The Online Photographer

The Perfect Game (OT)

Guest Post by Carl Weese

Mike's post on Saturday about pool reminded me of something I still continue to process. My maternal grandfather emigrated from Ireland to Canada as a child with his family, then at 16 crossed into the U.S. on a bicycle. At thirty, John Francis Duggan had become a vice president of the Gimbel Brothers department store chain, known as Gimbels. It wasn’t because of his executive skills. It was because the Gimbels were Jewish and were excluded from the country clubs and after-hours watering holes where some important business networking was done. Jack Duggan wasn’t. He played golf in Greenwich and the resort town of Deal, New Jersey. But most important was a prestigious private club he belonged to in New York City. The center of the networking. Through the decade of the Roaring Twenties he was the reigning billiards champion there, and God knows how many business deals for Gimbels he secured in the pool rooms. This was during prohibition of course, so I love that I’ve inherited several of his many trophies—engraved sterling silver hip flasks.

This sucker is big, too—it holds a full pint!

Flash forward to the late nineteen-thirties. He had been clobbered by the 1929 crash. When my father was courting my mother, the family had (very unwisely) not yet dealt with the sunk cost and moved out of the mansion in Greenwich. But the pool room was still there and Dad told me it was the most frustrating thing in the world to play with Jack. He was more or less recovered from his first nervous breakdown (as they were called back then), but playing the game you described today, he would insist you take the first break. You might sink a ball and get another shot or two. Then you’d miss, and he’d clear the table. And the next. And the next….

Dad said it wasn’t boring, because he could closely observe what Jack was doing, but the frustration was that he couldn’t try to replicate the moves and learn to do them, because the table was never relinquished. Bear in mind, at this moment in history my father held all the world records for tournament archery. It was one master, or champion if you will, observing another.

Bowling
I’ve almost never thought of this connection before, but when I was maybe twelve or so I asked Dad if we could go bowling, because I’d heard it was this neat thing to do that other kids were doing with their parents. I also knew that in the shoe rack in the closet there were these weird-looking narrow black shoes. I had been told, oh, those are Dad’s bowling shoes. Kangaroo leather and smooth soles. We went to a local place and found shoes small enough for me (I hadn’t had my growth spurt yet). For the first line he was mostly teaching me to get the ball, in my rented shoes, down the lane instead of in the gutter. Then he’d toss one down. Then he started throwing strikes, looking kind of happy at remembering the skill. So we did another line. I managed to knock down some pins on my turns instead of going in the gutter. Dad bowled strike after strike. A peanut gallery formed. Then management came down to look—while Dad bowled a perfect 300. He was in his early fifties and hadn’t bowled in at least twenty years. There was no video to prove it, of course, in that long-ago time, but when we turned in my shoes and went to pay, the counter guy just said, "Are you kidding? You don’t pay after a perfect game!”

I’m not the physical genius my father was. But I’m a bit better than your average bear, and have tried to make the most of it.

—Carl

Our friend Carl, who has written for TOP many times  and held several prints sales here of his platinum/palladium large-format prints, was a champion archer in his youth. You can see all his TOP articles under his name in "Categories" in the right-hand sidebar—scroll through and you'll realize how many gems there are.

Book of Interest this Week

Home Fires Volume II: The Present. There is of course a Volume I: The Past.  TOP reader Bruce Haley has produced documentary work relating to conflict, humanitarian crises and environmental/industrial/land use issues for 30 years. He received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his coverage of the ethnic civil war in Burma.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

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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If It Ain't Broke....

Written by Carl Weese

Not long ago Mike mentioned how annoying it can be when software manufacturers include changes in an update that disrupt our accustomed workflow. I’ve just encountered one of these situations and thought it might be useful to recount what happened and what I’ve done—so far—to cope with the changes.

As background, while I still shoot large format film and work on scans in Photoshop, with digital capture I do almost everything in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), the raw file development module of Photoshop Creative Cloud (PSCC). After a recent update of PSCC, the first time opened a capture from Bridge into ACR I saw that the main, or “Basic” panel of buttons and sliders was significantly changed. The top of the panel now begins with a Treatment line, with radio buttons for Color and Black & White. The next line is Profile, with a dropdown and an expansion option that turns out to offer a large number of profile choices. The pane where we used to do the b&w/monochrome conversion now has only the set of sliders for Black & White Mix. (I’m currently reading a book that quotes frequently from books and correspondence of late 18th century authors, and I’m amused to find that their use of Capitalization is almost as extravagant as Adobe’s.) Next I noticed that the very useful-if-you-don’t-overdo-it Dehaze tool has been promoted from the fx pane to the Basic panel.

Then I hit a snag. I’d just shot a session that I planned for B&W. Over years of working with ACR I’ve saved quite a lot of User Presets. Things like half a dozen frequently-used white balance settings, four different levels of vignette (lens falloff) corrections, something as simple as a setting that only invoked the monochrome/grayscale conversion of the HSL pane. I selected all the captures in the session, then went to the top menu for Edit > Develop Settings…expecting to see all of my custom presents. They were gone. Copy, paste, previous conversion, and ACR defaults were the only options. Those aren’t exactly difficult to use, but they’re nowhere near as convenient as having my own set of User Presets available.

So I headed to the Presets pane, and found a whole new set of dropdown menus: Color, Creative, B&W, Curve, Grain, Sharpening, Vignetting, and then finally, User Presets. I applied my grayscale preset to a single file, dropped back to Bridge, selected the rest of the session captures, then went to Edit > Develop Settings > Previous Conversion.

Later, I began to work with some new captures. There were just a few so I brought six into ACR, selected all and hit the new Black & White button at the top of the Basic panel. Yuk! The conversions were harsh and ugly. They were a terrible tonal representation of the color image before conversion. Hmm. The second line in the panel, Profile, read out Adobe Monochrome. I dropped back to Bridge and brought up one of the files I’d converted earlier, and found that the Profile read Adobe Standard B&W. What’s going on?

Back to the new files, up into ACR, and I opened the long list of Profile drop downs. Under B&W there were seventeen options. Most were harsh and ugly, but a few looked more promising. The last five clearly imitated classic pan film filter effects, B&W Yellow Filter, B&W Orange Filter, etc. Then I noticed that one of the dropdown options was Legacy, and sure enough, when I opened it, there was Adobe Standard B&W. Apparently, calling up my grayscale User Preset located this option under the hood and provided the grayscale conversion I’d been used to. It really is the Legacy conversion that used to be the default. Rummaging around a bit, I found that I could make Adobe Standard B&W a Favorite, and I could cut Adobe Monochrome from the Favorite list (if not consign it to an inner circle of Hell), making Adobe Standard B&W effectively the default if I hit the Black & White button up in the first line of the Basic panel.

On a more positive note, I was disconcerted when I first found the new and improved User Presets drop down, because, as I moved the cursor down the list of presets, the image in the Preview window jumped all over the place. Each Preset was being immediately previewed. Once I’d gotten the mono conversion issue at least preliminarily settled, I went back to look at this again, and have to say that I like it. Mousing over my set of saved White Balance settings and seeing the Preview image show the effect without actually committing to it is really quite cool. Same for my set of vignette correction settings. Not to mention my often used highlight recovery settings. I’m going to save more of those at a finer grade of distinctions because it is now so easy to preview their effect by just mousing down the list of User Presets before selecting one of them.

There’s some validity to, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and changes like these can be annoying, especially if what’s going on is pretty opaque, but sometimes there’s really good stuff to be found in what the anonymous elves stick us with in each upgrade. I’m old enough that being forced to learn new stuff is supposed to be good for me, so I’m not all that annoyed.

Carl

Carl Weese, who lives in rural Connecticut with his artist wife Tina, has been teaching the esoteric art of fine platinum printing in group workshops and private tutoring sessions since the 1990s. He has had several Pt/Pd print sales on TOP.

©2018 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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Featured Comments from:

Rob de Loe: "Under the new model Adobe is following we are going to have to get used to frequent major changes like this. I actually like the new Profiles approach. I compared the Adobe Monochrome profile to the one I developed using the old camera profiles, and I prefer Adobe Monochrome. It brings out just a touch more separation between tones at the start, meaning that it gives me a bit more headroom to make adjustments using the other tools. My only worry was that Adobe will 'tweak' the Profiles in future versions, meaning that in a few years an image I open in Lightroom will be different than it is today because the foundational profile was changed behind the scenes. It's been suggested to me when I raised this elsewhere that Adobe won't do this; instead they'll preserve Adobe Monochrome as it is, and make a new version with a new name. This is the approach they use with Process Versions (so I have some hope that this may be how they do it)."

Eric Chan: "Here is some more information about the new Profiles feature in Camera Raw (also applicable to Lightroom). And here's a video that provides an overview of the feature as presented in Camera Raw. Rob, we are definitely sensitive to preserving the appearance of your existing (already-edited) images. If we find ways to improve the quality of the profiles, we would be creating new or additional profiles (instead of changing the appearance of existing profiles). Cheers, Eric Chan, Camera Raw Engineer."

