Bill C

Thanks AJG, it's nice to hear that at least someone finds interest in my somewhat verbose posts. Fwiw I've mostly shared your view that it has historically been more cost effective to have a pro lab doing your work, but that's not much of an option anymore. Fwiw I'd say that a careful worker, given enough experience, could probably do high quality work at home, albeit at a much higher labor cost - probably on the order of ten times higher, or more. So it's not a very sensible way to do commercial work. But for someone with a lot of time on their hands... who knows? I'll be glad to answer any related questions I can, so feel free to ask. Fwiw the later versions of VPSIII, then Portra 160, optically printed onto the appropriate pro papers could do beautiful work with studio portraits. When we did test shooting we could lay prints out in a color booth, then lay out some of the actual fabrics used in the shooting - they would be nearly a dead match. Color charts very close too. But again, it's gotta be on the pro papers. It took us some time before we could make digital prints, studio portrait work, as good as optical Portra prints in side-by-side comparisons. Most people wouldn't see this though - without side-by-side comparison either one can be plenty good. And digital is much easier.

This is gonna be long and tedious, mainly for Allen. It's mostly about me and how I eventually got to be on the "true colour committee," in Allen's words, "blessed from above." I made a full-time living in photography, originally wanting to be a photojournalist, admiring many of the Life Magazine photographers. I was able to buy my first serious camera, a used Rolleiflex, by shooting weddings for a local guy while I was still in high school. I quit the weddings when I took a traveling job doing high-volume portrait work- I thought it was time I learned to use professional studio flash; this was with long-roll portrait cameras, 70mm pro color negative. I had somewhere around 40-50 thousand portrait subjects - that's enough to fill a major league baseball stadium - under my belt when I moved into lab work. Don't think these are like school pics - these were every age group, infants to adults, and every single one you work hard to get good expressions. I went into lab work "temporarily" to learn about the mysteries of color processing. Like everything else I learned ground up, ran processors and operated printers. When they had an opening in the QC department I was lucky enough to get in as wet-behind-the-ears tech. I learned the ropes from another young guy - our primary duties were in "process control," reading control strips, calibrating replenisher flowmeters and adjusting rates, etc., and collecting chemical samples for the chemical lab. My boss had a chemistry degree, and he got the company into bulk mixing, etc. I and my fellow tech did all the dirty prototype work, doing all the pilot mixes. A companion department was headed by a fresh RIT photo science grad, and I learned a great deal from him. I was finding all of this more interesting and challenging than actually using a camera. Eventually I became the QC manager, the department now having a full-time chemist, a couple of general purpose techs who could do anything lab-related, a full-time product inspector doing semi-random inspection of the ready-to-ship product (under the supervision of the RIT guy, a statistics specialist) and a full-time inspector for our in-house camera repair shop - strictly our own equipment; the company owned literally thousands of portrait studios. The department did about anything photo-related that was not officially under another department. New film/paper being considered? We did all the sensitometric testing as well as preliminary test shooting. My techs would set up an in-house test studio, etc. We'd get a variety of models, and shoot a wide exposure range - from maybe a couple stops underexposed to perhaps five stops over. The film processing department runs the film, along with a control strips, my techs make sure everything is good. Then everything is printed by one of the production departments. 8x10s to start. The "normal exposure" is hand-balanced for best skin color within "1 cc" color (this is by committee; there is some disagreement at the 1 cc level, but NOBODY disagrees beyond 2 cc). Next, every other exposure is hand-balanced to match the flesh highlights of the "normal exposure" reference. These are the basis for our film evaluations. If it's a brand new film or paper we are typically part of a trade trial; I've been involved in something like a dozen of these with, for example, Kodak, Konica, and Fuji. Typically there will be 6 or 8 film and emulsion engineers from the vendor, along with a handful of marketing and sales staff who will be meeting with the company management. So the tech people will have brought a variety of pre-exposed test materials for us to process in our seasoned machines, etc., and they want us to print certain things. We have panel discussions about the results of our test shots, and they ask, can they get copies of our test prints? Certainly, what sizes and how many do you want? I've been involved with the company's original digital printing efforts (before ICC profiles were a thing, I believe). I used to make the tonal response curves for dye sub printers in our field locations. Around this time a group in one of the production areas got one of the X-rite digital swatchbooks; they were working with prototype Kodak LED printers and presumably this had been recommended. And this was an eye-opener for me - in 3 or 4 seconds it could take spectral readings of a test patch (the later i1 units do this near instantly) and the ColorShop software would give results in CIELAB, or whatever you want- even as Status M densitometry. This is also where the Fred Bunting booklet came from - still about the best primer on color that I know of. When high-quality digital cameras finally became available - they cost in the range of $25 to 30 thousand dollars US - we met with all the major players. We already had several dozen Sony cameras, also in the same price range, that were the first serious studio design cameras - these were running in a group of experimental studios. But they were a 3-chip design using a prism set-up to separate colors; consequently these were unlikely to ever become "cheap." So we partnered with a fledgling "hardware" group to build a ground-up digital camera for studio use. I was the primary color guy so began getting educated in the ICC systems. Anyway, on and on. Eventually I got onto the true colour committee, only for photo.net, but still blessed from above as Allen puts it. In this capacity I can have people like rodeo_joe tell me about the usefulness of Macbeth ColorCheckers, or Glen explain about why or why not his flash photos were taken with flash. Occasionally I think about bailing out of photo.net, but where else could I make the kind of money I do on the true colour committee? (This is tongue-in-cheek if it needs to be said.)

