# School Assignment



## white (Mar 7, 2010)

I just started taking photography classes at college and one of our first assignments was depth of field. I have a Minolta SRT-202 with a 50 mm prime lens, f/1.4 - /16. I shot this picture at f/1.4 with ilford Hp5 400. I think it turned out okay. I kinda wish I shot it at f/2 or /2.8, though, to make sure the cat was in full focus. Curious what you guys think.




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## DRoberts (Mar 7, 2010)

Needs better focus on the cat's face, especially the eyes. Other than that a good start.


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## Cosette (Mar 15, 2010)

definitely should have had the cat in focus


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## white (Mar 16, 2010)

Right.

I shot wide open (f/1.4) and the focusing distance was rather small, so there was an extremely narrow depth of field. I figure I could've done better at f/2.8 or even 3.5. Also, manual focus is a ***** sometimes, especially with things that move and don't want to be photographed.


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## white (Apr 6, 2010)

*First Darkroom Print*

Last night I got a chance to make a contact sheet and a print in my school's darkroom. I think it turned out okay. I included the original to show the crop that I really, _really_ did not want to make. But the crooked line had to go.












Tech specs:
Minolta SRT-202 w/ 50 mm Rokkor-X f/1.4
ilford HP5 400
1/2 @ f/8


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## SoonerBJJ (Apr 6, 2010)

First, welcome to film!

DOF has already been mentioned.  If you are going to shoot close at wide aperture you have to be EXTREMELY precise with your focus.  You have no margin for error.

Is the cat a scanned negative or print?  You've got some dust and/or scratch issues going on with both images.

The tones look a muddy gray for me.  If they are prints you might need to adjust printing time or the grade at which you are printing for better contrast.  If they are scanned negatives you may still need to adjust contrast to get a better representation of the negative's potential.

My early prints were a muddy gray, too.  This improved with more attention to printing times and contrast.  Printing longer to bring in the shadows and filtering for some contrast made a big difference.

Keep at it!  Printing is extremely rewarding as you work through these issues.


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## white (Apr 6, 2010)

SoonerBJJ said:


> First, welcome to film!
> 
> DOF has already been mentioned.  If you are going to shoot close at wide aperture you have to be EXTREMELY precise with your focus.  You have no margin for error.
> 
> ...


The newest pictures were printed on ilford multi-grade paper with no filter. My teacher said the paper has the equivalent of a #2 filter.

Yesterday was my first time printing ever. We haven't covered printing filters yet, or burning and dodging. That's probably what we'll be doing tomorrow.

The picture of the door/flower/lamp was adjusted in photoshop. The print is much more contrasty in real life: 







And this is something new I printed tonight. 12 seconds at f/16. I have a lighter print which is 9 seconds at f/16, but the white in her hood was really blown-out. I liked it, though, because there was more detail in her jacket and you could see the back of the chair she was sitting in, instead if being all black.


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## stone_family3 (Apr 6, 2010)

I just did this assignment last quarter in my Foto 111 class. I agree the cat's face needs to be a bit more in focus. But you're off to a good start. Once you get into using filters and maybe the zone system you could make some really nice prints.


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## cnutco (Apr 6, 2010)

Great pics!

The only thing I see, that does not have to do with DOF, is the cat.  I would like to see a picture with the cat on the right side looking to the left.  Giving him space to look through in the picture.


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## SoonerBJJ (Apr 6, 2010)

white said:


> The newest pictures were printed on ilford multi-grade paper with no filter. My teacher said the paper has the equivalent of a #2 filter.


 
The more experienced printers may correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't sound correct to me. Variable contrast paper only prints at #2 contrast IF you use a #2 filter.

Either way, the door/flower/lamp needs more contrast. The highlights on the back wall are blocked out. Examine your negative and see if you've got detail on the wall. If so, you can bring it in with longer printing time.

Once you learn about dodging and burning you'll be able to manipulate the girl's image to bring in all your highlight and shadow detail.

With time you'll learn to evaluate your negative for all the information it contains. You may not be able to capture all it's highlight and shadow details with a simple straight print if it exceeds the range of your paper, but with burning, dodging and use of contrast you'll be able to bring it all into the image. That is where printing gets VERY cool.

To paraphrase St Ansel, the negative is like the score and the print is the performance.

In the very beginning learn the principles of developing and enlarging with basic dodging, burning and contrast control. Tighten up your technique, ie controlling dust, scratches, cross-contamination of chemicals, etc. Then start developing the creative and technical tools at your disposal for making the expressive print and realizing your vision.

