kex said:
wow !!
my base exposure is at f16 18sec grade 2.5..
Areas i'm trying to dodge is mainly the kids tribal clothings in black!!(Arrgh..)
i'm trying to burn in the blown out sky and paddy fields..
i tried burning at grade 0 with dodging for 45sec+ and then expose the midtones and shadows normally..
i tried doing the base exposure and burn in the highlights with the same grade with dodging,results are alot better but still not satisfied..
the image is something like this ps'ed image
Actually I still don't understand! My brain cells are getting koyak!
Let me analyse the problem. You have an image that is very contrasty, with the girls' clothes black and the sky blown out. Unfortunately you have things sticking out from the "foreground" into the sky, making burning in the sky without creating a halo around the poles/ropes or making the top portion of the same poles/ropes black.
OK, now look at the negative.
Are there details in the girls' clothes? If it is all blank (white out) then all dodging will do is to make the clothes a dull grey. If details are there, then perhaps something can be done. Now let us look at the sky. Are there details - clouds? If empty, all that you will achieve by burning is an uninteresting textureless grey sky.
Let me assume that you have interesting details in the clothes and sky. It is extremely difficult to burn the sky without blackening the poles/ropes or creating a halo around them. There are contrast masking methods, but I think this is beyond me for the time being.
Solutions:
1 You must try to bring out the sky by lowering the "threshold" of the high values (sky) to allow details to come through in the base exposure. In a simple image, all that is required is to allow more exposure, something not possible here. I would suggest flashing. There are two ways to do this. A localised pre-flashing to the sky, or the whole paper. I think for simplicity sake, try the whole paper first. Use a paper, set aperture to eg f16, expose for 1 second, two seconds, three seconds etc in strips like making an initial exposure strips. Try up to 10 seconds. Then develop this paper normally. Look at the developed paper, and look for the strip that first show some "grey". When looking at this "flash strip" do not look at it under too bright light. Assuming the first strip to show some grey is at 4 seconds. The duration of flashing you will want is 3 seconds. Remember you will only want to reduce the threshold to allow the high values to come out. You do not want to make the high values grey. Now take a new paper, and flash it at f16 at 3 seconds. Then use this paper for the base exposure.
2 How to decide on the base exposure? Generally speaking, the duration of exposure is to to chose a duration for the hgh values of interest. I would think that the important high value here is the blouse of the girl at the centre. The sky can be a little white, and should be! Which contrast to chose? Remember increasing contrast makes shadows darker. So chose a lower contrast. What grade? I would suggest trying grade 1 or even grade 0. A major problem with seeing is that it is usually harder to reduce a grade than to increase a grade.
Let us say you chose grade 1, and if this does not bring out the details in the girls' clothes, then dodge them during the base exposue.
Try and see if this method might work.
