Going crazy making black & white prints

[Franglais]

Today is a public holiday in France so I've been doing some homework. I now have an Epson R2400 printer which can make excellent black & white prints so for the past week or so I've been rolling a few off, comparing prints made from scans of B&W negatives to prints made from digital concerted to B&W.

Cruel truth no 1: An image may look good (or bad) on screen but it may look worse (or better) when you print it. This is particularly true for digital "noise" which may be visible on screen at 200% magnification but is usually invisible on an A4 print.

Cruel truth no 2: Prints made from scanned B&W film (Ilford XP2 Super) look better than prints from straight desaturation of a digital image. Everybody said the digital image was dull. I had to up the green and red filters, introduce an S-curve and increase the sharpening for the digital images to look right.

Cruel truth no 3: On an A4 (8x10) print there is no visible difference between a 6Mpix DSLR and a 10Mpix DSLR. They both look good.

Cruel truth no 4: Not all prime lenses are suited to the latest generation of DSLR's. My little 28mm f2.8 works great on the D70 but on the D200 it's left way behind by the 18-70 kit lens and the 28-70 f2.8.

Any comments on this?

My raw material:

1. Anarchists march on 1st May 2005 done on Ilford XP2 Super with Nikon F75 + 35mm f2
2. Anarchists march on 1st May 2006 done on Nikon D70 RAW + 28mm f2.8
3. Beauty queens at Church Garden Party done on Nikon D200 + 18-70 DX

Charles

[walterick]

Today is a public holiday in France so I've been doing some homework. I now have an Epson R2400 printer which can make excellent black & white prints so for the past week or so I've been rolling a few off, comparing prints made from scans of B&W negatives to prints made from digital concerted to B&W.

Cruel truth no 1: An image may look good (or bad) on screen but it may look worse (or better) when you print it. This is particularly true for digital "noise" which may be visible on screen at 200% magnification but is usually invisible on an A4 print.

Cruel truth no 2: Prints made from scanned B&W film (Ilford XP2 Super) look better than prints from straight desaturation of a digital image. Everybody said the digital image was dull. I had to up the green and red filters, introduce an S-curve and increase the sharpening for the digital images to look right.

Cruel truth no 3: On an A4 (8x10) print there is no visible difference between a 6Mpix DSLR and a 10Mpix DSLR. They both look good.

Cruel truth no 4: Not all prime lenses are suited to the latest generation of DSLR's. My little 28mm f2.8 works great on the D70 but on the D200 it's left way behind by the 18-70 kit lens and the 28-70 f2.8.

Any comments on this?

My raw material:

1. Anarchists march on 1st May 2005 done on Ilford XP2 Super with Nikon F75 + 35mm f2
2. Anarchists march on 1st May 2006 done on Nikon D70 RAW + 28mm f2.8
3. Beauty queens at Church Garden Party done on Nikon D200 + 18-70 DX

Charles

Charles, I am going through a similar learning curve in home printing this week. I can verify Cruel Truth #1 myself. I find Truths #3 and #4 very interesting, though I shoot p&s digi so they don't apply to me.

I really did want to comment on your images here. The tones are simply fantastic! Some of the best I've seen here in some time. What ever hell you had to go through to get these, I tell you it was worth it. Hopefully your prints look as good as these files do!

Regards,
Rick

[Photo-John]

Cruel truth no 1: An image may look good (or bad) on screen but it may look worse (or better) when you print it. This is particularly true for digital "noise" which may be visible on screen at 200% magnification but is usually invisible on an A4 print.

The obsessive viewing of digital images at 100% is a curse of digital photography. It's especially foul because of all the tech-centric, non-photographically inclined nerds digital cameras have attracted. It doesn't matter what your images look like at 100% or more. It only matter how they look at output size - whether that's an 8x10 print or a 640x480 web image. When setting up images for final output - sharpening, noise-reduction, etc. - I use the "Print size" option in view and toggle between that and 50%.

Cruel truth no 2: Prints made from scanned B&W film (Ilford XP2 Super) look better than prints from straight desaturation of a digital image. Everybody said the digital image was dull. I had to up the green and red filters, introduce an S-curve and increase the sharpening for the digital images to look right.

Desaturated digital images are terrible. Black and white film is wonderful because of the contrast curve. For good digital B&W images, use a channel mixer adjustment layer. Here's a link to one of mine: http://gallery.photographyreview.com...sort=1&cat=500

Cruel truth no 3: On an A4 (8x10) print there is no visible difference between a 6Mpix DSLR and a 10Mpix DSLR. They both look good.

Yup. I'm still selling full-page and even double-page photos taken with my 4-megapixel EOS 1D. It's more about the file setup than the resolution in most cases. It does depend somewhat on the subject matter. Landscapes always benefit from more real detail. And, of course, for prints larger than 11x14, more resolution really does count. But I believe setup is still the most important factor in print quality - especially because most people have no clue how to set up a good file.