Just like Chauncey says, but I dunno why four. In the US and Canada it was common for mass market studios to have what they called "passport cameras," making two simultaneous images on Polaroid film. Only two images were required. They were supposed to be "identical," but the powers that be decided that two nearly identical shots, taken simultaneously, were good enough. I would guess that some countries had a further image-count requirement, thus giving rise to the 4-up camera. In the US one of the more common passport cameras was called the Simul-Shot, and as i recall Polaroid also sold several models. I don't know that you'd find any real use for the cameras today. Passport photos have specific requirements for head size, among other things. Meaning that these cameras had to be used at a specific distance, more or less, and the lenses are spaced to work at that distance. They'd still have to be internally baffled to put crisp edges on each frame. These cameras kinda went defunct when outfits like Sony started making digital passport cameras with companion dye sub printers; it became possible to take several shots, letting the customer choose and then printing the one they wanted.

You're kinda missing the point, which tells me you didn't read McCamy. Yet(?) Probably my fault for not explaining better. The original chart was made to mimic, spectrally (within a reasonable approximation), a variety of colored things. This allows you to test without actually having those "things." For example, from the 1976 paper, "The orange and yellow patches visually matched some samples of oranges and lemons, both freshly picked, not dyed. They matched when illuminated by Macbeth daylight with ultraviolet component, CIE Illuminant A, and a cool-white fluorescent lamp. Etc." So here's an example for the specific purpose of helping you understand my point. Say you wanna see if your film/paper system, or whatever, can make a decent printed reproduction of a similar orange and lemon. So you photograph the chart (or you photograph the actual orange and lemon if you prefer). Now you make a print. Now, as I said, you can compare under different light sources. You can hold the print, the Macbeth ColorChecker, and perhaps even the original fruit, in a color-viewing booth and compare them. Or you can compare them under whatever fluorescent lamp you like, even the (horrible-for-color) eco-friendly style, like most CFLs. Or you can carry them outside and compare. That's what I mean by comparing the original chart vs reproduction under different light sources. You wanna see how your reproduction holds up under different conditions. Now, I can guess what you're thinking, "Why bother with the ColorChecker? Well, by using a standard reference chart, the ColorChecker, you can do this testing when the fruit is out-of-season. Or if you have a remote customer you don't have to mail the fruit to them. I could say a lot more but I don't think today's photo.net, in general, has too much interest.

