HP5 and Rodinal
On that roll of HP5, along with Macconnell’s Mill in February, were b&w images of Saguaro National Park near Tuscon captured last year. I posted color images from that trip here and never got around to developing that roll until December and never got around to scanning that roll until, um, yesterday. This park is famous for its Saguaro cactus fields, and it also has a mound of petroglyphs from the Native American residents. It might be fun to compare this b&w image with original color one. Just as reminder, I found this place really full of energy and had quite an interesting visit there.
From a craft POV, the image above was worked pretty extensively in Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex. Why in the heck would you manipulate a b&w image in a tool designed to translate a color digital image into b&w in the first place?
This may, in part, be due to ignorance on my part. Silver Efex has a multitude of settings, only one of which is to choose a ‘film’ emulation type (which adds a contrast curve from that original film as was as a grain pattern). BTW, just a note: I’m not in love with some of their film emulations; the one for FP4 just seems way off to me, and I never use that emulation even though FP4 is either my first favorite film or, at worst, my second. But I digress.
However, Silver Efex also has ‘presets’ where they make global changes to the image BEFORE you choose a film emulation (which you do not have to do). These presets affect three factors: Brightness, Contrast, and Structure. I would guess readers of this blog don’t need definitions of Brightness or Contrast, and I think the definition of Structure might be ‘micro-contrast’ or ‘local contrast.’ Anyhoo, the presets emulate things like ‘pushing one stop’ or ‘pulling’ the film, and I really like those presets as a starting place. I generally run through most of my favorite presets (two of which are ‘pull one stop’ and ‘underexpose one stop, which give quite different results). For those not film-savvy, ‘pulling’ a film means to rate the film at a slower ISO then expose normally at that ISO, which increases the detail in the shadows, and then compensate for that ‘over exposure’ by changes in development so the highlights don’t blow out. You get increased shadow detail but less contrast. The image looks softer.
Under exposing means what you’d think, it is like exposing the frame at EV -1. You would develop normally, but the negative would be thiner with deeper shadows.
The other setting it has is a vignette that, unlike a similar tool in Lightroom, allows you to choose the center of the vignette.
I used both a Nik preset on this image, along with a de-centered vignette, and then used a brush in Lightroom to increase the contrast and clarity on the swirl.
I would really love to ‘see’ this process, some before/after images, possibly a video of the exploration process?
Why Lightroom and not Aperture?
Chris, it makes perfect sense to me. I’ve used Silver Efex on b&w images with what I thought was excellent results. It does allow a high level of fine tuning of any b&w image even if it started out as b&w in the first place. An interesting feel of texture to this photo.
Well, whatever you used, it’s nice! I see that you are still trying to get to the bottom of that bottle of Rodinal! Good luck. It might take a while. I love the petroglyph. I wonder what it means, if anything.
I am going to try and figure out how to do that, I really like that idea. Hmm, regarding Aperture, with v 1.0 of each, Aperture had lots of negative press, Lightroom had lots of positive press, and Lightroom (if I recall) was 1/2 to 1/3 the price. I’ve never used Aperture and have no compelling reason to switch. I have about 9,000 images in my Lightroom database, and since Lightroom stores only the changes to any image in the database (it leaves the original image untouched), I’m not sure how I’d export all of them to Aperture anyway.
Thanks, Earl.
I’ve seen that glyph on a number of southwest ruins (Peg has an image taken in the Valley of Fire in Nevada which is identical). Petroglyph scholar, anyone?
I think there was a huge price differential around v1 with these apps. I can’t imagine trying the migration if there was no automated means with a guarantee. I don’t know the apps, but know I keep feeling my adobe stuff is just bloated.
Well, you may be right, and I certainly was surprised when an app by Apple fell into disfavor with photographers so quickly, but it did. I know some big names who use it (Joe McNally for one), and I have never even tried it. Version 3.0 is supposed to be a big step forward, and I suppose I should really give it a shot. I also have never really searched for ways to migrate. But Lightroom does everything I want, to be honest.