Thomas Knoll: "Mark presets as Favorites to have them appear in the Bridge menu. It is now common to have hundreds or more presets installed, and we needed a way to keep the menu usable."

[Thomas Knoll of Adobe Systems is the original creator of Photoshop. —Ed.]

Carl replies: Marking presets as Favorites to have them appear in the Bridge menu works nicely. There are only a few user presets I frequently want to apply to large groups of files, so it was easy to add them back to the Bridge menu as Favorites and have them back again.

Howard: "Let me recommend an enlightening book that will help with these changes: Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson, M.D."

A Platinum Print from an iPhone?

Written by Carl Weese

Photo: Michael McWeeney. Instagram account @havana1933.
Co-Founder and Creative Director at the Reggae Math Foundation.

Recently I taught a weekend “Digital Platinum” workshop at Penumbra Foundation in Manhattan. The basic point of the workshop is to teach participants how to make platinum/palladium prints from digital negatives prepared specifically for printing in the process.

Setup
The first two hours are taken up with a lecture to explain what we have to do to trick a photo-quality inkjet printer and transparency media into producing a negative with sufficient UV-blocking density range to match the extremely long scale of the Pt/Pd print. This includes learning how to vary some of the tricks in order to calibrate for a specific paper, sensitizer coating mixture, UV light exposure unit, and general lab conditions. Then we test the calibration using a negative that combines a complex step tablet file with a real-world picture. Printing these tests lets me demonstrate the hand coating of the paper, preparation of the sheet for printing, then exposure, development, and finishing.

After that, the workshop goes free-form as I work with each participant to prepare picture files in Photoshop the way I think will work best for the process, then send them into the semi-automated “black box” of the calibrated procedure. A Photoshop Batch Action prepares the negative file, then a print driver Preset instructs the printer what to do to enhance the UV-blocking density range of the output on transparent media. While the freshly output negative cures (outgasses), the participant coats and preps a sheet of paper, then exposes it and heads into the wet darkroom area for processing, where my teaching assistant (thanks, Lizzy!) keeps everything running smoothly. By the end of Saturday each student had made negs/prints of one or two of their own pictures.

Image sources
The two most obvious advantages of working with digital internegatives are that you can enlarge a small original (platinum prints must be made in direct contact with the negative under intense UV light), and that you can make a Pt/Pd print from a picture that didn’t start out as a film negative.

There’s much more versatility than that, however. By the end of Sunday our five participants had made 30+ negs/prints from a wide range of original sources. Most were from captures with good digital cameras, but we also had: scans from medium format film; scans of negatives from a 4x5 view camera; scans from 35mm transparency film; scans of negatives from a handmade 4x5 pinhole camera; non-photographic images from Adobe Illustrator renderings; and copy captures of historical wet plate photographs more than a hundred years old. This is almost typical of these workshops and a very real part of the fun.

Sunday surprise
One participant, Michael McWeeney, had brought his MacBook Pro to the workshop, and after working up one or two pictures with me on mine, began to do the workups on his own. Late Sunday, he had a surprise for me. “Just to see if he could,” he chose a picture on his iPhone 6, and worked it up entirely on the phone. Then sent it to his computer to run the “black box” operations for a digital negative. The resulting print was entirely presentable, and had all of us at the workshop amazed/amused that he’d pulled it off.

I asked Mike to detail the apps and steps he used to do this, so here’s his lightly edited explanation:

iPhone Pt/Pd workflow

1. Shoot a raw file with the Moment camera app.
2. Send the Raw file to Google Snapseed.
3. Adjust basic highlight, shadow, and color temperature as Structure in the Snapseed RAW processor.
4. Convert to B+W in Snapseed’s filter tools, BLACK & WHITE tool, using color filters, grain, contrast and brightness adjustments.
5. In the Tools section, use DETAILS to add sharpness and structure if needed [Note: Only add structure one time, either in the Details tool or RAW editor].
6. Use SELECTIVE to create masks to edit specific areas.
7. The lens blur tool added a selective focus look and some lens fall off/vignetting to the image. [This concentrated emphasis on the flowers and helped the hosta leaves recede visually.]
8. Save image.
9. Send image to computer via Airdrop or email.
10. Run the Batch and print driver Preset to make the negative.

As you can see, it worked!

An equivalent workup could be done in the Lightroom Mobile App, and I’m sure there are others, while of course specific steps will vary.

I’m happy to see this blending of the 19th and 21st centuries!

Carl
(Thanks to Mike McWeeney)

Text © 2017 by Carl Weese, image © 2017 by Michael McWeeney, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

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Weese Platinum Prints Have Shipped

All of the 7x17 platinum/palladium prints from our most recent sale have now shipped (except for one or two where the buyers have made special arrangements). Please allow up to ten days for your prints to arrive—three weeks if you are overseas. After that, you can contact Carl or me if you have any problems. We will replace damaged or lost prints, so don't worry if the boat bringing yours to you is slow. You're covered.

Big thanks everyone who participated!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Geoff Wittig: "Just by patronizing TOP's print sales for a couple of years, I've acquired exquisite examples of a range of photographic print technologies. Dye transfer, high-end inkjet, gelatin silver, and now platinum/palladium. Sort of like my own little museum collection. And at amazingly affordable prices! Thanks again, Mike; and thanks to all the photographers/printers who have shared their beautiful work. Cibachrome/Ilfochrome might be cool; just sayin'.  :-)  "

Rob: "My wife and I received our print of 'Fog' today and it is absolutely gorgeous. I think these prints really have to be seen in person to be appreciated: the detail is immersive, both from normal viewing distances and close up. This is the second print we've bought through TOP print sales, and it's a fine companion for Peter Turnley's 'Paris.' Looking forward to next year's sale!"

Russell Jacobs: "Took forever to mat and frame my 'Fog'...viewing the image up close is a near mystical experience. Exceeded my wildest expectations. Much thanks for sponsoring these sales."

Pt/Pd Tech Part II: A Little Help From Your Friends

By Carl Weese

[Part I is here]

Some people claim platinum printing involves black magic. I won’t go that far, but it’s certainly as much art as science. That’s partly because it’s just plain complicated. The ideal of testing one variable at a time is nice, but it just doesn’t happen in the platinum darkroom. You’re always juggling multiple factors.

This past March, Hahnemühle sent me some sample packs of its not-yet-released Platinum Rag paper (HPR). I did a couple quick tests and liked it so much I requested more for my “Digital Platinum” workshop at CAP/Penumbra in New York. (Disclosure: Hahnemühle is now a partial sponsor—donated paper—for my CAP workshop, which is entirely appropriate because CAP is a non-profit educational institution. For my current print offer I’m buying my paper from B&H, just like anybody else.)

The paper behaved about as you’d expect if one of the oldest and most respected paper makers in the world put their mind to the task of creating a paper from scratch for the process. The surface is so easy to work with that students, absolute beginners, were getting nice smooth coatings right away when we opened the samples on the second day of the workshop.

HPR and humidity
A sheet coated with Pt/Pd solution needs to be carefully prepared for printing. You have to dry it off, but you need to leave enough moisture in the paper to support the exposure process. Just how much humidity you need depends on the particular paper. I knew from beta-tester reports that the new material thrived in lower humidity environments than most other papers, which was great because the CAP workspace tends to be dryer than most papers like. The students’ prints showed that the paper is faster (shorter printing exposures) than the old standby, Platine, and had significantly more contrast. I’d need later on to do some tests to modify my negative preparation to compensate for the higher contrast. Meanwhile the workshop participants were delighted to be getting nice prints in their first experience with the process, and to see the fascinating differences between the prints on Platine and HPR.

Back in my darkroom I did precise tests with a file that combines an abstract step tablet and a small real-world picture. This let me find the shortest printing exposure that gives a maximum black, and then let me dial back one of my print driver settings (for outputting the digital negative) to keep the higher contrast from burning out the whites.

Then I did other stuff for most of the summer. When Mike and I had gotten our possible Print Offer selections down to four or five, working from on-screen files from scans, I decided it was time to test print them. As much as I like Fabriano, I didn’t want to do a volume run of printing with a paper that needs pretreatment, and anyway, I thought these pictures would look better on the brighter, cooler-toned HPR. So I got a package of 22x30 (which cuts down efficiently to 10x19.5) and immediately ran into a sticky situation. Literally. When a coated sheet that seemed to be perfectly prepared was printed with my large UV light source and vacuum frame, the edges of the coated area stuck to the negative film. This is not a complete surprise. These films are made super-absorbent so they can handle extreme ink loads, which is why we can make digital negatives for platinum with them, but absorbent is more or less a synonym for sticky. So I tried again and dried the next sheet enough that it would not be successful on Platine or Fabriano. The picture printed fine, but the edges of the coating stuck. This was strange. I’ve never before had this issue relate to scaling up the size of the print.

