Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Black and White....

During summer vacations I rediscovered the beauty of argentic B&W photography and those times where I learned how to process an manufacture a picture using a film camera.



Finally, is the principle so different compared to the digital electronic coding? The image is stored in a chemical memory deposited on the film and has to be revealed later on. While the digits are stored in a memory card in the digital camera.

The image is captured using basically identical lenses and all the rules of light managmement are valid.



processing differs completely of course, but once scanned, an argentic picture can be printed of modified as a digital one!! The shot is also different. The 36 exposures and the impossibility to check the result immediately make the picturing rather different. It recquires clearly more careness and the effect of slight changes in the light can't be seen directly.

Visual effects of black-and-white pictures are very specific and evocative in certain circumstances. It's even very pleasent to play with B&W processing of digital pictures.

Here is one digital pictures recently taken using my Nikon Coolpix L11 in its dive housing.



It was taken a cloudy day. I colorized the image using very desaturated monochrome blue and added a filter to mimick the grain of high-sensitivity film:



The large undetailed areas can be used to had a text for an advertising-like picture :



Or here in French with a reference to our dive-watch forum:



The magic of the digital processing to get multiple possibilities of tones otherwise very difficult, or impossible to get chemically of course.

Here is a copper-like version :



But I'm still waiting for finishing my roll and process the real film! Finding consumable for argentic photos is nowaday not so easy. A camera shop in Lyon, France still sells everything necessary (Leica Central Photo Centre conseil 22 rue Algérie 69001 Lyon). I was suprized of the numerous caution notes on the packages. Hydroquinone and hyposulfites are indicated very toxic for the environment...something that was not at all indicated in the 70's.

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