Non-starter. Have you ever read the original paper, "A Color-Rendition Chart," by C.S. McCay, etc al, published in 1976? I'm guessing that it can still be found online. It describes the color test patches and compares them, spectrally, with respect to the real world objects they were intended to simulate. Now, the color reproduction of modern color films, as well as digital cameras, is much better than the films of the 1970s, so you might say that testing is unwarranted. But say, for example, someone wants to "test" color reproduction of some object represented in the chart. The current chart allows you to compare, side-by-side, the actual chart vs the reproduced chart, under different light sources. You would not be able to readily do this with a backlit test chart. There's more, but I think this is a good starting point for consideration.

It's quite certainly from an on-camera light source, which I presume is flash. Perhaps you're not noticing the light falloff (from near to far) so much cuz the scan is so dark and low contrast. And your flash has some pretty severe side-by-side falloff such that the closest person (the girl, foreground left) doesn't seem so bright. But compare how dark the guy just above her head (orange-shirt guy) is. I'm a little floored that a photographer doesn't recognize the on-camera flash here so let me point out a few clues that show this. The easiest way to determine where a light is coming from is to look at the shadows. If you look at the red chair next to the teacher's desk you can see that the back of the chair leaves a hard-edged shadow just below itself, on the blue side of the teacher's desk. So this shows that the light source is just slightly above the camera center line, and the light is small (the shadow edge is "hard"). Next, there is a guy near center, front, (he has a satchel on floor in front of him). You can clearly see his trousers immediately under the desk surface. Clearly the ceiling lights could not illuminate this; the fact that there is not a deep shadow suggests that the main source of light is not from above, but rather it is coming from the direction of the camera. Another clue is to look at the far wall, near the top. It is fairly evenly illuminated. If the ceiling lights had any significant effect you would expect to see brighter areas on the wall nearest to the ceiling lights - there are no such bright areas. So apparently the ceiling lights do not even lighten up something only a couple feet away from them. One last thing, and the one that immediately showed me that the ceiling lights would have almost no effect, is that they are not blown out white. In fact, they are barely brighter than some things in the scene. For example, note the small white table next to the teacher's desk; it is nearly as bright as the ceiling lights. (Nothing more needs to be said?) Anyway, these are some things to notice with respect to the light sources.

Glen, this photo is mainly illuminated by a flash; it's directly over, and very close to the lens. But you're right - aside from being pretty dark, the skin tones don't look too bad. But they're not a result of the ceiling lights. Today's fluorescent lamps, especially the "environmentally friendly" ones, are much worse for good color. But at the same time the later films, especially from Fuji Reala and later, became much better at dealing with such color issues. Still, it's hard to get anything better than what I'd call a "pasty" look for skin with such modern fluorescent lamps.

Good one. I would say that some of the best, what you might consider "creative genius," pondered this mightily, trying to understand how color is seen and how to mix paints to create the impressions they wanted. Whilst I was writing this you posted the da Vinci video, which I think well illustrates how he investigated and studied many various aspects. In other writing about Leonardo they give excerpts from his notebooks where one can see his thoughts about how colored light works, etc. I think it have been a revelation to him when Newton later used a prism to separate light from the sun into the spectrum, and then to recombine the spectrum into white light. I don't think that Leonardo would have seen Fred Bunting's writing as silliness. Today's photographers, though, can easily ignore such things - the "giants" of color photography have put it all together for them.

I can't tell if this is a real question or not. Accurate color is not limited only to photography. Color has been studied for many years, but the foundation for modern CIE color specifications was established in 1931. For anyone with a technical bent, one of the best, everything-in-one-place, write-ups is Fred Bunting's 1998 historical/primer which was supplied with the X-rite Digital Swatchbook. I said one of the best, but in truth I don't know of anything better. Again, it's technical, but it puts all the pieces in place. Download the pdf from this link: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://silo.tips/download/the-colorshop-color-primer-an-introduction-to-the-history-of-color-color-theory&ved=2ahUKEwj-lIGVvPfvAhXEKM0KHQbxCCEQFjAMegQIBRAC&usg=AOvVaw15Al_XTSnia4VVfUd2g9uU

You're quite welcome (and also clippingphotoexperts). As a note, Henry's design uses a black front which ought to minimize problems with "print through," by which I mean the situation with thin paper, like newsprint, whereby copies could be affected by what's on the back side of the paper. (If black print shows through, then backing the entire thing with black hides it.)

