge in that to our heart's content while maintaining a normal bringing home the bacon job. When photography is a job that usually means working for someone else either as a paid employee or as a contractor to deliver desired results. Some artists can get connected with a gallery to display and sell photos or set ups in one's own gallery or flea market. What makes one successful with that? Who knows? Fate? Why does a selfie of Cindy Sherman lying on the floor sell for $3.9 million. I've got a lot of selfies that I would sell for one half as much, but no takers..

Photography is a trade like plumbing or carpentry. Most plumbers or carpenters don't go to school to get a degree in engineering. Most photographers don't have degrees in visual arts or whatever. Successful ones may have taken valuable business courses. But most learn by serving or working with a photographer who is in the business and can teach the ins and outs of maintaining a successful photo business. Wedding photography would be one place to start as a second shooter, gofer, heavy gear carrier to learn that trade. Most traditional photo jobs are being eliminated due to technology. Newspapers are releasing their photographers as the reporters can take any needed photos with their iPhones. Stock photo agencies once paid several hundred dollars for each photo used but now on line stock photo services pay only a few dollars.

The brain knows what is going on with the surroundings in a scene. A flat photograph doesn't. The photo of me standing in the doorway above shows that. The face values are the same as the shadow values in the background. The brain knows what is going on and HDRs to see the face value as the same as the face value if it were back in the open area. Using HDR or fill flash would raise the face value to what the brain thinks it sees, zone 6 face value not the actual zone 2 face value in the scene. To the brain or a person in a room, the room interior looks as light as the exterior scene through a window. But, a photo taken of a person sitting by the window would have the person well exposed but the exterior blown out or the exterior well exposed but the person in shadow. An old trick was to use flash to match the indoor exposure to the outdoor exposure. If the exterior called for 1/125 sec at f/8 then one would have the flash sync speed at 1/125 and set the flash to f/8. Perfect. The interior exactly matched the exterior. The only trouble was it looked like the photo had been taken in a house on which the roof had been removed to let in the sunlight. Like many have been saying, upping the dynamic range (using HDR as an example) just makes for a phony or strange look.

Sara, I'm glad you brought that up. I was thinking of the problem of blocked highlights with paper prints. Suppose a shaft of sunlight were to fall on a bride's dress while posing in the shade. If looking at a negative one can see in a black area some fine lace work on the bride's dress. On a print that would only show as a pure white area. Trying to burn in that area with some extra enlarger exposure would result in the lace showing but on a now gray area on the white dress. The dynamic range of the paper is only ten stops or zones. Having a greater dynamic image film or sensor capture would just result in those blocked highlights when making prints. We are back to the illusion of reality. People see that bride and a white dress with a shaft of sunlight and they also see the lace in that sunlit area. White dress, white sunlit area with lace. The camera, which is recording the reflected light reality, depending on the exposure setting sees either a gray dress with a white spot showing the lace or a white dress with a white spot showing no lace. Could the dynamic range of the paper or display medium be increased? Things go from black to white. Despite what the detergent commercials say, there is no whiter than white.

Some of that blur may be due to atmospheric conditions. Warm air rising in the area that you are set up would cause wavering air flow. You can see that when you look over a hot highway or hot stove and see things wavering in the background. I have seen that hot air wavering in front of the moon when looking at the moon through a telescope. If things are cool and crisp all around you, including the earth at your feet it shouldn't be a problem. Or, a fast shutter speed to freeze the "action".

"There are parts of the shadow areas under the bushes that are black and you can't see details. So maybe you metered the lighter areas so the comparison is faulty." Could be but now we are just nit picking. My Pentax V spotmeter had the needle pointing to 7 on the areas under the bushes and pointing to 7 on my face under the porch roof. I called them zone 2 but I could just as easily called them zone 1. It would be my choice where I wanted to place them but the point is the bush shadow and my face value are the same brightness. Both reflect the same intensity of light. What the camera recorder was the truth. For a person opening the door, my face does not appear black but four or five zones lighter while the bush shadows stay black in the background. That is similar to the optical illusion I posted above. Square B appears lighter because the brain wants it to appear lighter. To the person opening the door, my face appears lighter because the brain wants it to appear lighter. The camera captures truth; what the eye sees is an illusion. Create a sensor that can capture what the eye sees? Rather create a sensor that captures what the brain is thinking.