I coated a small sheet for my standard test negative, dried it totally with a hair dryer, and printed it right away. No sticking, but no Dmax. That’s no surprise, and most of the tones looked amazingly good for a bone-dry sheet. I coated and totally dried another one, then let it rest for ten minutes in 60% humidity, then printed it. It stuck. Just at the edges. I developed it anyway, and the print looked great, but the negative was toast from sensitizer transfer at the edges.

Community
The small community of platinum printers is very collegial and generous. I quickly found out that people working with HPR over the past few months liked to use the additive Tween20 with it. About Tween, there are people who swear by it, and people who swear at it. I’ve always been in the “at” group. I hate the way the solution “works” during the coating process with the additive, on most papers. (It’s a surfactant. For those familiar with the silver darkroom, think Photo-Flo on steroids.)

Well, if HPR came with an instruction sheet (it doesn’t) I think it would recommend the use of a surfactant. The action of coating was not badly impacted—the coating distributed and worked in more quickly. Most important, given fan-but-no-heat drying in a 45% humidity environment, it showed no sticking at all even in the hard pressure of the vac frame, and delivered a beautiful print. OK, problem solved.

That’s how you figure things out for platinum printing: experiments, limiting the variables as much as feasible, and a little help from your friends.

Carl

Carl Weese, who lives in rural Connecticut with his artist wife Tina, has been teaching the esoteric art of fine platinum printing in group workshops and private tutoring sessions since the 1990s.

©2016 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

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Andrea B.: "Carl, can you tell me a bit about Pt/Pd archival properties? Any particular framing or hanging suggestions? Thanks!"

Carl replies: Andrea, Pt/Pd is the most archival of photographic media (well, carbon transfer may tie for that honor). The print consists of microscopic particles of non-reactive Pt/Pd metals embedded in fine, 100% cotton paper. Standard archival matting and framing materials are fine. Avoid dry-mounting; the print will lie perfectly flat positioned with corners or a paper hinge. UV-blocking glazing is a good idea to protect the paper, and avoid display where it will get direct sunlight.

Subdued or special lighting is not needed. In fact, it makes me a little crazy when I go to a museum show of wonderfully archival platinum prints and find the curators have set the lighting so low I can’t see the pictures properly!

'A Banner Year for Platinum Printers'

By Carl Weese

It might be surprising, but I consider the most important variable in platinum printing, both technically and aesthetically, to be the paper, not the chemicals. The chemicals—double salts of platinum and palladium combined with ferric oxalate to make a coating solution—are pretty much the same as when the process was invented in the 1870s. You can modify the appearance of the print by changing the proportions of platinum (Pt) and palladium (Pd), or by using additives to increase the contrast or shift the color, but the biggest changes, and so the most important creative decisions, come from choice of paper.

In the heyday of platinum printing, manufactured, store-bought papers were the norm. Kodak alone made thirty different platinum papers around 1900. Warm and cool, thick and tissue-thin, smooth and rough—a vast array of choices, all of which disappeared around WWI when the noble metals because precious wartime commodities. The revival of Pt/Pd printing in the 1970s didn’t attract any manufacturers and to this day Pt/Pd prints are all prepared by hand, mixing the coating solution for each print and applying it to the paper with a brush or glass tube.

The weight (thickness), texture, and color of the paper all affect the appearance of the final print. However, it’s more complicated than that. The coating and eventually the image area of the print aren’t just applied to the paper like a crayon or charcoal; the coating solution interacts chemically with the sizing of the paper, and those reactions affect many aspects of the print, including color and contrast. Or, they make the paper useless for the process. Most papers are in that category, because manufacturers seeking the “archival” label for their products load them up with alkaline buffering agents. The coating needs a neutral or slightly acidic environment, so coating on a buffered paper results in dismal failure. Some papers with too much buffering can be rescued by treating them in a bath of highly dilute oxalic acid. Three-minute soak, hang up to dry, and the sheets are ready to print on in the morning. Fabriano Artistico is a paper that responds well to this treatment and the natural white version is one of my favorites.

2016 has been a banner year for platinum printers. Arches Platine, which has been around for years as the only paper manufactured and expressly intended for platinum printing, was revised with a new and improved version. Magnani Platinum, an excellent paper for platinum printing that was introduced a few years ago, then disappeared, is now available again, though I haven’t had a chance to test it yet. Most important, this spring, the venerable Hahnemühle company developed and introduced a new paper built from the ground up especially for Pt/Pd printing, though it is also proving to be excellent for many other alternate photographic processes. There are also several Japanese exotic-fiber papers specially prepared for Pt/Pd; they’re lovely, as well as stunningly expensive. I chose to use Hahnemühle Platinum Rag for this print offer because the characteristics of the paper are perfect for the two selected pictures.

Tomorrow I’ll describe the testing/experimenting process I went through to learn how to work with a newly introduced paper.

Carl

©2016 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

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About the Pictures

By Carl Weese

There are places, locations, that strike me as simply magical. One that I’ve returned to many times is a five or six mile stretch of dirt road along a ridge line, a point, in central West Virginia. Most of the hollows on either side are farmed, and no matter what the weather conditions might be like nearby, somehow the light when I get there is always fantastic.

Another magical place is a farm in far western Virginia that happens to belong to an old friend. I made “August Morning Fog” at the farm in 2001. I’d driven at dawn from the farmhouse in the valley up to the highest hayfield. There was ground fog (I think there always is on summer mornings there) and the views back into the valley were spectacular. In short order I made several pictures with my 7x17 and one with my 12x20-inch camera. When I turned around to take the 12x20 back to my truck, I saw, more or less, this picture. The 7x17 came out again and I made several variations of this as the light brightened and the the array of spider webs in the tree branches glowed.

I made the second picture in the spring of 2000 in the town of Easley, South Carolina. One of the facades has a large sign with the name “Dixie Milling.” It was morning again, but this time in clear sunlight an hour or so after dawn.

For those interested in technical details, both pictures were made with a Korona Panoramic View Camera (it says "Panoramic" right on the nameplate on the front standard). The lens used for both is a 305mm Schneider G-Claron. As far as camera adjustments go, the tree picture was pretty much, “ƒ/45 and be there.” I metered the darker trees and gave an exposure of several seconds to retain detail in the shadows. For the mill, I took advantage of the fact that the G-Claron design provides a large circle of coverage that grows dramatically as the lens is stopped down. At ƒ/64 I was able to use almost all of the camera’s front rise capability in order to take in the top of the mill with the camera perfectly plumb to avoid convergence in the lines of the building.

Both of these prints are made from digital negatives slightly larger than the image area of the in-camera negative. I’ll have more about the printing process in another post.

Carl

Carl Weese, a former Contributing Editor of Photo Techniques magazine and occasional contributor to TOP, is the co-author of The New Platinum Print (1998). He has been teaching the art of platinum printing for nearly twenty years. He uses large and ultra-large format cameras extensively and has been an enthusiastic advocate of the use of digital internegatives for platinum printing. He has put many hundreds of thousands of miles on a succession of trucks photographing vernacular scenes all over North America. His work is in many private collections.

©2016 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Doug Howk: "Carl, I believe you've said elsewhere that you do not adjust contrast when Pt/Pd printing. Since these are from digital negatives, do you still try to retain the contrast from the original scene?"

Carl replies: Doug, yes, I make the prints using a mix with about 20% Pt and no contrast agent. Getting that long a scale in the digital negative was the primary challenge.

John Sarsgard: "Carl's photographs celebrate the world around us in perfectly composed images of the extraordinary ordinary. They reach full realization in his beautifully made platinum/palladium prints with the characteristic Pt/Pd delicacy in the midtones. I take issue with some of the earlier comments about his choice of subject matter. There is much that is interesting about our world on its own...without concepts that feed commentary by art critics. I also enjoy some of the conceptual photography that I see, but not more than Carl's work. I own several of his prints...you need to see them to fully appreciate."

Carl replies: John, your check is in the mail.  :-)

CharlieH: "Curious whether Carl likes to see these framed so that the black irregular borders are not covered?"

Carl replies: I leave that up to you. If I were matting one for myself I would probably include a thin black line with either of these pictures. That could be my Leica roots showing, though.  

toto: "Is 7x17 the size of the paper or of the image?"

Mike replies: I make the image area 6 3/4ths by 17 inches, give or take a sixteenth or so. The paper is several inches bigger.

Print Offer: Two Large Original Platinum Prints by Carl Weese

Carl Weese, Dixie Milling, Easley, South Carolina, 2000

Carl Weese, August Morning Fog, Eggleston, Virginia, 2001

From time to time we hold print sales here on TOP, to help put beautiful original examples of fine photographic printmaking into people's hands at reasonable prices.