Here's a plan you might wanna look at... Not metal, and you gotta drill your own holes, though. Minimal tools needed; looks like they designed for simplicity of construction. Presumably it's been tested, but I dunno. Best of luck... Low-Cost Tilt-Top Vacuum Table

Well yeah, ultimately things gotta look right. But... when looking at something like studio portrait prints, the more or less standard style, it turns out that something pretty close to measurably "correct" color generally looks about the best. This is not exactly correct because the print actually needs a slight mid-tone contrast boost (the "why" is a whole 'nother topic [Todd and Zakia discuss it briefly in their book]). I'm speaking from considerable practical experience, including shooting tests with multiple models as well as a significant number actual studio subjects. It's probably been way more testing than most people here would guess, and there's just not much doubt about the results. Now, in something like rodeo_joe's sunset shot these rules don't apply. For one, a sunset can't be duplicated on a print because of the brightness issue. Secondly, it can't be measured in the terms we normally use for photography; the color spaces we use are referenced to a "white," and I don't see that such a thing exists in a sunset. So we are pretty much left to however the photographer wants it to look (and there is no one to dispute whether it is "correct" or not). Well, I would say that this is not exactly true. If you photograph someone standing on the lawn we sort of expect for the shadows under their chin, etc., to have a slight greenish tinge. If that tinge is NOT there then the image tends to appear fake (this is a big deal when if you use a green screen to replace the scene). The human eye is surprisingly good at detecting things that don't fit; a person may not be able to say specifically what's wrong, they just get a sense that it's not right. But the greenish color should not be over the entire face. Humans just have a way of "normalizing" the ambient light, a sort of automatic "white balance" for the scene, so our eyes tend to cancel out this sort of thing. You could probably put a slight amount of green in the face to suggest that the subject is under green trees, but too much just looks bad, as though it was poorly printed. Fwiw most people are not very finicky about color in their photos, so they mostly don't care that much as long as it's reasonably close. And the longer they look at a print the more it seems more or less ok. So it may only be when it's seen next to other prints that the deficiencies stick out.

The former member I was thinking of is Daniel Lavoie. Here's a brief retouching tutorial he wrote way back when, including a quick way to retouch in skin highlight: Intro to Advanced Skin Retouching

Well, I don't see any specific evidence of any, but it's possible, I guess. In your new link the top photo clearly shows the effect of a kicker light on the side of her arm (the side she is facing toward). The other side shows a similar light coming largely from above, see top of shoulder and on some of the wrinkles in the jacket. They seem relatively soft, perhaps a strip-style softbox. Assuming that you already own some lights, why not set up and just do a few tests? A digital camera would really speed up the testing. You'll have to get the images into digital anyway to weaken the skin tones like in the examples. If you don't want your BG lights/stands to be photographed in the image area you could probably use parabolic reflectors on a studio-light head; these will project out enough that you can move the lights further out.

Well, fashion is something I've never done, so take this with a grain of salt. It looks like a young Carolyn Murphy, so probably mid-1990s or so; a time when digital retouching was readily available. So you should figure that a great deal of hand work was done. A brief note on the background... it looks like a large bluish background, blown out to white behind the subject. This could be done by the use of background lights directed behind the subject. And then digitally removed from the scene. Or... perhaps the background effects are completely done digitally. Maybe. Fwiw pro color neg films have a tremendous latitude for overexposure so this would have been no problem in that day. Shooting it today, on a digital camera, you'd likely be clipping on the sensor, so would likely have to fix the tonal transitions. Or maybe not... it just depends. On the lighting, in general... it looks like a couple of fairly large light sources, fairly high and off to the sides of the camera. Look at the green-skirt photo, paying attention to the shadows under the lower lip and under the tips of the collar for clues as to the size and location of these two lights. It look like "kicker" lights used to some extent; these would be located somewhat behind and above the subject, and used to give some glancing reflections off the subject. There don't seem to be any deep shadows; could be an overall large fill light, or even just a result of large amounts of spill light in a light-colored studio, white paper on the floor, etc. The curious desaturated skin colors were probably done in the digital retouching afterwards. And some of the skin highlights were added/manipulated the same way. There used to be a guy on this website who did digital retouching during fashion shoots, and would give some basic instructions here. I can probably find some of those for you if needed. You should probably figure to put more time into the retouching than the shooting. Best of luck with your project.