[Franglais]

I really did want to comment on your images here. The tones are simply fantastic! Some of the best I've seen here in some time. What ever hell you had to go through to get these, I tell you it was worth it. Hopefully your prints look as good as these files do!

Regards,
Rick

The killer is the first image done on film. That black banner with the off-white letters "la precarité tue" (being isolated kills - meaning AIDS victims) - in the print it's just bursting with tones of black and white, the printer did a beautiful job in rendering it (really pleased with the R2400).

So in the digital images first of all I used the channel mixer (in Nikon Capture - the original files are RAW) to add a lot of green filter and some red filter. This made skin tones lighter so that the faces are more readable.

It still lacked snap so I used the curves tool to change the tonal response from a flat line to an S. It took some playing around with to avoid putting too much contrast into the faces of the little princesses.

Finally I just stepped up the sharpness a bit so that it looked really clear but not unnatural.

Here is a screenshot from the Pacifist image. My system is in French but you can understand the settings

[walterick]

But I believe setup is still the most important factor in print quality - especially because most people have no clue how to set up a good file.

- Raises hand -

Looks like I'm gonna have to go take a photoshop class one of these days

[walterick]

That's great Charles thank you for the detailed description. I have Photoshop Elements but I assume many of these features are available there as well. I have yet to dig and learn how to use this software properly

[Loupey]

Charles, thank you very much for sharing your points and demonstrations!

Your point #3 confirms my suspicions that (at A4 level) with good technique a 6 MP (or 4 MP in John's case) camera can produce results that todays 8, 10, or 12MP camera can. At least on a humanly visual level.

I find your point #4 very interesting. My limited experience with zooms have been very positive and I have wondered if (and when) current generation zooms may surpass previous generation primes as manufacturers put more developmental $$$ into these highly marketable optics. Still, optics are optics - wonder what makes such a difference with digital equipment?

Thanks again. Oh, wonderful images btw.

[freygr]

Charles, thank you very much for sharing your points and demonstrations!

Your point #3 confirms my suspicions that (at A4 level) with good technique a 6 MP (or 4 MP in John's case) camera can produce results that todays 8, 10, or 12MP camera can. At least on a humanly visual level.

I find your point #4 very interesting. My limited experience with zooms have been very positive and I have wondered if (and when) current generation zooms may surpass previous generation primes as manufacturers put more developmental $$$ into these highly marketable optics. Still, optics are optics - wonder what makes such a difference with digital equipment?

Thanks again. Oh, wonderful images btw.

I'm still selling images that I took with a 3.2 mega pixel camera. Any camera with at least 3 mega pixels and good lens can generate a photo that will look good printed at 8 by 10 inches, if the photographer does there job.

[Franglais]

About Photoshop Elements - you can do what I do in Elements 1 & 2 but in version 3 they left out the Curves tool. This is scandalous. I now only use Elements for image manipulation (changing people's heads etc.). For the first step basic image correction I use the camera manufacturer's tool, which is much more powerful.

About why a lens - prime or other - would work well with a 6Mpix camera and fall down with a 10Mpix camera, even in the centre of the field, my understanding is this.

- Lenses are a compromise between contrast and definition.
- Perceived sharpness is a combination of contrast and definition
- My 28mm prime probably has lower definition but higher contrast than my zooms. Globally on film the result looks better than a zoom
- On digital the photosensitive sites are spread out horizontally and are much smaller than film grain (4 sites = 1 pixel).
- If the photosensitive sites are smaller than the definition of the lens there is suddenly a cut-off and the image falls to pieces.
- A zoom with higher definition but lower contrast can keep on resolving the detail - and the missing contrast can be put back in software.

Charles

[Loupey]

About why a lens - prime or other - would work well with a 6Mpix camera and fall down with a 10Mpix camera, even in the centre of the field, my understanding is this.

- Lenses are a compromise between contrast and definition.
- Perceived sharpness is a combination of contrast and definition
- My 28mm prime probably has lower definition but higher contrast than my zooms. Globally on film the result looks better than a zoom
- On digital the photosensitive sites are spread out horizontally and are much smaller than film grain (4 sites = 1 pixel).
- If the photosensitive sites are smaller than the definition of the lens there is suddenly a cut-off and the image falls to pieces.
- A zoom with higher definition but lower contrast can keep on resolving the detail - and the missing contrast can be put back in software.

Charles

Makes sense. It also explains why Canon states, in the descriptions for the newer "L" zooms, that certain lenses have been optically redesigned to perform better with digtal cameras. Since development of new generation primes have all but ceased, the divergence in useable equipment between the "film" and "digital" groups will continue to spread.

As unthinkable as it might be now, are we witnessing the beginning of the end of (not just 35mm film cameras) but primes ? It seems to me that manufacturers will need to redesign their entire prime lineup if they are serious about selling them to advanced/professional shooters in the future with digital bodies yet to be introduced.

Interesting how, in the past, manufacturers could pump out film bodies and lenses knowing that film technologies would not change so drastically as to render their lenses obsolete within the lenses lifetime. Ironic that digital is actually very expensive not only for the consumer but for the manufacturer as well.