For the next five days, until Friday at 8 p.m., we'll be taking orders for Dixie Milling and August Morning Fog by our friend Carl Weese. Both are 7x17-inch large format photographs expertly printed in platinum-palladium (Pt/Pd), often called "platinum printing." Both prints will be signed and dated.

Here's how our sales work: In a standard bricks 'n' mortar gallery, sales are customarily made only one at a time, and the gallery typically keeps 60% or 70% of the sale price. Hence, the prices have to start out much higher for everyone to make money. Our sales are specifically designed to make the price low for buyers while maximizing the profit for the person who did all the work, i.e. the photographer. (We're all photographers here and that's how we all wish it always worked!)

As most of you know, making many prints at once is much easier than making one print every now and then. So what we do is take orders for five days only, and at the end of the five days, close the ordering window. Carl then knows how many prints he needs to make, and can "mass produce" the prints specifically to fulfill the orders already received. (With platinum/palladium prints, "mass produce" is the wrong term...each print still has to be made carefully and one at a time. Carl can make approximately nine prints per day during a six-hour working session, which he finds is his limit for this painstaking work.)

Plus, with TOP sales, 80% of the sale price goes to the photographer.

Being able to make many prints at once, knowing that each one has already been sold, and then being able to keep the lion's share of the sale price all enable the photographer to sell the prints for much less than they would have to sell for in a gallery. (Carl's standard gallery price for a 7x17 is $2,000, which is not at all atypical for a large original platinum print.)

The downside is that you can't see the print in advance, so you have a guarantee: If you don't like your print after you see it, you can return it within three days for a full refund, minus shipping.

We'll have several posts later this week about the pictures and the prints and how they were made, but let me just remind people that with platinum prints especially, little JPEGs are only distant approximations of the beauty and presence of the original prints themselves.

How to Order

Carl will be taking and tracking the orders manually. The price is $375 for one print and $100 off if you buy both. (Important! New York and Connecticut residents must add the correct State sales tax based on where they live. These rates vary, so you need to do this yourself.) You can pay either by PayPal or with a mailed check or money order (the latter saves us the PayPal fees. Carl will let you know the address if you want to send a check). Don't include notes or details with the payment, but make sure your name appears on it.

[Sale has ended 9/16/16 at 8:10 p.m.; if you have ordered and need to get in touch with Carl, you can email him. Thanks to everyone who participated! The sale was a success. —Mike]

Orders close Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern U.S. time.

We hope you like the photographs! I think you will be impressed with the prints. More about them later in the week.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

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Gone Fishin' (And Print Sale Plans) (And Albany)

Albany, New York

It appears it's that time again.

Most years at this time I go on a short family vacation, and as I had a family situation arise last Thursday that's going to keep me busy for a while, I think it's best if I put the Gone Fishin' shingle on the door and close the TOP shop for a week or so.

Despite the lack of forewarning, for which I apologize.

The caveat is, I'm still going to have a lot of time and I'm pretty sure I'm going to want to write a post or three. So even though I'm "away" on "staycation" and on a limited schedule, I'll most likely still do some writing. So please don't be a stranger.

Coming up
We are planning a print sale for September that will feature two of Carl Weese's 7x17-inch in-camera view camera panoramic platinum/palladium prints. Like many pros Carl likes being a jack of all formats and media, but I secretly think 7x17" Pt/Pd is what he's best at. (Don't tell him I said that.) We haven't yet chosen the images (well, Carl has his candidates nailed down but I haven't rendered my 2¢ yet), and we don't have a for-certain start date yet. Carl is completing experiments on a beautiful new paper he's very psyched about.

More news when I have it.

A photographer's town
Recently I got to visit Albany, New York (capital of the Empire State) for a short time. The weather when I was there was gorgeous and I was blown away by Albany—I guess I didn't know what to expect, so it took me by surprise how beautiful and interesting a place it is. I cured my itch for a Touit by latching the XF 14mm on to the camera and getting out for three hours or so for some intensive photography. Fun. Saw pictures everywhere, most of which I didn't even take—one of those days. I'm currently in the familiar "Wow, look what I did!" stage with the pics, but it's possible a few of them might in fact survive the "Maybe that isn't so great after all" stage which comes later. If I still like any of them after a week or two I'll post more of 'em. Above is my version of a standard "this means Albany" shot, of the famous (forget it, I'm not writing "iconic" any more) statue of Philip Schuyler, the Revolutionary War general and early Senator.

I want to return to Albany (and the nearby towns of Schenectady and Troy), perhaps with a local tourguide, for some more exploring and some more photography. I met some nice people there and really enjoyed wandering the streets and public spaces, and had to leave much too soon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

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Special for You: Custom Modes

Shop Window, Chickasha, OK, 2012. The sort of color picture I make when exploring with a handheld digital camera. Usually I have it set to one of several Custom Modes.

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Words and pictures by Carl Weese

For more than four years now, most of the time I have my digital cameras set to a “custom mode,” not the the usual M/A/S/P modes on the dial. Most references I’ve seen recommend this feature—which many digital cameras now have in some form—for managing groups of different in-camera JPEG settings. I’m sure it's useful for that too, but I always shoot RAW captures and yet I still find custom modes extremely useful.

Back in 2011 on a shooting expedition, for the second time in a couple of days I grabbed the camera from the car seat, jumped out and began shooting, only to find the ISO had switched to 3200, which was not an acceptable level for the Lumix G3 I was using. I got the settings back where I wanted them, made some pictures, found nothing I wanted to shoot with my large format cameras, so got back in the car and decided to figure out what had gone wrong. It didn’t take long. The camera’s control buttons were softer touch than I’d like. If you pick up the camera and hit the ‘right arrow’ button on the controller, it opens the ISO dialog. You see that in the finder as you raise the camera and can quickly dismiss it. But if you bump the right arrow button twice, the second hit sets ISO 3200. When I got to my hotel room that night, I called up the PDF of the instruction manual on my MacBook and looked up the custom mode function. I’ve been using it ever since.

A custom mode memorizes a whole suite of camera function settings. If an accidental button push sends ISO through the roof, just move the mode dial from C1 to C2 and back again, and your whole custom suite of settings is restored in a split second. You don’t have to figure out exactly what got changed. You don’t have to remember what your favorite settings are, or what menus to find them on. So having custom settings can bail you out on an accidental button push. Also, what if you are trying to work with a situation and decide, first that you need to dial in –.66 exposure compensation, then realize it would be better to switch to single-point AF, etc. When you move on, flip the dial, or turn the power off and when you actuate the camera again it will be at your custom settings.

Examples
There’s much more. I just want to give an idea of how useful this is, not tell everyone how to set up their cameras, and I can’t address the many camera-specific variations out there, but here are a couple of examples. The Lumix GX7 cameras I’m using now have three “custom” positions on the mode dial, and number three can open to a menu with three choices, for a total of five suites of custom settings. I won’t bore you with all five of my suites, but I’ll illustrate how useful they are by detailing my most and least often used sets.

C1 is my default for walkabout shooting, which is what I do the most with a  handheld digital camera. AE is set to aperture priority; ISO is auto, top-limited to 3200; in-body stabilization is active; AF is multi-point with touch screen AF disabled (too easy to actuate accidentally with a camera over my shoulder); drive is single frame; and all the other functions that I never change are sitting at default.

  Touch AF is really useful when the camera’s on a tripod
(here in multi-point AF mode)

When a subject calls for a tripod, for me it’s usually also calling for a large format film camera. When I actually want to use a tripod for digital capture, the camera will perform better with a very different suite of settings. So, in C3-3, aperture priority AE remains, but ISO is locked to base level; in-body stabilization is switched off (important, and oh so easy to overlook); AF is switched to single point, with touch screen AF active; drive is two-second delay.

Even though it requires a menu call and tap, switching from C1 to C3-3 doesn’t take two seconds, and I can do it while I’m mounting the camera to the tripod head, so it really doesn’t take any time at all. I’m not always in a rush, but anything that speeds up camera handling is helpful when speed is important. When the tripod shot is done, it also takes effectively no time at all to return to C1 (or C2, C3-1, C3-2) without having to locate and execute half a dozen settings scattered across four or more menus buried multiple levels deep—or having to remember what all those settings and menu positions are anyway.

  Macricostas Preserve, Washington, CT, 9/13/15

Spending the time to work out a group of custom setting suites that work well for the ways you make pictures simply makes your camera a better tool. I recommend it.

Carl

TOP Contributing Editor Carl Weese is a photographer, writer, and workshop teacher based in Connecticut. There are many online galleries of his pictures at his website, and he publishes a daily picture blog.

©2015 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2015 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.

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Michael Matthews: "This could be the most helpful suggestion I've run across in years. We know the custom settings option is available, but how many use them in this way? I'd always thought of custom settings to mean unusual combinations for very precise needs. It's finally clear to me that this may offer the cure for my ham-handed mishandling of Micro 4/3 cameras which seem to keep changing their settings spontaneously. At last—the 'lock all' button which has eluded me."