"The camera only sees that because you stopped down the aperture reducing the amount of light hitting the sensor so that the outside scene is neither over or underexposed. If you opened the aperture, the sensor would "see" your face but the outside lighting would be blown. " I know that. Tell me why if both the face and bushes are at the same zone via spotmeter reading, My brain sees them as entirely different much like the squares A and B above. And, if that same zone but different appearance can be seen in the illusion above, why not on a sensor? You take a photo of the above illusion and it would look the same. It doesn't matter how great the dynamic range of the human eye/brain is, the fact remains that the bush shadow value and and face value are at the same dynamic range as checked by a spot meter.

Look at this:<P> <center><img src="http://jdainis.com/optical_ill.jpg"><P></center><P> Both squares A and B are the some tone. (Copy and paste one on the other in Photoshop to see). Square B looks like a zone 6 equal to my face value and square A looks equal to a zone 3 bush shadow. So why does it work here and not in my figure in a doorway photo? <P> I have seen this set up on a floor using tiles and a green tube with lighting casting a similar shadow. It works the same. There was no opening/closing of apertures to raise the zone 3 B up to a zone 6 from a Zone 3 A.

<p>Below is me standing on my front porch in front of my front door. This is what the camera sees. A person opening the door would see me not that dark shadow and instantly say, "Hello, James." So Why is that? Using a spot meter, the dark shadows under the bushes outside fall on zone 2. My face under the porch roof also falls on zone 2. It would be zone 6 standing back under the sun.<br> If my face in that situation is the same dark tone as the shadows under the bushes, how can film or a sensor record otherwise? Using HDR and opening up four stops for my face exposure would do it, as would using fill flash. But, why can't the camera see what the brain sees? </p><div></div>

<p>Note to WW. Clicking on that link gets:</p> <h1>Private Folder</h1> <p>This folder has been marked as " private" by its owner."</p>

<p>I don't know why not. One could control the dynamic range of film by development so why can't a sensor be made more sensitive for that? The shadows of a person's face in bright sunlight may fall on zone 3 so one would overexpose two stops to raise it to zone 5 and under develop to drop the flesh tones back to zone 6 and the result was as seen by the eye. The same would apply to shadows cast by trees across grass or under bushes.</p>

<p>That would also explain why Jimmy Stewart and his camera were smashed. Using a Speed Graphic and wire sports finder would have the user seeing and being well aware of his surroundings. Looking into the Graflex dark tunnel to the ground glass would isolate the user from what was going on around him. Not a good thing when there are tons of metal moving about at various speeds.<br> Later in the film, wasn't he using a Speed Graphic to fire the flash blinding Raymond Burr? He should have taken that to the race track but then there wouldn't have been any broken leg or any movie.<br> . </p>

<p>You don't say what the exposures actually were so I will assume they were 1/250 @ f/22. But that doesn't really matter. Shooting 400 ISO film with the meter set at 1600 ISO means you underexpose by two stops. Period. If you didn't meter through the filter you underexposed by three stops.<br> Push processing, giving extended development, does not raise all values. Shadows stay where they are and only higher lighter values can be raised. Some values would be:<br> Zone 1 = black no detail<br> Zone 3 = dark sweater with weave, shadow detail<br> Zone 5 = gray card<br> Zone 6 = face/flesh <br> Zone 9 = white shirt with some detail<p> Underexposing by three stops would get the sweater dropped to pure black,<br> the gray card dropped to almost black zone 2,<br> the face value dropped to zone 3, very dark gray<br> and the white shirt dropped to zone 6.</p> <p>Giving a two stop push would raise the white shirt from zone 6 to zone 7-1/2 but the face values and gray card would stay just about where they are badly underexposed. One could raise the values in printing but the whites would go off the chart as blocked highlights, and the lower shadow areas would still have no detail, clear on the film. Giving less enlarger exposure to raise the face value up to zone 6 would mean all the shadows get less exposure and would appear gray not black.<br> You do not push film when shooting 400 ISO at 1600 ISO. You are underexposing the film. The dark tone values are lost, not recorded on the film. Trying to get them back in processing will not work.</p> <p> </p>