You're quite welcome. Hope you get good results pretty quickly. Ps, it's pretty typical that people don't much care for their own photos, so don't be disappointed by her reactions. The real proof of your success is when other family members praise the photos. Or if your daughter's friends tell her she's lucky that she looks so good in photos (they think it's a trait that she just naturally has).

Hi, when I say "closer to the camera" I mean in an angular sense; not related to subject-to-light distance. So instead of the fill light being at a 45 deg angle from the subject, a much smaller angle. Obviously you can't readily get it right on the camera centerline, but I would put it as reasonably close (to on-centerline) as you can. And don't let it go below the lens (unless you have a specific purpose). I wouldn't worry too much about trying to have the fill light get more fall-off on the background because 1) it's a relatively weak light (compared to the main) and 2) if it's close to camera axis there won't be much (visible) subject shadow from it (the shadow mostly falls behave the subject). (Fwiw, a BG light can never completely overpower a shadow - you can use it to make the shadow become less and less obvious, but it never fully disappears unless you blow out the BG to white.) I also would not worry too much about this for normal portraits. "Regular" portraits are typically taken under more or less normal room lighting, so the pupil size is normal for that ambient condition. I know that some people try to set up their studio so that the modelling lights are the brightest thing in the room. I personally don't like to work this way because it puts the subject in an uncomfortable situation. They can't see what's going on, almost like under a police interrogation; they will also be inclined to squint. So unless you specifically need to use the modelling lights like so, I wouldn't do it. I'd generally just work under normal room lights, just using the modelling light to check for reflections in the glasses. And to confirm that the lights are actually powered on. Sorry, no examples. But these are just relatively standard setups. And you'll be seeing your own results pretty quickly, anyway.

Hey, nice beard. Re: background; if you don't have one yet you could probably get one with a lighter center spot - with this you won't even need a BG light; just position the subject's head in the right place. Or, if you wanna use a BG light, pretty much as you say. Put it on a low stand behind the subject, using a wide-angle sort of reflector. You probably don't need any diffusion, assuming that you can power down enough. I personally don't like that look - if the subject is looking head-on to the camera with a big smile it tends to put dark shadow lines under both cheeks - neither light can reach fully into the shadow. I'd use the main similar to what you say, but put the fill close to camera. With the glasses, like you said, you could raise both the main and fill to help eliminate reflections in the glasses. Better, so as to not raise the lights, is to to tilt the glasses by raising the stems up above the ears. If these methods don't do the trick you can have her face slightly toward the fill-light side (there's no lights over that way to be reflected). I'd generally prefer to have the subject face into the main, but it depends. The way I'd wanna be shooting is from some sort of camera stand, using a remote trip. You should be able to work from near the camera, on the main light side (there's room between the camera and main). This leaves you free to interact with the subject and use your hands to indicate which way to move, etc. And wherever you want them to look, you just walk over there. If, instead, you work with a handheld camera, then you are very limited in your ability to work with the subject. Regarding your other lights, there are a lot of ways to do things. I personally like the look of a weak "kicker" light, high and off to the side behind the subject, making a slight rim-lighting effect. Use a grid on the light so that it can't shine into the camera lens. I like more natural-appearing light, so would probably put it on the same side as the main. And depending on how things look, you might wanna add a hair light. I tend to like em subtle, but if you want a more glitzy look you can boost the power of the kicker and hair lights, and put at least one opposite of the main light. In any case, make sure that neither light is far enough forward to light up the subject's nose. Posing and getting good expressions is a whole 'nother thing. Something people tend to do when they sit on a posing stool, or whatever, is to slouch with their head tilted back. They don't realize they're doing it (and it looks awkward in photos), so it's up to the photographer to direct them; so ask them to sit up tall, back straight. From there the best simple advice I could give is to pay attention to the camera viewfinder, and try for a "balanced" look. If, for example, you want to tilt the head forward for a more "dynamic" look, you may also want to have the arm on that side moved farther out. So it doesn't look like the subject is gonna fall forward. At least this'll be a start. Good luck with things.