Tim Wilson: "Carl, I have used this extensively on the OM-D E-M1. You can assign any of the mode dial positions to a custom function set. My two main configurations are for hand-held aperture preferred (Image stabilizer on, plus other stuff) and one for tripod shooting (IS off, two-second delay from exposure). I have put the tripod mode dial name on labels on the top of my tripod to remind me to reset. Works great."

What Is This Duotone You Speak Of?

Center spread from a fund raising brochure I produced in 1992 for St. Mary of the Plains hospital in Lubbock, Texas. The duotone printing, done at a firm in western Massachusetts, was executed the old fashioned way—with process camera negatives made from my silver prints by an elderly craftsman who spoke with a Scots accent. He looked at the prints, very carefully, and slowly, having decided how he wanted to interpret my work for the press, said, “You’ll nae be wantin' any black printer in the shadow tones, then?”

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Written by Carl Weese

In my recent book review post, I touched on the topic of different offset litho reproduction processes. The most common today is CMYK, which produces “full color” printing. Monochrome photographs can be printed in CMYK, but it’s not ideal. Multiple plate offset printing with black and gray “spot color” inks is a better way to get really good monochrome photographic reproductions that are also smoothly consistent form after form, and so page after page in the publication.

An offset press halftone plate when printed can only distinguish 50–70 levels of tone. (The wide variation depends on the type of paper, the press, the care taken, etc.) Even 70 levels severely limits print quality. Almost as soon as offset lithography was developed, people figured out that they could make a vastly better monochrome print (neutral, warm, cool, livid green, bright magenta, anything you want) by using multiple plates with different inks. Two, three, four—as many as you can afford. Separation negatives were shot so that in a tritone, for example, one recorded primarily highlight values, another mid-tones, another the dark values. Using one black and two gray inks, (counterintuitively, the black ink is best used for the highlight printer, as I learned from the Scotsman) the result, this not being an ideal world, isn’t 210 levels of tone, but it’s a whole lot more than 70. A really well executed page can rival the original silver print.

Process cameras are about as common as dodos today. So, Adobe Photoshop has a duotone function, which includes the ability to make tri and quad tones, from digital files that have been captured, or scanned from film or prints. You can specify any Pantone ink formula for each separation, and you can adjust the curve for each. These controls are the digital equivalent of what a skilled tradesman used to do with the process camera. The file (incorporated into the page layout document) is then output as two, three, or four ultra-high resolution imagesetter negatives at the print firm, then plates for the press are burned from the separations. The plates are mounted on a multi-station press with the specified inks in the correct fountains, or the plates and inks can be used in sequence for multiple runs through a single station press in registration. If all goes well, the result is a publication with beautiful reproduction.

There’s a completely different way to use the duotone dialog. You can use it essentially as a Photoshop filter, best done in a duplicate layer, to manipulate the tint and tone of a file that you will send to a photo quality inkjet printer. The result, however, just to get picky about it, isn’t a duotone—it’s not made with differently inked multiple plates on a printing press. It’s a composite RGB print. Photoshop and the print driver interpret the file data into RGB, because that’s the only language the inkjet printer can understand.

Recently I’ve been studying and experimenting with the Photoshop duotone function because I plan to use it for the plates in an upcoming book project, and I plan to do the tritones myself. It’s a powerful dialog and can create interesting monochrome effects. However, despite the time I’ve spent learning to work with it, I don’t plan to use it on files destined for my inkjet printers. I can get the results I want easier-faster-better with Epson’s Advanced Black & White print driver module for my 3880, or with Photoshop color management and custom ICC profiles for my HP Z3200.

If  you try the Photoshop duotone tool and there’s something you love about the interface and you find it helps you reach the results you want, then by all means go ahead and use it for files intended for inkjet printing. These choices are all subjective. Me, I’m only planning to use it on work destined for a Heidelberg.

Carl

Carl Weese is a photographer, writer, and workshop teacher, based in Connecticut. There are many online galleries of his pictures at his website, and he publishes a daily picture blog.

©2015 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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'Like Musical Instruments,' Portraits of Poets

Reviewed by Carl Weese

This hefty softcover book—228 pages of text and pictures at traditional letter-size—is really two things at once: a collection of 83 portraits by photographer John Sarsgard, and an anthology of contemporary American poetry edited by Larry Fagin.

For the poems, the selection emphasizes diversity, not favoring any one style or camp. There are young and old, famous writers and relative unknowns. With the better known contributors, an effort was made to select some of their lesser known work, so even readers up to date on the poetry world will find some surprises. I was an English major many years ago but I haven’t stayed current in the field. I’m finding Larry’s curating to be a great guide to introduce me to current work, and I’m happy that he sought out a wide range of styles and approaches.

On the photographs, first, disclosure: John is a friend, who has studied platinum printing with me. His portraits are utterly direct and straightforward, devoid of any hint of pretense or artifice. His rapport with the poets is obvious, and he has told me that the conversations during the sessions were mind-blowing-amazing. He makes the exhibition prints in platinum/palladium, and they are progressing to several gallery venues around the country.

Something to study in these portraits is the way John uses every bit of the frame. The environments—I’m not going to use the term “background”—are rich with suggestion even though they generally take up little space compared to the human subject. In most cases he asked the poet to choose the location for the shoot, and the places selected are often resonant, adding another layer to the connection John makes with his subjects.

The pictures are all made by available light, on medium format Tri-X film, with a Pentax 645 and normal 75mm lens. That last detail is telling. Selection of the normal rather than the more typical “portrait length” of 150mm is partly responsible for getting those significant surroundings into the frame and keeping them legible. It also draws photographer and subject physically closer, which again aids the sense of connection that comes across in these pictures.

The publishing team, including Sarsgard, Fagin, and Larry Moore of Broadstone Books, wanted to keep the price “at a level that poets might afford.” This leads to a small downside. To reach that price, they had to print overseas, by remote control, using CMYK-monochrome printing. The reproductions are good, but not at the level of a first-tier print house working with tritone or quadtone plates—however that book would cost $80–90, not $39.95. I think they made the right compromise.

If you like portrait photography, or poetry, this book is for you. If you love both, it’s like getting two for the price of one.

Also, if you order from the publisher and mention that you read about the book here at TOP, they'll discount it to $30 for you.*

Carl

*[Despite the discount, the publisher and the authors actually get to keep more money for each book if you buy it through our link than if you buy it from a bookstore or from another online source. —Ed.]

Carl Weese is a photographer, writer, and workshop teacher, based in Connecticut. There are many online galleries of his pictures at his website, and he publishes a daily picture blog.

©2015 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

ADDENDUM by John Sarsgard, the book's photographer: "I appreciate Carl writing the review, and certainly hope folks will buy the book, but I also want to take the opportunity to encourage others to consider a long term personal project. I met and engaged with over a hundred poets, and gained a perspective I would never have any other way. I am still in contact with many of them.

"I hope many who have not done so will think about a group of people they would like to meet and know just a bit. I had the benefit of an insider collaborator, but I also found that people will lead you to others if they like the work. Poets are under appreciated by the larger society these days, and most I contacted were happy to participate. I'm sure rock stars and novelists would be harder.

"I tried to keep the technical things simple and second nature so I could spend my time engaging with the people. One camera, one lens, one film, natural light, tripod or not as necessary, meter the face.

"Carl mentioned that the poets frequently picked the location. I always asked, but also made sure I had a few ideas just in case. "I dunno," followed by "I'll get back to you" from me would have been lame. I did learn how hard working in a park can be on a sunny day, with hot spots in the background everywhere. Cartier-Bresson liked cloudy days for good reason.

"I asked everyone to sign a simple release at the end of the session that promised prints, with a space for a mailing address. Most signed right away. Some wanted to see the prints first. They all signed eventually. I don't think releases are technically necessary for this work, but I wanted to make clear what I might do with the images. I gave them all permission to use the images for anything they wanted, and a number have been used as author photos for books.

"Finding a publisher was hard. More than one told me that photo books are the second lowest volume category, and poetry sells even less…and that I had some nerve to ask them to publish something that combined the two! Larry Moore at Broadstone is a brave small publisher who loves both poetry and photography and is not in the game to get rich.

"I hope many will explore such a project. Think of what might happen!"

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scott kirkpatrick: "I'm not sure how to purchase the book from its publisher and get the $30 price Carl refers to. The website doesn't do it automatically, and the publishers should not be looking forward to a flood of emails requesting something like a discount code? So I just bought it anyway."

Mike replies: Carl has now added a link that goes to a special TOP readers' page that applies the discount. It wasn't up at first. If you tried to buy the book soon after the post went up and didn't see how to get the discount, but ordered the book at full price anyway, you'll be contacted by the publisher.