Stick with it. You WILL be rewarded for your efforts.

And you should check out the forum at apug.org for more info about film photography than you can possibly digest in a lifetime.


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## white (Apr 7, 2010)

Thanks, Sooner. Today I didn't spend a lot of time practicing burning like I thought I would -- just enough time to discover that precise burning is _tough_! I have a few negatives which are good candidates for burning, so I guess I'll just keep at it.

Maybe you can help shed some light on something for me. I read that a good rule of thumb is to "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights". Does that mean for an overexposed negative I should underdevelop or overdevelop? All of the pictures in this thread (except the cat) were developed for 60 seconds. The shadows usually come up first and get progressively darker the longer they sit in the tray. 

Anyway, here's three prints I made tonight. I'm using less paper to get prints that are _decent_, at least, which is an improvement from a couple days ago. The picture of the hands was adjusted in photoshop -- the detail in the hands isn't as dark in the print. It will be one of the pictures I'm going to practice burning with.


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## SoonerBJJ (Apr 7, 2010)

The saying "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights" applies to the NEGATIVE, not the print.  For now I would focus on normal development, especially if you are shooting 35mm roll film.  Expose your photos as well as possible and develop normally.  Don't mess around with pushing and pulling your film yet.  If you are shooting roll film you would need to over/underdevelop the whole roll and develop accordingly.  Don't worry about it yet.  Expose normally and develop normally.

Developing your negatives and developing your film are two different processes and should be considered separately.

Normally develop your negative and then determine a printing strategy based on what you've got on your negative.  Printing time is going to depend on the density of your negative, paper, grade, height of your light, etc.  Determine your exposure time and any dodging/burning and then develop the PRINT normally, too.  Ask your teacher how long you should develop the print and develop every print for the same amount of time.  Don't go changing too many variables at once because you won't know where you screwed up.  Don't develop by inspection either, ie don't sit there watching and pull it out when you think it looks good enough.  They look different in the safelight than they will dried in regular lighting.  They almost always dry down and your blacks will be flat or underdeveloped.  I thought your muddy prints above might have been underdeveloped.  Mine looked like that for awhile because I was jacking around with print developing times because I thought I knew better.  I was wrong and wasted paper.  Find out how long you should develop and develop for that long every time.  That is assuming your developer isn't depleted.  Ask your teacher how to go about testing or replenishing the developer.

How are you metering?  Modern film has a pretty wide latitude so you'd have to really screw up your exposure to bump your highlights off the shoulder or drop the shadows off the toe.  That saying about exposing and developing is in reference to the Zone System.  Definitely explore the ZS later when you have a spot meter, but save that for later.

The hands would be a good one to practice with.  You've been shooting wide open again, haven't you?  The DOF is so narrow I can't really tell where the focal plane is supposed to be.

You are obviously thinking about all the right things.  Keep at it.  Learn the basics and understand the process.  Learn the "normal" way to do things, then you can go about tweaking them to realize your vision.

Cool stuff, isn't it?


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## white (Apr 8, 2010)

Thanks man. I really appreciate all the advice. I have a Minolta SRT-202, so I've been using the in-camera light meter which is center-weighted matrix, I believe. I'm still on the fence about whether the camera's meter is off slightly (causing overexposure) or my ineptitude.  I'm more inclined to blame it on myself, though.

For most of these pictures I metered for the shadows, so when I re-composed the shot the meter typically read 1-2 stops overexposure. But for some, like the hands, I'm pretty sure the meter was set for normal exposure. So the negative & print were surprising -- I mean the forearm is basically pure white in the print. I chose to scale it down a little in photoshop.

I keep a log of all the settings. And you're right about shooting the hands wide-open, lol -- I'm a sucker for narrow depth of field. It was shot at 1/500 @ f/2, and I was pretty close to the subject. I probably could've shot at f/3.5 or f/4 and achieved the desired look. I wanted the hands in focus, but little else.

The curtain shot was 1/60 @ f/2.8 with a 50 mm prime lens. I had to use that setting because I didn't have a tripod set up and there was little light. Again, I'm surprised by the missed focus for the items on the table. I focused about halfway on that cardboard box flap; I guess it wasn't enough.

With this next roll I'm shooting I'm going to make sure the exposures are all normal. It might be tricky, though, since the assignment is line/architecture, and I'll probably be using a red filter for the landscape shots.

I try to print using the same variables all the time. I use the same enlarger (whenever possible), and typically all of my decent prints are 12 seconds @ f/16. Another question: I could get the same print at 6 seconds @ f/11, right? What are the benefits / disadvantages to longer and shorter print exposure times?

