High contrast black & white film

[FBA]

Hi bros,

I'm moving from digital to film. Am interested to experiment with B&W film. The kind of look I'm trying to achieve is the really contrasty black and white like in the photos below. Can recommend any tips? Like what film types/brands to use? What filters should be used (if any)? And any special mentions on shooting techniques, like if I should underexpose my shots?

Thanks in advance bros!

http://tomaszlazar.pl/stories/theater-of-life/#

http://www.lensculture.com/petersen.html#


FARI

 

[Royale With Cheese]

Red or green filters should be able to give you the effect.

 

[FBA]

Thanks bro. And this will work with any B&W film at all ISOs?

Red or green filters should be able to give you the effect.

 

[gbealnz]

I agree, red filter, and possibly "hard" (contrasty) paper selection. Some films and developer combinations are known for more contrast, certainly IIRC you can process to "up the contrast".
Trial and error, lots of both usually.
Gary

 

[FBA]

Underexpose as in during the shooting process? So if I'm using ISO 200 film, underexpose by shooting at 1/500secs?

Thanks again for the tips bro!

Fari

Or you could just deliberately under expose your B&W film by a stop or two.

 

[foxtwo]

Or you could just deliberately under expose your B&W film by a stop or two.

then during processing you have to push. +2, +3

It's more expensive with push processing if you go to a lab. And not all labs may do it, you have to check with them.

 

[foxtwo]

Underexpose as in during the shooting process? So if I'm using ISO 200 film, underexpose by shooting at 1/500secs?

Thanks again for the tips bro!

Fari

are you using manual film camera? if you can rate the whole roll as ISO 400 or 800 then you don't need to keep fiddling with the shutter speed.

 

[FBA]

I was thinking of scanning it instead of printing. Some the photos above look like they were taken in HDR and then converted to B&W. I could be wrong though.

I will experiment with red filter, plus a bit of underexposure and see if I reproduce the same effect. Hope it doesn't end in a mess!

Fari

I agree, red filter, and possibly "hard" (contrasty) paper selection. Some films and developer combinations are known for more contrast, certainly IIRC you can process to "up the contrast".
Trial and error, lots of both usually.
Gary

 

[FBA]

Thanks bro. Can your technique also be used in combination with a color filter?

By underexposing, I mean for example shoot ISO 400 film at ISO 800, and then develop the film normally as ISO 400 film. That will result in one stop under exposure on the film. No need for special film processing such as push processing. When you scan the film, the blacks will still be black and the shadows will be blocked up, but the light areas will still be light. Viola! Instant high contrast image.

 

[FBA]

Yes, I am using a manual film camera.

Fari

are you using manual film camera? if you can rate the whole roll as ISO 400 or 800 then you don't need to keep fiddling with the shutter speed.

 

[raytoei]

Hokay...alot of good advice here...let me put some sense into this:

note: in analog photography, there is a lot of rule-of-thumb advice,
ie. shortcuts that work for people but it doesn't mean that it will
work for everyone else. this is very different from digital photography
where photoshop instructions are very deterministic.

okay, back to your question: How do you get High Contrast photos.

1. Some films are naturally high contrast. eg. Fuji Acros 100.

2. Compared with old single coated lens, modern lenses are naturally higher in contrast.
eg. Nokton 35/f1.4 MC multi-coated is higher in contrast. Nokton 35/f1.4 SC single coated
is lower in contrast.

3. Underexposure + Over-Development = increase in contrast.

eg. Neopan 400 is supposed to be shot at iso 400, but you expose it at 1600 iso, (ie. 2 stops from 400 -> 800 -> 1600)
and you develop it as-if it were a 1600 film, this is known as pushing.

Increased in Agitation while developing will increase in contrast.

4. The printing part can be adjusted to increase in contrast. In the ole days,
you would take a negative and enlarge it to make a print. Depending on the paper
or the enlarger you can increase the contrast. eg. grade 1 to 5. where 5 is high contrast.

In the modern world, we now scan negatives with our scanner. Increase in contrast
can of course be done digitally through the scanning software or through Photoshop.

5. Other variables:
* Choice of Developer also affects the contrast, eg. Universal developer like PQ Developer results in higher contrasts.
* Your lighting and expsoure
* Filters increase contrasts.

here is an example:

Leica CL with canon 50/f1.9 with yellow filter.
film is tri-x 400, pushed one stop to 800 iso
and developed in t-max developer.

(how many higher contrast elements did you count in there ?)

 

[sweat100]

If you need extreme high contrast for that look or for artistic value, try to get ur hands on technical pan and expose at E.I. 200. It is almost black and white without grey.

 

[Redshutter]

very nice!!!