Hugh Smith: "I looked for the book on Broadstone's website and was pleasantly surprised to find Larry offering a special discount to TOP readers. While I appreciate a bargain as much as the next guy/gal, I am purchasing the book without the discount simply to support the publisher and authors of this work. Just my two pesos."

Mike replies: I added a note to the post to this effect, but you should be aware that the publisher gets MORE support if you use our link than if you don't. In fact, the publisher wanted Carl to review the book on TOP in part because it allows them to keep far more of the purchase price than they get to keep using other channels of distribution. So ordering it here gives the producers of the book the maximum of support, despite the fact that it's cheaper for you.

marcin wuu: "I'm curious, why is CMYK printing cheaper than tri- or quadtone? It should the other way around or the same, since you use just three (or four at most) plates? Or is it printed 'on demand' on a laser printer?"

Carl replies: Marcin, I wasn't involved in production of this project, but in general terms, CMYK is Standard Operating Procedure at large printing firms. For monochrome, author-provided neutral or toned RGB files are fed through a batch action to convert to CMYK, ideally using a press-specific custom ICC profile. Then the job runs with many other jobs through high-volume presses that run nearly 24/7. (Pro tip: toning is good in this instance; true neutral is fiendishly difficult to achieve on press in CMYK.)

For duo-/tri-/quadtones, everything has to be done custom (which is a good thing if you can afford it) from creating the separations with specific pantone color specs and custom PS curves for the channels, to filling the press fountains with the custom inks, etc. At a mass production place the pressmen carefully keep the press running "on specification." At a high-end fine art printer, that's the starting point. Then the pressman works with the artist and/or designer to tweak the controls until what is coming out of the press is better than the proofs. Then he finishes the run keeping the press exactly on, not specs, but the signed-off-on sheet.

Going "on press" as a designer was some of the most exciting—and stressful—work I've ever done. Standardized production saves money, custom attention costs money.

Last Hour

Carl with the 8x10

It's a scant hour to go until the end of the Print Sale and I still haven't decided which one to buy for the walls of TOP HQ (can't afford both—house poor, from now until whenever). "Steep Rock" is more popular with American readers and "Church" with international readers. I'm leaning toward "Church" (which sort of goes along with my suspicion that I'm secretly British at heart, despite my lack of enthusiasm for footandheadball).

Carl is an old-fashioned photographic polymath (I love the word "polymath"—it means "a person of encyclopedic learning"). He seems to know a lot about everything there is to know in photography: he can talk with complete comfort about location lighting, dealing with art directors, calibrating digital sensors, ultra-large format cameras, the aberrations of '60s Leica lenses, photo history, the biography of a famous photographer who died eighty years ago, or hanging a gallery show. And then segue with no apparent effort to discussing the aesthetics of a picture. He just doesn't seem to admit or accept any boundaries to what he knows or to what he will learn. Developer formulas or inkjet printing. 

The picture is of Carl with the camera he used to make both pictures. I mentioned in the previous post that Carl has been a platinum/ palladium printmaker for 20 years and has been teaching it for 15 years, but I didn't mention that he's been shooting large format since he was seven. That's as long as I've been alive.

So far 100 prints have been purchased by 80 readers. That's just about perfect—a successful sale but not too many long days in the darkroom for Carl. Thanks to everyone who bought a print! Or two. I hope everybody else enjoyed the window into the process.

(Oh, and a number of people have inquirted about private workshops with Carl. Here's a link to a testimonial by Elizabeth Ellenwood.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 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.

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Getting Into the B&W Mindset

Ferrari, 29th and Madison. In town last November to teach a weekend platinum workshop, I had a couple of hours each morning to look around, and made some pictures using a simple trick to keep my mind focused on monochrome picture-making, even though I was using a digital camera which, by definition, makes color photographs.

Words and picture by Carl Weese

Later this month I'll be teaching a workshop in New York City that will have one foot in the 19th Century and one in the 21st: Platinum/palladium prints from digital negatives. As I've been planning the workshop I realized one aspect of what we’ll be doing could interest anyone who wants to do monochrome pictures using digital capture, even if you intend to keep your process all in the current century.

To step back a bit, since 2004 when I got intensely involved in digital capture work (for clients and myself), I've used it almost entirely to make color pictures. That's all the clients wanted, and it was also what I was most interested to explore, as I still do B&W work on long term projects using large-format cameras and film. But also, I found B&W conversions of my digital captures never worked. Before, I saw in color with color film in the camera, and saw in B&W with Tri-X or HP-5. I picked this up as a teenager in the 1960s. But my digital cameras were always loaded with color "film," and something in my subconscious refused to let go of this carefully acquired knowledge from forty years before. The color/B&W switch in my head locked on color, I made color pictures, and if I converted them in post to monochrome, they didn't become good B&W pictures—they were just color shots stripped of their color content.

This is not at all a technical issue. It's entirely a matter of perception. I couldn't put on my B&W shooting "head" with a camera that was incontrovertibly making color photographs.

Then something changed. Traveling through the midwest in September of 2011, on a road trip to continue my long-term project on drive-in movie theaters, for the first time I augmented my large-format B&W film work on the project with additional coverage using digital capture. One evening at a Motel 6, reviewing the day's digital work (the big negatives of course wouldn’t be developed until I returned to home base), I tried converting some of them to B&W. It worked like a charm. I was so used to seeing this subject matter in B&W that when I finished doing an 8x10 or 7x17 of the best viewpoint, or deciding not to, I made lots of other documentation coverage of the facility with digital, and all of it looked just right converted to mono. If I decided the venue didn’t warrent large-format film, the documentation I did with the digital camera still worked fine in monochrome—my head had been tipped to that direction. The visual habit of working with this subject had overcome my mental block about using a color camera for B&W.

Except, none of the "off topic" digital pictures I made on the road trip, and nothing I made after I got back, converted well. They were all color pictures. Without the trigger of the subject matter from the long-term project, my perception went back instantly to color pictures with the color camera.

So here is a trick I'll have my workshop participants use as we begin with an hour or so of shooting digital captures in mid-town Manhattan and the gorgeous daylight studio on the third floor at The Center for Alternative Photography. We'll be trying to make pictures that will end up as good platinum prints.

Set the camera to shoot RAW+JPEG. Then set the JPEG to monochrome. With a mirrorless camera (there may be exceptions) this will make the LCD and the EVF (if it has one) show a monochrome display. A DSLR's finder of course won't be affected, but (exceptions possible again) the LCD, whether used for live view or chimping, will show a monochrome picture.

The effect of this is both obvious and subtle. You can see the picture, on location, in monochrome. But that's not the point. It won't look much like a platinum print. This is a trigger—an input that reminds you that you are trying to make B&W pictures. For me, it helps me think pretty much as I did when I knew that I had Tri-X loaded in my Leica. I'm using Micro 4/3 cameras, so the reminder is constant in the EVF, though as with a Leica, I spend very little time looking through the finder. For DSLR users, you could try working live view, or turning on instant review, to keep that B&W triggering device in front of you.

Carl

©2014 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

Our friend Carl Weese needs no introduction to regular TOP readers. Equally at home in commercial and art photography, he's been teaching alternative process workshops for many years. He has a blog and a website, and more of his writing for TOP can be accessed in his category in the right-hand sidebar.

Question from Dan Khong: "I have this 'burning' question. When I set my P&S (e.g. Lumix LX3) digital to B&W by default, I see only monochrome on my screen, and it records monochrome images. Does the camera go through two steps in capturing images in color first and then auto-converts them into monochrome or does it actually act like a 'Leica monochrome' camera and capture monochrome images directly in a single step?"

Tech. Ed. Ctein replies: Your camera does it in two steps. There is an RGB Bayer array over the pixels, so it can't capture panchromatic monochrome directly.

I'm pretty sure that if you record RAW plus JPEG (assuming that camera allows for that) and compare the RAW files made with the camera in normal mode and monochrome mode you'll find that they look exactly the same for the same development settings. —Ctein

Original contents copyright 2014 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.

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Featured Comments from:

George K: "For a few second there, I thought this was going to be a discussion about B&W speakers and the lack of coloration they give to older records. Luckily, I love black and white film just as much as I love my record collection. Great article."

Herman Krieger: "In regard to a B&W mindset, when I take black and white photos, I think in terms of lines. With color, I think in terms of areas. I mainly take B&W photos with a film camera, and then scan the negatives for handling with Photoshop."

[Herman, a great "pure" documentarian in the tradition of Milton Rogovin, just published a new project shot in Springfield, Oregon, which Matt Groening recently confirmed was the basis for the fictional "Springfield" of the long-running "The Simpsons" show on Fox TV. He shot with a GF670, Fuji's modern recreation of a historical folding medium-format camera. I always enjoy looking at Herman's plainspoken but insightful reports of the people and places he sees. —Ed.]

Ken Ford: "This is exactly what I've been doing for a few years now—it helps my previsualization tremendously."

