You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘film’ tag.
This piece started as two series photographs. The first one, Black Water, was composed of 1,045 photographs and the second one, Two Gasometers, was composed of 873 photographs. These digital photographs were taken on a small fine quality, as I had to think about the output before the input. Small Fine quality on a Canon D20 camera means 1.2 Mb per picture at a resolution of 1728 x 1152 pixels. The maximum output quality – HDTV wide screen – is 1920 x 1080 and on an Imac screen is 1680 x 1050. This means that the Small Fine quality of the pictures is more than enough for the chosen output.
Once I composed the two footage together I encounter the problem that my film was 56.27 GB for a duration of 9 minutes. The settings of the sequence were Animation compressor and exported as a Quick Time movie. This massive size was quite difficult for the computers to reproduce smoothly. I had to drastically reduce the size if I wanted the movie to work.
I tried different compressions. On the first one the settings of the sequence were DV-PAL (720 x 576)with Animation compressor, this gave me a small film size but the resolution quality of the Quick Time movie (H 264) wasn’t good and the pixel size was reduced. I thought this could be still OK if I were to show it as a projection. But I really wanted to use a better quality display. By recommendation I also tried to change the settings of the sequence to HDV 1440 x 1080 the result was better but the file size was still quite big.
The next step was to find a good compressor for Quick Time. I tried Apple Pro Res and this gave me a better result, at HDV 1440 x 1080 I got 13.6 GB. To try to compress it a little further and still keep the same good quality I used Apple Pro Res 1080 x 720 and this has given me a file size of 6. 81GB which is a big difference from the initial 56.27 GB. The resolution of the movie is still good so I am quite happy to be able to show it without technical glitches.
The Zone System long associated with Ansel Adams and Fred Archer is a technique used to learn how to pre-visualize. Pre-visualization stands for the act of looking at a scene with the physical eye and seeing in the mind’s eye how a medium such as traditional black and white photography can render the subject.
The Zone System is a good methodology as it demystifies technique. Understanding it allows a simplification of the traditional photographic process (exposure, developing and printing). By getting perfect negatives with a precise exposure you reduce the time of post-production to get the results you desire.
TECHNIQUE
The Zone System splits any given scene into tonal zones, 11 steps of tonal values which the human eye can recognise. Adams and Archer took the spectrum of print values, from black to white, and, using f-stops as the standard of measurement, simply assigned a Zone to each value that each f-stop of exposure produced. This results in a Zone Scale, which is a visual representation of PRINT values from black to white. This technique can also be applied to colour negatives.
Zones are always represented in Roman Numerals. Zone 0 represents the maximum black that the print can produce. Zone X represents pure paper-base white – no image. The mid-grey is in Zone V, the middle of the scale.
The light meter provides exposure settings for Zone V, giving a correct exposure for a known Zone. That’s the starting point. By adjusting exposure the subject can be placed in any Zone, up or down the scale, from the starting point. The subject will assume the tonal value of the Zone in which it is placed.
“Expose for the shadows; develop for the highlights.”
Zone placement can be also controlled by the development of the B&W negative.
Shadow density is controlled predominately by exposure. Highlight density is controlled predominately by developing time. A little additional development will not significantly affect shadows, but will push highlights up the scale. As developing time is increased, negative densities increase, but highlight densities will increase the fastest. Therefore, contrast also increases with increased developing time. This is referred to as N+1, “normal development plus additional development to achieve one additional Zone.” N+2 implies two additional Zones.
Zone description
| 0 | Pure black |
| I | Near black, with slight tonality but no texture |
| II | Textured black; the darkest part of the image in which slight detail recorded |
| III | Average dark materials and low values showing adequate texture |
| IV | Average dark foliage, dark stone, or landscape shadows |
| V | Middle grey: clear north sky; dark skin, average weathered wood |
| VI | Average light skin;light stone; shadows on snow in sunlit landscapes |
| VII | Very light skin; shadows in snow with acute side lighting |
| VIII | Lightest tone with texture: textured snow |
| IX | Slight tone without texture; glaring snow |
| X | Pure white: light sources and specula reflections |
Digital photography
The Zone System can be used in digital photography just as in film photography; Adams (1981, xiii) himself anticipated the digital image. As with colour reversal film, normal procedure is to expose for the highlights and process for the shadows.
One way to expose a photograph correctly with a digital camera using the camera’s little LCD window, would be to take a quick reference meter reading of your subject and note where the histogram falls on the scale from right to left.
