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[OM] Rodents and plans - two thirds of the equation

Subject: [OM] Rodents and plans - two thirds of the equation
From: Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 10:41:06 -0500
Yesterday, I set out to do some B&W contrast filter testing with
digital. Other than being a bit on the warm side, the mid-afternoon
conditions were about perfect. This was all for a nice article on
www.zone-10.com.

Instead of real film, I decided to use the Panasonic DMC-L1. The
reason why I I wanted to use that camera is because the in-camera
processing and JPEG engine does a remarkably good job with doing B&W
conversions. I figured that I could use the camera this way.

It worked. Sorta.

I made a couple of assumptions and setting adjustments which did end
up screwing up the entire project. All was going along well until I
started putting the images up on the web page. Only then did I notice
that there was little to no difference between images. OK, time to
regroup and reshoot it with much more exacting settings. My visual
analysis of the scene contradicted what I saw with the Sekonic L-508
meter. It turns out that the meter was right. I was wrong. I also
messed up on converting the filter factor into stops. Thirdly, I had
made an aggressive white balance adjustment to make the camera pretend
to be one type of film stock, when in reality, only one film stock had
that spectral response AND it wrecked havoc with the filters. To
compensate for my wrong settings, I decided to do an automatic tonal
adjustment on the files. As you can imagine, with this many things
wrong, there wasn't enough right to really be educational. If I hand
adjust each image, you can easily see the differences, but when the
computer did an automatic process, all bets are off.

Why not use film? I could... But there is the time and cost involved.
There is also the aspect that no two films see the world the same way.
Besides, everybody knows that it is best to do your B&W conversions in
post. Right? Do B&W contrast control filters have ANY place in digital
photography, other than with Tina's M-Monochrom? In most
circumstances, I would agree that post is where it is at. But I'm also
seeing distinct advantages, at times, for a more "traditional
approach" to this.

Just a few observations:

1. Trust your handheld meter. Pretend that your digital camera has no
built-in meter at all. And, under absolutely no circumstances should
you trust the histogram. Pretend that your camera has no auto modes
and no meter. Built-in is fine if you are not using filters, but the
moment you put a filter on the lens, it throws everything off. Very
off. You DO own a handheld meter, right? It is amazing that such an
ancient technology does actually work better than the latest/greatest
metering technologies for B&W photography.

2. Daylight White-Balance for the "TMAX" look. Offset your
White-Balance to the blue if you want to simulate Tri-X. Not much,
just a little bit.

3. Do shoot RAW+JPEG. Use the highest quality settings for the
in-camera JPEG. Keeps the settings pretty normal--don't go for the
extreme contrast settings until you have a very good handle on what is
going on.

4. Do understand "Filter Factor" and how it precisely translates to
exposure compensation.

There are several other things that are coming to mind, but I need to
trim this off to prevent information overload. Besides, just stick
with post-processing and you'll all be happy. For those who do the
"shoot-chimp-shoot-chimp-shoot-chimp-process-edit" routine, maybe none
of this applies at all. Continue on in your bliss. Those of us who do
shoot B&W--especially film, having a better understanding of what
exactly the filters are doing and what they are doing to your exposure
might be of value.

This is definitely more for me than anybody else. I've been running
into some situations where what I thought was going to happen didn't.
So, a little bit of controlled testing will help me out.

-- 
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
-- 
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