Panasonic GX7 Notes: Responsiveness

Reviewed by Carl Weese

[This is the fourth and final installment of Carl's notes about the Panasonic GX7. Part I is here, Part II is here, and Part III is here.]

First, a few less favorable points. I think Panasonic should have made the GX7 "splash-proof." The first 4/3 format camera, the Olympus E-1, was weather-sealed way back ten years ago. Even if this moved the price of the GX7 up a notch, I'd like it to be there. I've used my GF1 and G3 cameras in the rain lots of times (I like to take pictures in the rain) and they're still working, but I'd rather not find the water resistance limit the hard way.

Next, with the GX7, Panasonic has, for the first time in one of its Micro 4/3 cameras, included in-body optical image stabilization. This is welcome, but the implementation isn't powerful. My sense is that the "shake reduction" in Pentax cameras seven years ago was a bit more effective. It's still much better than nothing, especially since my four best lenses for the format are not stabilized. Testing with a 20mm ƒ/1.7 I found the stabilization began to improve my results consistently at 1/30 sec., and by 1/8 sec. it was much better than me, though not entirely reliable. I won’t hesitate to use this combination at 1/8 sec., but I'll let off bursts of several exposures expecting that some of them will be good enough for large prints. If the best possible stabilization is a top priority for your work, you may want to look elsewhere.

Rangefinder-like form-factor: The uncommonly
handsome Panasonic Lumix GX7

There is a stealthy "silent mode" that turns off the mechanical shutter, focus assist light, and alert sounds (I turn sounds off anyway as soon a camera's out of the box). The standard shutter sound is more of a whirr than a click and seems quite unobtrusive. The silent mode really is inaudible—it takes some practice to get used to the lack of feedback. The downside is that relying on the electronic shutter alone can result in defects in the capture. The problem is that while you may have an effective speed of 1/320, the sensor scan can take 1/10 second. If the subject moves, or the camera shakes, during that time, you can get some weird renderings. I've experimented with it and managed to come up with some Lartigue-esque out-of-round wheels on moving vehicles. The usefulness of this feature will depend on whether the situations where you want a silent camera are likely to generate these motion-based image defects.

Southbury, CT. The snow flag on the hydrant reads perfectly round, but look at the front wheel of the moving SUV in the background. Movement during the sensor scan in silent mode has distorted its shape.

I can't give a hard and fast definition of what makes a camera feel responsive, but I know it when I see it, and this is the most responsive digital camera I've used. In no particular order, here are some of the reasons.

I've already mentioned the double control wheels, and also want to point out that they respond immediately, without needing to be unlocked. This could at some point result in accidental actuation, but I’ll take that chance in order to have instant response. By default, the camera auto-switches between LCD and EVF. I found that disconcerting at first, but I've decided I like it. I don't like to use continuous autofocus, but a nice touch is that in single AF, as you raise the camera to your eye, when it switches to the EVF the autofocus is automatically triggered, as though you had half-pressed the shutter. I don’t know if this will ever make the difference in getting a successful grab shot, but it makes the camera seem quicker, which is a valuable thing in itself. The contrast-detect AF is, as with earlier models, highly accurate and reliable, and it's now noticeably faster. Combined with that automatic triggering, focus is mostly seamless and simply there before you know it.

Torrington, CT. You don’t need to shoot sports to appreciate a responsive camera that helps you get the framing and timing just where you want them.

Like some other cameras, the GX7 responds to the shutter release faster in burst mode than in single, even if you only want one frame. It's also so much faster than the G3 in medium-burst drive mode that I had to retrain myself to get off the button soon enough to avoid two or three shot bursts when I meant to take one frame. It's nearly impossible to squeeze off just one shot in high burst. The camera also writes its RAW files remarkably faster than the earlier models—to my same old cards, which are quite slow by current standards. This will help anyone who does a lot of high speed sequence work, but I also like it because, in difficult light (and I'm drawn to difficult light), I often take one shot and then review the RGB histogram. A fast write time means that the file is available by the time I've lowered the camera enough to see the LCD clearly and hit the playback button. If I see a safe histogram I can go back to shooting with this whole check sequence taking perhaps one second flat. It makes the camera seem quick and eager to please.

There are more custom mode settings available than before, which is nice. I find custom modes highly useful and will talk about them someday, but in some future article since they certainly aren't unique to this camera.

Ancramdale, NY. Natural light effects can be fleeting. A camera with "good reflexes" helps capture them.

The LCD is improved in general appearance, visibility in bright light is better, and it has more and better touch screen capabilities. The EVF presents, well, a more substantial display that seems more like a ground glass and less like a washed out mini-TV. It's also easier to use in bright light, though not yet to the level of an SLR.

Of course there's a raft of other features, from "intelligent" automation to Scene Modes and "creative" filters and effects, but I don't use any of that, so this wraps up my mini-series user report on the GX7. I'll watch comments for any questions about details of interest that I might have missed.

I mentioned in the first post of this series that I had waited out a number of new Micro 4/3 models from Panasonic and Olympus before pulling the trigger on the GX7 release. The camera is a big step forward from the GF1 and G3, even though I've been getting files from those cameras that make excellent 17x22-inch prints. I expect I’ll be able to use it for quite a while before something demonstrably better comes around. The improved exposure range of the sensor is important to the pictures I like to make, and the greatly improved high ISO performance, while not as important to me, is certainly nice to have. However, it's the "responsiveness"—the overall combination of factors from body design to hardware controls to logical, easily navigated menus—that really stands out for me. It has already affected the way I shoot. Before I'd even worked with it extensively, the GX7 was becoming much closer to "an extension of my hand," than any digital camera I've used before. It's a keeper.

Carl 

©2013 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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Featured Comments from:

Dave Karp: "Thanks Carl. I am thinking about purchasing this camera. Your articles were very helpful."

Alan Brown: "Thanks, Carl, for the well-written review. I concur with your observations about responsiveness. The GX7 is so responsive that it seems to be anticipating what I'm going to do. The camera is more that the sum of its parts or features. One additional observation is that the histogram, compared to earlier Panasonics, is very accurate. I thought I would miss the 'blinkies' of the Olys, but the accurate performance of the histogram mitigates that. It is simply a delightful camera to use and makes me want to go out and photograph. Thanks again."

Micro 4/3: What's in a Name?

I've had some great ideas over the years about photography—and a statistically significant number of them have come from Carl Weese.

Carl, who is currently investigating a Panasonic GX7 for us, is an artist and a working pro, a student of photography and a teacher of it, a navel-gazing artist and a social documentarian, a fastidious craftsman, even a graphic designer. (At one point he augmented his photography services by offering fully integrated graphic design services.)

Among the ideas he's tossed my way over two decades or so are the notion that B&W was already perfect in film but digital is the coming of age of color; the idea of using a digicam as a note-taker for ULF scouting; even the proper way to get to grips with the meaning and use of a Leica. He's the one who first explained to me what bokeh is.

And it's frustrating for me, now, because occasionally he'll toss off, in emails, these perfectly formed little thoughts and insights that could really be whole essays. 

Or at least whole blog posts.

Most recently, last night: Is "Micro Four-Thirds" actually a colossal naming blunder?

Why "micro"? In this day of proliferating sensor sizes, many of which really are tiny, wouldn't it cause confusion in the general public when you take an accepted but not particularly well-known or well-defined term (4/3) and add to it a word that means "exceptionally small?" Doesn't that imply, at the very least, that the sensor is smaller than regular 4/3? (Even Carl assumed so at first; so did I. Of course, it was the cameras that are supposed to be smaller, not the sensors.) Doesn't "micro" appear to intentionally underscore the difference in size of a format that is in truth just a little smaller than standard (if standard is APS-C) but difficult to distinguish from it in practice?

Fascinating. Xander told me last night about a company that tried to launch a new product with a name that very soon after became profoundly wrong. The time was just before the outbreak of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome epidemic, the product was a weight-loss pill, and the name the inventors chose for the product was "Ayds." Oops. That's like those poor mothers who named their babies "Harry Potter" a few years before the J.K. Rowling juggernaut burst on the scene.

Carl thinks "Micro 4/3" might better have been called "Mirrorless 4/3," because it's "descriptive, not much more awkward, and wouldn't give the impression the sensor had been downsized."

Of course the common usage of "mirrorless" came along after Micro 4/3 did, I think. It was a retrospective descriptive term. But what if the official name had been, say, "SuperSensor"? Just as accurate, really, because it's supersized compared to digicam sensors...and those were, for the most part, the "mirrorless" cameras that existed before Micro 4/3 cameras along.

I'll bet that would have been a whole lot more popular with the public.

If this is a perception problem in the general public, though, it would be all but invisible to us. Core aficionados of any activity tend to sort out and demystify the terminology of their field of interest very quickly (because it's important to them) and then they just can't see any longer how that terminology might strike an ordinary person who is coming to it cold.