A histogram shows the concentration of tones, running from dark on the left to light on the right, it can be used to judge whether a full tonal range has been captured, or whether the exposure should be adjusted. Varying the exposure one or two stops would correct the image if it is too dark, the histogram should be as far right as it needs to be to avoid the problems caused by expanding the contrast.
Digital camera previews are generated based upon different assumptions, one of those assumptions being that the image is being taken as a JPEG. This means that when shooting RAW files the histogram that the camera creates won’t precisely match the one that will eventually be worked on. Raw files can recover highlights that may seem to be “blown out” on the histogram.
Applying the Zone System maybe a better way to take a correct exposure. The subject highlight values can be placed accurately on the Zone Scale. It is a similar system to that used with colour reversal film. In this case the subject needs to be exposed for the highlights.
If your in-camera light meter has a spot metering function, or if you have a hand held spot meter:
- Carefully meter the Zone VII important highlights of your subject
- Make note of the meter’s recommended exposure
- Since Zone V is two stops darker than Zone VII, opening up two stops from the meter’s recommended exposure for the textures highlight will accurately place them on Zone VII. This will be the perfect exposure for digital cameras. EG: 1/125 @f/22 becomes 1/30 @ f/22
HDR
Another method of getting great scene contrast can be accommodated by making one or more exposures of the same scene using different exposure settings and then combining those images.
Automatic layer alignment in the image editing software makes this combining easier. The image then can be combined in HDR software that assists precise registration of multiple images.
Similarly to traditional photography we need to take into account the postproduction on a digital image, every step is important. The tonal range of the final image depends on the characteristics of the display medium. Monitor contrast can vary significantly, depending on the type (CRT, LCD, etc.), model, and calibration. A computer printer’s tonal output depends on the number of inks used and the paper on which it is printed.
Digital exposing for the highlights
It should now be clear that there are important technical advantages to properly exposing digital image files, but using the Zone system with 35mm cameras always requires some extra efforts.
With roll film cameras the problem always is: how to apply individual contrast control to frames that must be developed together. That isn’t a problem with digital 35mm frames, but there is still the issue of metering selected areas with built-in light meters.
Since it’s so easy to preview digital photographs using the camera’s little LCD window, one practical solution would be to take a quick reference meter reading of your subject and note where the histogram falls on the scale from right to left.
If the image is too dark, you could simply open one or two stops using either apertures of shutter speeds until the histogram is as far right as it needs to be to avoid the problems caused by expanding the contrast.
Moving the histogram too far to the right would be overexposure and cause the subject’s highlight values to fall off the edge of the histogram where they would be lost.
This is a very quick and very simple exposure method (and this is what many digital photographers actually do), but there is one issue that, shooting raw image files makes this approach less precise that it appears to be.
As mentioned above, digital camera previews are generated based upon assumptions about how you will eventually want to use the image. One of those assumptions is that you’re shooting for jpeg images that are compressed. When shooting in raw format, this means that the histogram the camera creates won’t precisely match the one you will eventually be working with. This issue also applies to the flashing ‘out of gamma’ highlight warnings that are a function of many digital slr cameras. When the preview is set to this function it can give the alarming impression that the highlights are blown out when, if shooting in raw format, they may be recoverable.
We talked about the essay and I mentioned my interest on how photography represents our times. Photography is seen as something to validate our experiences, as Barthes wrote “a photo is of something”. I am interested in the fact that photography has a role as testimony of historical events, as it happened with Joel Meyerowitz’s pictures. He was commissioned by the Museum of the City of New York to make for posterity the official images of the scene in Ground Zero after the 9/11 events. These pictures where exhibited in the city and later internationally.
Jonathan mentioned a website www.mercurynewsphoto.com where the news are presented in a highly stylised approach. I looked at one of their reportages, “Uprooted”, it is presented as photographs with a voice over plus insets of video. It is beautifully made and it brings back the debate about photography serving a memory function, evoking the memorable and giving a feeling of “pastness”, in direct contrast to the moving image and its “presentness”.
It is very interesting to see how moving image and still image cross over and are integrated. Another example that was mentioned was the film “Hunger” by Steve McQueen where there is a scene that last for about 10 minutes and is a single shot in a straight angle. In the scene Bobby Sands informs a member of the clergy that he intends to commence a hunger strike. This scene is showed to us as an almost still image, accentuating the scene’s gravity and its transcendence.