Hi, most likely the problem is very harsh bright reflections of the light sources. The normal way to deal with this is to make the light sources "larger" (as "seen" by the subject). The result is that the shiny (specular) reflections will become larger and less bright. One way to make the light source "larger" is to put a larger piece of "diffusion material" (perhaps tracing paper, etc.) between the light and the subject. Or reflect the light from a larger white card, etc. If you don't understand what I'm saying, imagine that you have replaced the subject with an angled mirror - you should see that the reflections are actually an image of the light source. So the apparent size of the light source has a big effect on how harsh the reflections are. A number of years back a couple of photo.net members had done a series of lighting tutorials - you can find a pertinent one here - WEEKLY LIGHTING THEME: Controlling Specular Highlights............ In Brooks' example photos, pay attached to the shiny (specular) reflections on the top of the tomatoes. This shows the effect that I am trying to describe, and will hopefully lead your friend to a way to improve the photos.

Uhhh... no, it's not. It was well known in the industry that the conversion from the older Ektaprint 2/3 papers to RA4 was to a silver chloride material. In the 1980s there were at least a few technical papers published on some of these aspects. I was personally involved with the operation of a developer regeneration system with Ekt 2/3, using ion exchange resins to remove primarily bromide from the developer, allowing it to be reconstituted (see SPSE technical papers by Rami Mina, et al, of Kodak). This system became moot with the introduction of RA4, as bromide, with its powerful restraining effect, was no longer present. I'm sure that Henry Wilhelm, in his book, available for free download from his website, gives at least a brief discussion of the differences between the Ekt 2/3 vs RA4 papers. (I'll find page numbers for you, if needed.)

I'm doubtful. RA-4 paper is based on silver chloride so one would NOT expect its starter to include bromide ion. Whereas C41 DOES have bromide ion as a significant restrainer. If you have a way to test the developer "activity" by processing a reference image, or whatever, you might try processing a bit of heavily exposed film as a partial substitute for the starter. I'd guess that this would be a much better alternative than RA4 starter. Keep in mind that these are just educated guesses. I presume that you are NOT using a replenished system?

Well, first you get a "guide number" for the flash. There should be a table on your package of flash bulbs. It'll depend on 1) the shutter speed, 2) type of flash reflector used, and 3) the "ASA" speed of the film. (These should all be covered on the table.) To get the f-number setting you divide the guide number by distance to subject. (The shutter speed will be the one you used when looking up the guide number.) This should give you a reasonably close exposure if you ignore ambient light. To get a correct exposure WITH ambient light, I would suggest to find which exposure would predominate - ambient light or flash. If they are roughly equal then this means that the combined exposures would be roughly twice what you need - in this case you should close down the lens by one f-stop. Otherwise it's probably ok to just use the exposure that predominates, at least with a negative film - these have a lot of latitude for exposure. Of course you can fine-tune the exposure a little better if you want, but if the stronger light source is more than an f-stop brighter then the exposure error is fairly small. It might be helpful to calculate a handful of flash exposures ahead of time and tape a note on your camera. Say, for example, distances of 8 ft, 11 ft, and 16 ft (note that these distances are each one f-stop apart, and you may have noticed that they are also the same as the standard f-stop settings). Anyway, once you work with this a bit it'll get much easier. Just decide ahead of time what standard distances you're gonna use and then work to those. Best of luck. Ps, do an exposure test first, before any serious work.

(Not a post yet)

UP locomotive

You're quite welcome. Regarding cords, Paramount cords is a name often bandied about. I don't have any experience with them, but it appears that they would be able to supply just about anything. Or if you wanted to, and are a bit handy, you could probably rig your own. I don't recall what the solenoid connection is like, but the flashgun should take a standard two-prong lamp plug. If you've got a junk lamp laying around you might be able to cut off the plug with a foot or so of the cord and rig that to the solenoid. Maybe... I dunno for sure. Best of luck with it.