I don't think the developer would be depleted. We have a few lab techs who are usually on top of things.

Anyway, thanks again for all the help. Yeah it's really cool stuff. I don't care that film seems to be dying off. It's good fun being able to do this stuff hands-on.


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## SoonerBJJ (Apr 8, 2010)

A couple of issues.  When you say you're metering for the shadows, how are you doing so?  To use Zone System terminology, your meter is going to meter that area for Zone 5 or middle gray.  If you then pull back and shoot the scene at those settings it is going to overexpose everything.  Your shadows are going to come out middle gray.  Not good for the shadows and the highlights are going to be 2-3 stops overexposed.  "Metering for the shadows" implies that you are going to meter the shadow area and then stop down from there to put the shadows 2-4 stops below middle gray, depending on how much texture and detail you want in the shadows.

With that center-weighted meter you have to get up close enough to the shadow area so that it completely fills your frame.  Any light that bleeds over from the more lighted areas is going to throw your meter off and you will be overexposing.  Metering small, specific areas can be problematic with a center-weighted meter.  Get a spot meter if you truly want to go there.

This is all Zone System 101.  But like I said, learn the basic operations and principles before you start messing around with the ZS.

re: DOF.  Like I said, if you are going to shoot shallow DOF at close range you have to be extremely precise.  You have no margin for error.  At that close range you will have a relatively shallow DOF even when you stop down a few stops.  

re: the forearm.  If you have detail in the forearm in the negative and not in the print then you aren't printing long enough.  You can either print the whole thing longer or burn in the arm.  If you've got detail in the negative then you CAN bring it into the print.  If Photoshop can pull out the detail then so can your enlarger.

re: print times.  1 full stop should roughly double or half the time for printing.  An advantage of longer times is that it gives you more time and margin for burning and dodging.  It is really difficult to make subtle manipulations with short times.  In theory you can lose sharpness at long times due to more diffusion of light within the emulsion.  The longer the light falls on the paper the more time and opportunity it has to bounce around and spill over.  My times are relatively short and I haven't had this problem but I've heard it from others.

And film isn't dying off.  It is alive and well.


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## white (Apr 10, 2010)

Some new ones. I got my first assignment. It's "Line / Architecture". Supposed to have 4 prints, preferably 2 for each concept.

I'll probably reshoot this one. I love the tones, but there are a couple things in the picture that bug me.






The actual print of this looks lighter and better. I just don't feel like messing with it in photoshop right now. Lazy. And tired.


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## white (Apr 10, 2010)

SoonerBJJ said:


> A couple of issues.  When you say you're metering for the shadows, how are you doing so?  To use Zone System terminology, your meter is going to meter that area for Zone 5 or middle gray.  If you then pull back and shoot the scene at those settings it is going to overexpose everything.  Your shadows are going to come out middle gray.  Not good for the shadows and the highlights are going to be 2-3 stops overexposed.  "Metering for the shadows" implies that you are going to meter the shadow area and then stop down from there to put the shadows 2-4 stops below middle gray, depending on how much texture and detail you want in the shadows.


Right. I knew light meters were calibrated to make everything middle gray, but I didn't think about stopping down to make the shadows fall into Zone III or II. Normally I filled the frame with the shadows knowing that it would turn them middle gray and I thought I could "fix" the overexposure by underdeveloping. Like you said, though, that's a little over my head at the moment.



> re: DOF.  Like I said, if you are going to shoot shallow DOF at close range you have to be extremely precise.  You have no margin for error.  At that close range you will have a relatively shallow DOF even when you stop down a few stops.


I used to want to shoot everything at f/1.4 because I love soft blur, but I've learned through painful trial and error that f/2.8 is often good enough for my purposes, and sometimes even f/4 if I am close enough to the subject.

Anyway, today while I was printing the photograph of the building, I discovered that my enlarger lens shifted focus to different parts of the negative, causing either the foreground or background to blur. Thing is, most of the negative is *sharp*. So when I made the print I focused on the foreground bricks, since that is what I could see clearly. What I am wondering is if the enlarger lens functions like an ordinary camera lens, and if so, that I should focus my enlarger somewhere in the middle of the image to ensure that  everything in focus _in the negative_ is _in focus in the print_.

Probably not. It's likely due to having the enlarger lens wide open (f/2.8) to ensure maximum light for focusing, right?


