[filmscanners] Re: Real-World Scene Brightness Range

["Daniel Merchant" <djmerchant@comcast.net>]

There are lots of threads here that I would like to respond to.

I think scanners are designed to work from images that were originally
properly exposed and processed.  I was asked by my wife to clean up a shot
that was both contrasty to begin with, and underexposed to boot.  I used
curves in Photoshop to add a toe and shoulder and then changed the slope
until I was able to improve the image.  The new image looks a lot better
than the original, but it is not perfect, and I don't think I can improve it
any more.  KODAK never made graded or variable contrast color papers for its
chemical processes, so this image could never have been cleaned up in the
chemical era.  Some flash fill when the original was taken would have
eliminated the need to do all of this digital wizardry.

Film has limited range, and that is where the Zone System helps you.  Don't
count on a scanner to do miracles for you.

Lets say I want to shoot a caucasian girl wearing a white bathing suit while
she is running on the beach in Jamaca.  Her flesh tones are supposed to be
Zone 6 (and that is where I place them), and the bathing suit comes in at
Zone 8.  The brightly lit sand comes in at Zone 12.  The shadows are not
important to me, so I don't care where they fall as long as I get some
blacks somewhere in the image.  If I am shooting B&W negative, then I might
be able to process it N+2 and make the image work (of course if its roll
stock then the all of the roll gets N+2 processing).  If I am shooting a
color slide film that I know to have a 10 stop range,  I can either :

1) Know that I will have no detail in the sand and live with it.
2) Come back on an overcast day when the brightness range will be reduced
(this works if the girl is a model that I have hired).
3) Build a light tent to bring the brightness range down.
4) Use fill flash to bring the girl's brightness up to a level where the
sand is not Zone 12 (might look like hell too!).
5) Recreate the scene in my studio.

If I am shooting with an 8 bit per channel  digital camera, then I have even
fewer options.

If I want to photograph the same girl pensively reading a book, sitting on a
rocking chair, located inside a New England fish shack,  while shooting the
shack from the outside (with her being revealed through the window), I have
a similar brightness range nightmare where shadow detail is important and I
don't care as much about the highlights.

The physics are bound to the original chemical limitations.  Digital methods
give you more flexability, but they still have to follow the same physics.
Outdoor photography starts with 10 zones.  Portature in a studio is probably
8 or 9 zones.  Good B&W shots print on a 2 or 3 grade of paper.  Yes you can
salvage mistakes with other grades of paper and lots of burning and dodging,
but the final image is compromised.  Color negatives don't have graded
papers to fall back on.  Slide don't allow for any correction in the
darkroom.  A scanner lets you do more than I could ever do in the darkroom
with multiple paper grades.

My point is that you need a good original, and the Zone system will help you
get a good original.  I know how the films that I use perform, and how to
determine if I can get the image or not.  All this talk about how contrasty
light is in different parts of the country or T-shirts of varying shaded of
gray in different lighting conditions does not help you get a better
original image.

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