B&W Over the Years

First off, as the kids say nowadays, this is the first GIF I've ever made. After working online since the late 1950s (perhaps I exaggerate). Proving that you can teach old photo-dawgs new tricks. Even if those "new" tricks are already like 25 years old—GIFs first became common in the late '90s and early 2000s.

These are a couple of images I made back in 2006 (hi, Nari and Mark! Mark is as skinny as a rail now, by the way) to illustrate the difference between old look B&W and new look B&W. I could probably do better now, but I had these and I wanted to see if I could make a GIF in Photoshop. It's not just a change in contrast...the curves are different and the spectral response is different.

The very small point for today: current digital B&W doesn't just reflect changes in the technology. Tastes have changed. People are trying for a radically different look now. It's a matter of what's in fashion and also a matter of what's being modeled as the generally acceptable standard. As I've said before, Shorpy.com is an excellent way to calibrate your eye to the look of old-style tonality, although it's also conflated with the look of large and medium format film. I love it.

Dorothea Lange, Young family, penniless, hitchhiking on
U.S. Highway 99 in California...., November 1936.
Via Shorpy. Rolleiflex TLR medium-format neg.

Check out this one I found the other day. I love Dorothea. Things sure were slow back then, though, weren't they? Imagine having motion blur problems in sunlight that's casting hard shadows! Unless she made some sort of mistake. Wow.

Here again is my simple trick for instantly improving the tones of many digital B&W pictures: open Curves. Grab the straight line of the Curve in the middle. Pull it upward a bit in a direction perpendicular to the Curve, to suit visual taste.

Viola, as Phil Davis never used to say (he misspelled "voilà" once and I used to tease him about it, which he didn't think was at all funny): increases shadow contrast, raises the often radically lowered middle values, and softens the contrast of highlights, all at once. This is just B&W Tonality 101, nothing for you experts out there.

Anyway, if you're not seeing that GIF change every five seconds, please let me know, and the old dawg shall go back to the drawing board.

Mike

Book o' the Week

It's Not About the F-Stop by Jay Maisel. Jay was suggested by Moose and this book was suggested by Albert Smith—it's actually my favorite too (I got mixed up before). I got to meet Jay Maisel once. Everybody should meet him in his books, if they haven't already. Might help; cannot hurt. Jay's is some of the most positive, hopeful, and generous picture-taking advice you'll find.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

B&H can do it all.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Featured Comments from:

Comments

[Anton Wilhelm Stolzing]

Thank you for the advice. I usually apply DxO Film Pack of Nik Silverfast, making some adjustments to the presets if I find it suitable. I particularly like the new Nik Preset "More Silver".

[Sal Santamaura]

...the spectral response is different...

You showed us how you modified the curve, but not the spectral response. Please elaborate on the latter. Thanks!

[Herman Krieger]

Talking about gif's-

[David Dyer-Bennet]

The problem I have with the auto-changing GIF is that I don't remember which state was first, which makes talking about them hard! Maybe you could include a word in the bottom of the image (even outside the original image area) to label the two states to be sure we're talking about the same things?

Although I never even thought of using a GIF for this (partly because my first cases of needing it were in color maybe; don't remember why). I first used a javascript method that shows one image when you are not hovering over it, and a different image when you are (so it's clear which is original and which is later, and so the user is in control).

Lately I've seen a tool that lets the user drag the dividing line between the two forms of the image back and forth, so you can compare them locally across a dividing line whereever you want. This must be more complicated, but I'm sure free versions are out there (yep, here's one, with a bad but working example

[Stan B.]

I suspect “tastes have changed” in B&W simply because people can’t emulate the more pleasing tones of B&W film with digital.

[Alex Mercado]

If Ms. Lange used Kodak Panatomic-X film*, then her 'sunny 16' exposure would have been 1/25 sec @ 16. Had she set her Rolliflex Standard to 22, for the maximum depth-of-feild, then her exposure would be 1/10 sec @ 22.

*this was the first b&w film I ever used. Fell in love with it instantly. Kodak discontinued it the very same year. :(

[John Krumm]

I think that curve you advise is closer to the curve of human eyesight, at least according to the 1000 page Z6 manual I bought from Thom Hogan. I've been using variations of it ever since you last advised it. I tend to pull from a slightly higher point for a little more contrast, but that's about it.

Current taste is a good way to describe it. I really like photographers who master shadow details. It seems like there were more of them with film. Maybe because digital is so good at shadows, people don't put as much thought into them. Or maybe pulling up in post just doesn't look as good with digital... don't know. Roy DeCarava is one of my favorite shadow specialists.

https://tinyurl.com/3kb39x7y

[Mike Cawley]

Yes it's changing every 5 seconds. That trick works great for most of my B&W quick looks.

[Daniel Speyer]

The Lange photo is amazing. Wow-the composition! Thanks.

[marcin wuu]

That's why I shoot my B&W in colour, even on film. It's the absolute control over the outcome. Want to have a TRI-X look? Acros? T-MAX? one push of a button and you're set!

[Niels]

Mike said: "I love Dorothea"
Oh, how I agree!
I bought "A Vision Shared" and although Walker Evans' photographs are perfect, Dorothea's work is beyond that.

[E.]

Good point.
But, could the GIF's delay be shorter than those 5 secs.? Let's say 3, or so. Things are faster now... ;)

[Doug Anderson]

I was puzzled when I read that was the first GIF you ever made. In the early days of digital imaging the GIF format was just a lossless alternative to the JPG format that uses lossy compression. Later, being a more flexible format than JPG or others, it became used for short animated video files too. I would call the file you created an animated GIF.

And thank you for the link to Shorpy*com! An amazing resource.

[Peter Komar]

The Dorothea is a superb print, it’s alive with those luscious tones. It places you at the scene at that moment in time, but then again I’m old school when it comes to B&W printing. The other examples I am hoping you prefer the one where the whites, (in the blouse) are kept in check with detail rather than blown out. Far too many B&W images I see today are too contrasty, overused HDR, no subtle detail in the dark shadows and of course blown out highlights, YUCK !!!!

[Jack Mac]

GIF is cool. Sure agree on style changing.

[Andrew Kelley]

I caveat this question by pointing out that I've never exposed film, only silicon. But what's to recommend the "before" frame with the blown highlights? Is it that capturing the full tonal range of the scene wasn't possible with film, but it is with digital? The frame with the full tonal range seems obviously better to me, which suggests that I'm missing something . . .

[Andre Y]

MIke, this is a bit of a tangent, but your comments on your tonal curve reminds me of this.

I don't know if you're a movie fan, but if you are, I'd be interested to hear your take on Greig Fraser's last two movies where he was director of photography: Dune and The Batman. I see a lot of interest in the shadows, and it's a different (and more beautiful) aesthetic than most other big budget movies out there, which seem to be converging on a bland kind of visual style with no point-of-view.

Of course, the color in both movies are a big part of his style as well, but his take on shadows intrigues me the most and your comment on your tonal curve reminded me of that. The preservation of highlight details is also a big feature, but that seems to be the flavor du jour for filmmakers who chase after highlight dynamic range.

Both films also went through a film printing process as their final step after the digital image was finished, with The Batman going through an interpositive with bleach bypass. There's an interview on YouTube with Matt Reeves (the director) and Fraser where they talk about the film thing as well their lens selection process, and it's an intriguing conversation: if you search for the "Dolby Matt Reeves interview" you should find the video.