 

[FBA]

Hi bros. Thanks for all the inputs. I actually tested out a with a friend's M6 last week. Here are the results. I'm not sure why there's such bleeding in some of the photos? Is it because of the development process or I didn't get the exposure right?

Shooting set up: Kodak Tri-X ISO 400, Leica M6 and Summicron 28mm

https://picasaweb.google.com/farinaz407771/InternationalWomenSDay?authkey=Gv1sRgCJWi_p6N4Ie4sAE

Fari

 

[losheng]

By underexposing, I mean for example shoot ISO 400 film at ISO 800, and then develop the film normally as ISO 400 film. That will result in one stop under exposure on the film. No need for special film processing such as push processing. When you scan the film, the blacks will still be black and the shadows will be blocked up, but the light areas will still be light. Viola! Instant high contrast image.

This really doesn't sound right. When you deliberately underexposes your film, your highlights becomes thin on the neg. Overall the neg looks thin. You will need to extend development time to add the density back to the highlights. This is how it is done in the analog approach. However, as I think this through, since you have a second chance at tweaking the contrast curve in photoshop, this might indeed work, but the result might not be what you are looking for, as your mid tones will have far less details than usual - I don't know - do you have any samples of images that were done this way?

Film and developer selection, exposure ei and development time changes the contrast curve of the film. Filters changes the relative gray value placement of different colors. A red filter darkens the sky and lightens the skin tone, for example.

A really contrasty film is the ilfopan 50. It's so contrasty that I actually find it hard to shoot! You may want to give that a try just to see what it is like to be over the top - after all, you won't know what's enough until it is too much

 

[lualua]

What u want to do here is to increase contrast, under exposing by 1 stop WILL NOT achieve that. It simply shifts all your zones off by 1 stop. Rather, like what Raytoei explained, push processing(underexpose, overdevelop) is the correct way to increase the contrast. it actually expands the zones.

On a personal note, the most important point to note is the choice of scene. Snap a scene with flat tones and lightings and no amount of pushing, agitation or application of colour filters will help you create that effect!

edited note : my apologies, it should be under exposing. not over exposing... but the shift remains unchanged.

By underexposing, I mean for example shoot ISO 400 film at ISO 800, and then develop the film normally as ISO 400 film. That will result in one stop under exposure on the film. No need for special film processing such as push processing. When you scan the film, the blacks will still be black and the shadows will be blocked up, but the light areas will still be light. Viola! Instant high contrast image.

 

[sfoto100]

What u want to do here is to increase contrast, over exposing by 1 stop WILL NOT achieve that. It simply shifts all your zones off by 1 stop. Rather, like what Raytoei explained, push processing(underexpose, overdevelop) is the correct way to increase the contrast. it actually expands the zones.

On a personal note, the most important point to note is the choice of scene. Snap a scene with flat tones and lightings and no amount of pushing, agitation or application of colour filters will help you create that effect!

learned something here .. tks alot..

 

[crispy12]

If you are scanning film yourself, it's much easier to do in digital and expose normally instead. You lose a lot of dynamic range when pushing film, if you don't mind doing the digital PP then it's much better because of the non-destructive nature. Also high contrast negs are difficult to scan. IMO the best way to get contrast is to use particular film/dev combinations, and high contrast grade paper if you print in darkroom

Also +100 about having good light. I learnt this the hard way, wasted a lot of film taking flat scenes.

 

[FBA]

Thanks bro. I will try the scanning option and shoot as per normal -- i didn't know making the negatives high contrast will make them difficult to scan! So thanks for that. I guess Fotohub is the only option if I wanna scan to TIFF format; I don't think JPEG is editable, not without losing information?

Fari

If you are scanning film yourself, it's much easier to do in digital and expose normally instead. You lose a lot of dynamic range when pushing film, if you don't mind doing the digital PP then it's much better because of the non-destructive nature. Also high contrast negs are difficult to scan. IMO the best way to get contrast is to use particular film/dev combinations, and high contrast grade paper if you print in darkroom

Also +100 about having good light. I learnt this the hard way, wasted a lot of film taking flat scenes.

 

[sweat100]

Chaps, I'm only talking about one stop under exposure which is not a whole lot for black and white film. But is still enough to reduce the shadow detail somewhat, and that results in less information between the blacks and whites. In my work flow (scanning using a Coolscan 5000 and PP with Nikon View) this results in a contrastier image.

But as we've already learned from this thread, there's more than one way to "skin a cat". In fact there's lots of ways to do it. The best thing is to try out different things and see what works for you.

Your work flow does not change the contrast of the negative but everything is shift down by one grey level as lualua said. In your workflow, it was post processing that brought up the contrast not inherent of the film characteristic itself. I agree that it gets to the same end point, hwoever that does not make the negative more contrasty.