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## SoonerBJJ (Apr 12, 2010)

white said:


> What I am wondering is if the enlarger lens functions like an ordinary camera lens, and if so, that I should focus my enlarger somewhere in the middle of the image to ensure that everything in focus _in the negative_ is _in focus in the print_.
> 
> Probably not. It's likely due to having the enlarger lens wide open (f/2.8) to ensure maximum light for focusing, right?


 
Some of the more experienced printers may feel free to step in, but the enlarger lens does function like the camera lens.  It has its "sweet spot" as does the camera lens and that is typically a few stops down from wide open.

I was taught to generally print at 5.6 or 8 and was advised that there is rarely any reason to go any wider.  At those wider apertures your image is going to go softer toward the periphery.

What is sharp in your negative should also be sharp on your print.  In the beginning I was using a lower power lupe and told to focus on some straight line toward the center of the image and make it sharp.  My eyes are pretty good but I was having a hard time coming up with reproducable results.  I noticed a WORLD of difference in the sharpness of my prints when I started using a higher power grain focuser and actually focusing on the GRAIN in the image.  I generally prefer f/8 and focus to bring the GRAIN in sharp and have had much better results.

Don't use a wide open aperture.  You don't gain anything and unnecessarily shorten your print times and risk softening the edges.


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## white (Apr 12, 2010)

It's all starting to come together. Today was the first time I really experimented with contrast filters and dodging/burning. My dodging/burning skills definitely need some improvement. I spent most of the lab time getting this image right (the negative was really underexposed, and there was not much contrast in the sky):


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## SoonerBJJ (Apr 13, 2010)

Very cool.  Tell us what you did to get that print.  Camera, film, development, filter grade, printing time, where you dodged, paper?  I learn alot talking about the process.


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## white (Apr 13, 2010)

That one was shot with my Minolta SRT with a 28 mm prime lens and Red R2 filter. I stopped down to f/16 because I wanted to try hyperfocusing the lens to get great DOF. Shutter was 1/500; basically I didn't compensate enough for the filter and the negative was underexposed.

Film was ilford HP5 400, and I developed it the same way as I have been for most of the pictures in this thread -- 9 minutes @ 69 degrees, 30 sec. agitation initially and then 5 seconds every 30 seconds.

Ilford multigrade IV RC paper, #3 filter, printed for 12 @ f/16, dodged the right side of the building with my fist for about 2 seconds, and burned the sky for 2 seconds also. I kindof messed up while dodging, though -- there are supposed to be some light grays in the clouds near the buildings (instead of pure white).

I might make a new print today using a #4 filter and print it for 9-10 seconds instead. And burn / dodge better, of course.

Technical details aside, I'm curious what people think of the image. Let me know what works and doesn't. Personally, I think I could crop it better, and I may make a full negative print with border. And the way the building seems to lean bothers me, but I don't think there's much I can do about that.


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## SoonerBJJ (Apr 13, 2010)

I like the image and I like the crop.  I don't mind the leaning building, kind of gives it a surreal look.

I'm curious to know why you dodged the right side of the building?  It looks like you dodged as the building to viewer right and the sky in that corner look too light.

Personally I would NOT go up in contrast.  It is already contrasty and you're losing your midtones.  But I would try a few different strategies and see what you like best.

First, I would try going DOWN in contrast by 0.5 or 1 grade and print long enough to bring in the full blacks.  The sky looks good burned in but you can pick up more fine detail by going down in contrast.

I like where you're going with this.  The grays are still a little muddy, perhaps needs to be printed a little longer and then developed to completion?

Fix that building to far right so it doesn't look so light compared to the central building and burn in that bottom left corner.

Like I said, I like the composition the way it is.  Now you just need to fine tune the printing. Keep it up!


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## white (Apr 14, 2010)

Hell of a time in the darkroom today. Lot of effort, lot of wasted paper, and only two prints. Here is a new version of the building. Sigh. Muddy tones galore!






I'll post more about the image later. Suffice to say, I used a different enlarger that wasn't calibrated quite the same and it gave me a headache.

This picture is kind of boring; not sure why I printed it.


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## SoonerBJJ (Apr 15, 2010)

I think the sky looks great and I quite like the composition.  The building needs more exposure one way or the other, overall print time or burning.  Bring those detail-less shadow areas to black.

It is a matter of putting all the pieces together at the same time in one print.  I like the image and you've got the sky down.  Figure out the building and the foreground and you've got a print you can be proud of.  Ask your teacher for help.  Everything doesn't have to be trial and error and wasted paper.  Get advice from those who have gone before you.


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