<p>You can see which is the emulsion side of the developed film by taking a sharp knife and scraping the film. Emulsion (and image) will come off the emulsion side but nothing will come off the back side.<br> <br /> I would have thought the purple was the back side, too.</p>

<p>Thank you Q.G. I get it now. I think I knew it years ago and used fill flash but couldn't recall why it worked. Increasing the exposure by opening up the aperture or increasing the shutter speed raises all values. Adding light to the subject raises the values of the shadows more than the highlights.<br> Say the shadows fall on zone 3 and the face values fall on zone 6. That is a 3 stop difference between the two. Let us take 20 as the light units (lu) coming off the shadow areas.</p> <p>zone 3 = 20 lu = shadows<br> zone 4 = 40 lu<br> zone 5 = 80 lu<br> zone 6 = 160 lu = face<br> zone 7 = 320 lu<br> zone 8 = 640 lu</p> <p>Opening up two stops would raise the shadows to zone 5 but the face values would go up to zone 8, two stops overexposed, almost white.</p> <p>Adding 60 lu with fill flash would make the shadows 80 lu (20 + 60) moving them to zone 5 and make the face values 220 lu (160 + 60) moving up only less than 1/2 zone to zone ~6-1/2. Now there is less than a 1-1/2 stop difference between the shadows and face values.</p>

I've never understood exactly why but fill flash raises the shadows maybe two or three zones while the highlights stay about where they are. Sort of a reverse Zone system. Good thing too or else fill flash would just result in an overexposed subject.

<img src="http://jdainis.com/buildinga1.jpg"><BR> Photo as shot with camera facing upward. Tall and lean with rectangular windows.</br><P>.<P> <img src="http://jdainis.com/buildinga2.jpg"></P><P> Corrected for keystoning in software. Short and squat with square windows. <BR>(But at least the sides are vertical)<P> Which do you think gives a truer presentation of what the building actually looks like?

Perspective correcting software often gives misleading results. In JDM's corrected example above, the lines of the glass panels may be now vertically parallel to the side of the photo but the panels look more square than the true rectangular 2:1 that they are in the uncorrected photo. A clock tower may look like it is tilting over backwards with converging lines at the top when shot from a low angle facing up. Correcting in software so the sides of the tower are perfectly vertical will result in the clock face looking like an oval rather than round. The same thing happens when using the tilts of a view camera and I would suspect the same with a tilt shift lens.

If you have a digital camera take a photo of the negative strip against a light background so we can see what a few frames of the strip look like.

I don't know what is meant by "lessons". Are we talking about a formal classroom or are we talking about advice during a photo shoot? How much advice has to be given before it becomes a lesson? Consider: " I want a good shot of the lead guitarist. Since most people look at a photo the same way they read, from top left to bottom right, I will place him slightly off to the left in the frame and the drummer in the background will be off to the right and lower. I will use a wide aperture to get a narrow depth of field to have the guitarist in sharp focus but the drummer in the background will be blurred out slightly." Would you say that was advice or a lesson in composition and depth of field?

The only photos I see by Lex showing on that other thread are this one<P> <img src="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00c/00cqbA-551296484.jpg"><P> which is 700px x 464px and 302.45 KB and is just a bit over the suggested guidelines<P> and another of the unaltered image which is 700px x 464px and 284.53 KB which is within the suggested guidelines. <P>

If you are seeing some image you are looking at gross overexposure. That white block would be black on the negative. If the edges of the film frame are also black then it is not light coming through the lens but light striking the film some other way. This could not be done by bad processing unless they somehow caused the film to be light struck..