As photography is my chosen methodology, I have been reading about its relation to memory and time. I have come across several essays where photography is discussed in comparison to film. Exposing its function and contrasting its temporality to the flow of cinema. By observing the function of freeze frames and cinema, the role of photography is asserted as a medium on its own right and not dependent. Nowadays there are a lot of artist, such as Bill Viola, that work in the boundaries of both mediums. These are some extracts from the essays:
(Safety in numbness: some remarks on problems of late photography)
David Campany tries to define photography as a medium to represent memory. Photography is compared to the moving image and focused on how, in popular culture, a freeze frame is often used as a “simple signifier of the memorable”. A photograph and its simplicity, in a world of moving image where there is a sheer amount of information, can somehow relate to the process of our memory. A freeze frame is used on television and film to evoke the memorable and by contrasting it to the “presentness” of the moving image, it emphasizes its ‘pastness”. Photography is been given a memory function with a wish that its muteness will appear to be uncontaminated and serve as a memory trigger.
(Marking time: Photography, Film and temporalities of the image by David Green)
Raymond Bellours talks about how freeze frames within a film can have two different effects; the viewer can be made aware of two kinds of temporality, “one which belongs to the film and the intrinsic forward movement of the narrative”, the other is when the spectator is being made aware by this pause in the narrative that he is watching a film. The attention is then directed to the present making the freeze frame being a stop within a stop.
Garreth Stewart extends the argument considering that a freeze frame, a photogram, allow us to engage in a critical interrogation of film, giving it the possibility of cinematic reflexivity. Reflexivity allows the identification of the properties and characteristics peculiar to a medium. Therefore photography can define film as well as film can define photography.
Bill Viola: “The Innocents”, 2007
Bill Viola: ”Two Woman”, 2008
These two videos belong to the series Transfigurations.
The title of the series Transfigurations refers to the moment when a person or an object is transformed not by external means but from within. Viola says “the transformation of the Self, usually provoked by a profound inner revelation or an overwhelming sensation of clarity and fathomless emotion, overcomes the individual until literally a ‘new light’ dawns on him or her… Some of the most profound human experiences occur at times like these, arising at the outer limits of conscious awareness.” In Viola’s Transfigurations works, black-and-white images of ghostly figures emerge slowly from complete darkness eventually passing through a threshold of water into a world of color and light. Reacting with a range of emotions from surprise, to confusion, fear and anger, often with a desire to linger, the figures are finally drawn back through to the other realm. Viola combines images recorded in grainy analog video using an old surveillance camera with those shot in High-Definition video to bring the viewer to the intersection of obscurity and clarity—from death to life—and back again.
Press Release: BILL VIOLA – Bodies of Light
James Cohan Gallery, 2009
Bill Viola’s works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism.
Viola’s work often exhibits a painterly quality, his use of ultra-slow motion video encouraging the viewer to sink into to the image and connect deeply to the meanings contained within it. This quality makes his work perhaps unusually accessible within a contemporary art context. His work strives towards meaning; using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories he attempts to deal with the big themes of human life.
The aim when I took these pictures was to learn about how to photograph interiors and get the maximum tonality out of the negatives. I am learning about the Zone System which is very useful to know if you want to achieve detail in highlights and shadows and also I am developing the film pushing the amount of time (or giving N+1 development) so that the upper zones or highlights have been pushed up a further zone but the shadows and lower zones stay where they are achieving this way a greater tonality.
I have a diagram that explains what happens to the tones with different developing times (the roman numerals refer to the different tonal zones):
To get an even better tonality I developed the film for 20 minutes and the developer was diluted in a 1-100 proportion. I used Rodinal which was patented by Dr. Momme Andresen in 1891. It is the oldest continuously-produced developer formula in the world. At high dilutions Rodinal works as a compensating developer, which means that as the chemicals get exhausted they stop working on the highlights but continue working on the mid tones, thus preventing blown highlights.
There is an useful website to get correct times for developing, it is www.digitalthruth.com
The film I used is Rollei Pan25 which, according to the ad, offers outstanding resolution, sharpness and edge contrast, coupled with extremely fine grain and a long tonal range. This film is ideal where maximum quality is required, and its clear base makes it perfect for scanning. The only fault is that the film is quite thin and it curls a lot making it difficult to scan the negatives an quite fiddly in general.
I took this pictures with a classic medium format camera ( Hasselblad Super Wide). This is the technical data for the following images:
Colour Darkroom:
Meter readings: the floor was on zone II and the sink on zone VI
Aperture: f11, 6 minutes
Sculpture workshop:
Meter readings: the girder was on zone II and the sink on zone VI
Aperture: f11, 150 seconds
Type room:
Meter readings: the back of the room was on zone II and the highlight under the fluorescent light on zone VII
Aperture: f11
