Friday I took some pictures that I envisioned as B&W. Last night
I got around to experimenting with a couple of those to see if
they'd go anywhere. I shot the same scene with the E-1 as well
as my A1.
Veddy int'resting.
The tonal adjustments were "extreme" to say the least. We're
talking very heavy-handed processing to achieve a "look" that
was as far from "realistic" as possible. In the darkroom, it
would have involved a double whammy of paper-flashing and
split-grade processing. In Photoshop (or during RAW conversion)
it was quite a bit easier--but not quite as much fun. :)
Without a doubt, the A1 produced a film-grain look that was
nearly identical to T400CN. You'd be hard pressed to tell the
difference in the final print. The E-1 produced a look which I
still can't figure out, but merges the cleanliness of
medium-format with a slight edginess of silver-film.
Then came the fun.
I didn't want "grainless" or "noiseless" as I was attempting to
achieve a look. Well, doing some testing, this is what seemed
to work well and will be a basis of further experimentation.
1. Process the image to your desired tonal extremes. Let the
blacks and whites go just a touch farther into 0%, 100% than you
normally would. Don't worry about noise/grain, just let it go.
2. Upsize the image to your desired print size. Do the scaling
with Bicubic.
3. Duplicate the image onto another layer.
4. Apply noise to that layer. I stayed with monochrome noise.
Not much, just enough to irritate you.
5. Apply a very light blur to that duplicated layer.
6. Blend the duplicated layer at about 25-30%.
7. Flatten image.
The end result is an image with an "organic" look to it and the
extreme blacks and whites now have a texture to them that looks
real instead of white-washed. The results are more B&W'ish than
anything I've ever achieved through normal processes. I applied
these steps after the initial conversion to monochrome (and
whatever goofy things you do there). My biggest problem with
digital B&W is the lack of "finesse" in the highlights and
shadows. Most films have a nice toe and shoulder that gives
details that is lost in digital capture. This additive noise
process mimicks the lost detail and can actually reveal details
that are maybe one or two brightness steps different by bringing
them back from the threshold.
If I can get a globbier noise pattern, I might be able to mimick
real B&W films. The grain in a B&W film creates (extremely)
localized diffraction artifacts which are not captured in the
film scanning process or digital capture.
Much more work to go, but at least I'm making headway.
AG
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