Maybe this a bigger part than we realize of Micro 4/3's marketing doldrums: bad name. As in, actively misleading name. As in, a name that creates rather than ameliorates confusion and poor impressions. (This could be cultural. As many people have noted, miniaturization is prized in Japan, whereas "bigger is better" is normative in the West. Interestingly, market acceptance of Micro 4/3 follows the same pattern: it's popular in Japan and Asia, struggling in North America and Europe.) Too late now, but it sure is interesting to think about...like an awful lot of the ideas I get from Carl.

Mike
(Thanks to CW)

P.S. Incidentally, a not very well-known fact: Carl teaches private one-on-one photo workshops on request. Subject: Anything you want. Most often they're about LF platinum/palladium photography, but, really, whatever you're having problems with and want to know more about, he could help you with.

Original contents copyright 2013 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.

TOP's links!

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Featured Comments from:

Jeremy: "Please don't suggest 'mirrorless' as a name for anything. It may be expedient in one era but it can't be lasting to call a thing by what it is not. 'Horseless carriage' (automobile) comes to mind as does 'wireless' (radio)."

Greg Brophy: "I just took a platinum printing class last weekend with Carl at The Center for Alternative Photography. My only regret was not taking it sooner. For months I tried to learn it on my own and the money I spent on failed attempts would have easily covered the cost of the class. Carl helped me learn how to do it and demystified the process. We also learned how to process negatives in a tray with pyro and showed how easy it was. I plan on taking more classes from Carl in the future.

"On aside note I got to see Carl's GX7 and it is a really amazing camera. He showed me some things I have not seen other cameras do, which I am sure he will talk about in a future post."

Panasonic GX7 Notes, Part the First

Review by Carl Weese

This will be the first of several short posts detailing some of my reactions to the newly introduced Panasonic Lumix DMC GX7 camera.

Quick background: I began using Micro 4/3 format with a Lumix GF1 about three and a half years ago. I thought it would be a supplement to the APS-C system I was using, more appropriate for some of the work that I do with digital capture (I still do some of my work with large format film, which is something to bear in mind when you consider my comments). Instead, I quickly found I only used the previous digital system to access lenses I didn’t have equivalents to in Micro 4/3. As the (rather few) lenses I needed in the format became available and I got them, I stopped using APS-C entirely, not so much as a conscious decision, as that it stopped being something I needed. I preferred the results, for many reasons, from the slightly smaller format cameras.

About a year later, I got on the B&H waiting list for the Lumix G3 when it came out, because I wanted the integral EVF. When it arrived, I found that the build-quality wasn’t as nice as the GF1, but the EVF was, as expected, much better, and more convenient than the accessory EVF for the earlier camera. They had bumped the MP count from 12 to 16 without losing exposure range (a.k.a. dynamic range) or noise performance, though without improving either.

Then, I was, in digital age terms, patient. GX1, G5—many offerings of ever smaller cameras, which are for a different audience—while all along Olympus was keeping up or jumping ahead with their own new cameras. Until the GX7 was announced.

It had always been obvious to me what I wanted from Micro 4/3—a digital experience as close as possible to my decades of using M Leica film cameras. When the GX7 was announced, I got on the waiting list. This past Halloween, as dusk set in, there was no Trick (we live far enough out in the country that there are no kids on patrol) but a definite Treat. A new tool delivered by a weary UPS driver.

Storm Fronts, Ancramdale, New York, 11/17/13. With my earlier Micro 4/3 cameras I would have needed to do a lot of work in Adobe Camera RAW to hold the wide range of subject brightness here. With the GX7, an exposure with no plus or minus compensation held the range so easily that I had to raise the contrast in ACR to convey the drama of the scene.

All the talk about this camera seems to center on the "retro" styling. In fact, the new design of the body and controls really is a big deal and will be the subject of subsequent posts. But for now I want to talk about the capability of the sensor. No graphs or charts, because what I care about is how much subject information the sensor provides that, after RAW processing, I can make into convincing detail and tone in a print.

There's plenty of data in a RAW file that you can't print. RAW file processors can also invent data that wasn’t recorded, based on an algorithm analysis of existing data (that's also known as "guesswork"). I don’t find this convincing—RAW processing is easy to overdo. Nothing new about this, of course. The Zone System and similar traditional techniques were all about the fact that film can handle vastly more data than printing paper. The trick to controlled exposure and development is to limit the film’s data content to a range the printing paper can handle. That well-controlled combination of film and paper can handle a range of subject brightness that still exceeds the ability of digital capture; but capture keeps on improving and catching up.

Compared to the G3 (I haven't seen results from any intermediate releases) the GX7 has a big gain in exposure range. Not a tweak, but more like nearly 2 EV of usable, convincingly printable exposure range. Scenes that would have strained the ability of the earlier camera fit so comfortably that they look a bit "flat" at the ACR defaults and need to have their range expanded in RAW processing. As a side effect, many scenes that would have required minus exposure compensation to avoid clipping the highlights are fine without compensation. This is good because if you haven't lowered the overall exposure to save the highlights, you won't have to pull the darker values back up in RAW processing, and that can mean richer, smoother dark values in the final print.

The other sensor issue everyone cares about is high ISO noise. I'm old enough that I'm just amazed at how much better digital capture is, even with smaller sensors, than 35mm film ever was. Still, comparing again to the earlier Lumix G3, I'd call it a one-EV gain: 1600 looks like 800 used to; 3200 looks like 1600 used to. That means that in "available darkness" I won't hesitate to use 3200 and will expect results I couldn't get close to with 35mm film.

•     •     •

Next, camera body style, features, and handling.

Carl
Website / Working Pictures blog

©2013 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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Featured Comments from:

Sam: "Yay! Carl's back! Can't wait for more posts, and more pictures hopefully? I always enjoy looking at my lovely print of yours of the Bon Air Motel."

Steve G, Mendocino: "An excellent start and I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the series. I currently have a pair of G3 bodies and was happy with them, but your observations on the dynamic range of the GX7 vs. the G3 have acted like a shot of starting fluid on my GAS!"

Carl Weese: Texas Towns (a Mini-Portfolio)

Canyon, Texas

Zephyr, Texas

Abilene, Texas

Gatesville, Texas

Scotland, Texas

 

 Original contents copyright 2012 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.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

David Miller: "Hey—it's Saskatchewan! (Without the snow….)

Kevin Purcell: "Am I the only one to hear the (Ry Cooder) theme from Paris, Texas when viewing these?"

Jason: "Where are the people?"

Roger Bradbury: "I keep looking again at 'Canyon, Texas.' Thanks, Carl."

Anniversary Report

Yesterday was the 79th anniversary of the opening of the first drive-in theater, in 1933, which Google commemorated on its main page with one of its Google doodles (in the shape of a ticket, notice). Also to mark the occasion, Chicago's WGN Radio 720 conducted an interview with our friend Carl ("Odysseus") Weese from the road somewhere in the southern Great Plains. The interview's fun: the interviewer is intelligent, Carl articulate; both did a good job, methought.

Odysseus—er, Carl—had a hard couple of days: there's an oil boom in the panhandles, and the opportunistic labor force is sucking up all the available housing, including motel rooms, shutting him out. He had to drive hundreds of miles just to find a place to lay his head.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Update: The American Drive-In Movie Theater

Photo by Carl Weese

For those who were following along, I'm pleased to report that Carl Weese's epic western journey did indeed get funded, and then some.

An excerpt from his message to backers:

The American Drive-in Theater Kickstarter campaign ended with an amazing 196% of the initial funding goal. This means that I'll be able to cover many more theaters than allowed by the original bare-bones itinerary. I'll also add an additional loop later in the fall to work with theaters in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. The response has been wonderful, with a total of 272 Kickstarter Backers. People around the country are looking  up theaters and sending me scouting pictures by email. Theater owners, when I can make contact with them, are enthusiastic about being included in the project.

It's been quite an experience. There have been a number of media interviews about the project. An arts organization in Florida has invited me to do a week-long Artist in Residence session in the fall. An arts and culture magazine in Paris has asked to publish a portfolio of the pictures. And I can't wait to hit the road, though because of the way the funds are handled through Amazon Payments the trip won't be able to begin until about May 18th. Thanks to everyone who has participated in the smallest to the largest ways. Every backer at every level is important because the support shows how much public interest there is in the subject and this project. Again, thanks to everyone.

Carl tells me that an important percentage of his backers (though not the majority) arrived from TOP, so you can pat yourself on the back!

If he's able to do it, I'll ask him if he can provide a progress report or two for us from the road.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Carl Blesch: "Drive-ins aren't really my thing; while I dimly remember a few from my childhood, I was a bit young for their heyday. Still, I made a modest contribution to Carl's project because I admire the way he has a theme, a goal, and a historically valid and worthwhile mission. As such, he sets a good example for me to look for themes in my endeavors and to focus my efforts. Best wishes for success!"