HDR with Film

[robertandrewphoto]

I am takin a film class for school this semester and finally have access to a darkroom. I'm normally in the HDR section and that is the style of photography I practice the most.

So far my approach to this will be the "expose for shadows, develop for highlights" method, but I'd like to know if anyone else has tried this or has experience with it and has any tips.
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[maris]

I am takin a film class for school this semester and finally have access to a darkroom. I'm normally in the HDR section and that is the style of photography I practice the most.

So far my approach to this will be the "expose for shadows, develop for highlights" method, but I'd like to know if anyone else has tried this or has experience with it and has any tips.
​

"Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights" is a mantra of the Zone System in which single sheets of film get exposed and development is tailored to render subject luminances as a desired range of negative densities. The Zone system is only practical with cameras that expose individual sheets of film but used appropriately there is no subject brightness range on earth that cannot be recorded. The Zone System has been employed by thousands of photographers over the last 70 years or so and the literature on it is absolutely encyclopedic in scope and it would take years to read it all. A good place to start is with Ansel Adams' famous and definitive book "The Negative". Minor White's "Zone System Manual" is a publication I have used to teach Zone System to photography classes. Mastering the Zone System is about as hard as flying a helicopter. Lots of people can do it but you don't knock the challenge over in a semester.

 

[robertandrewphoto]

I am takin a film class for school this semester and finally have access to a darkroom. I'm normally in the HDR section and that is the style of photography I practice the most.

So far my approach to this will be the "expose for shadows, develop for highlights" method, but I'd like to know if anyone else has tried this or has experience with it and has any tips.
​

"Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights" is a mantra of the Zone System in which single sheets of film get exposed and development is tailored to render subject luminances as a desired range of negative densities. The Zone system is only practical with cameras that expose individual sheets of film but used appropriately there is no subject brightness range on earth that cannot be recorded. The Zone System has been employed by thousands of photographers over the last 70 years or so and the literature on it is absolutely encyclopedic in scope and it would take years to read it all. A good place to start is with Ansel Adams' famous and definitive book "The Negative". Minor White's "Zone System Manual" is a publication I have used to teach Zone System to photography classes. Mastering the Zone System is about as hard as flying a helicopter. Lots of people can do it but you don't knock the challenge over in a semester.

I understand what the ...shadows highlights... method is. I've read a lot on it so far, i was just looking for other techniques that someone else my have for making an HDRi with film

 

[maris]

A recent extreme HDR photograph done by me on film:

Wave Break, Noosa Beach
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Gelatin-silver photograph on Kodak Polymax Fine Art VC FB, image area 24.7cm x 19.6cm, from a Tri-X Pan Professional negative exposed in a Tachihara 810HD triple extension 8x10 field view camera with a Fujinon-W 300mm f5.6 lens and using a #25 red filter and a 1 stop soft ND grad filter.

A modern technique in electronic picture-making is High Dynamic Range processing where several exposures are combined to bridge wide luminance ranges in subject matter. A difficulty with HDR is subject movement but this can also represent an opportunity. Wave Break, Noosa Beach is high dynamic range subject done on film. The brightness difference between the sun-disk and the shadow side of the line of trees is in excess of 15 stops but the original photograph includes detail in both. Here's how it was done:

The tripod mounted Tachihara 8x10 camera was placed on a low rock wall so it could look toward the beach with a plain sea foreground. Focussing was augmented with a back tilt of the rear standard to place the Scheimpflug plane (the plane of focus) along the water surface and through the distant line of trees. The picture would then be in focus from front to back at any aperture, any shutter speed.

Careful note was made of the upper right-hand corner of the ground glass (bottom left-hand corner of the picture) to establish what part of the sea surface lived there. That patch of sea was committed to secure memory because it would be needed later.

A 6 inch clear plastic ruler was placed on the ground glass of the camera to measure the movement of the wave images. The fastest wave image moved 2 inches in one second. Since I wanted a maximum 1/2 inch blur to imply wave movement but retain wave shape I knew my main shutter speed would be 1/4 second.

The lens was fitted with a Cokin P filter holder carrying a grad ND filter and a #25 red filter. The grad filter was aligned with the tops of the trees. The first exposure was made at 1/90sec @ f64 with the result that only the sun disk, some bright threads of cloud, some water sparkle and, faintly, the tree line registered on film. The camera was then left completely undisturbed for nearly half an hour while the sun set and the scene darkened.

Before the second exposure the red filter was removed (carefully!) and the shutter re-cocked at 1/4 second. A spot-meter reading confirmed that an aperture of f16 should be set for the assorted dark tones to fall on Zones II, III, and IV. The last element was getting the wave in the right place. Because the ground-glass was blocked by the film-holder that pre-memorised patch of sea was the aim point for the breaking wave. A few seconds later the shutter was clicked to catch a nice wave as it swept by. The rest was routine.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

Most negative films don't really need HDR. HDR is designed to compensate for the DR that digital just doesn't have. Shoot Tech Pan in the right developer and there's over 20 stops of range in it.

Film doesn't experience tonal block like digital does, ESPECIALLY color negative film. Where a digital camera may have between 5-10 stops of usable DR, films like Portra 400 have usable DR of almost 20 stops. That's insane. Negative films have what's called a shoulder, where brighter objects may start being blown out, but they don't lose color or tonality like digital. In fact, with some films, like 400H, you can shoot it at ISO 50 and still get totally OK results out of it, despite it being rated for ISO 400.

For example, digital couldn't pull this off, you'd have to do an HDR if you wanted to see color or tonality in the area around the sun.

Now photographers in the past cut negatives before, but that's some pretty slick darkroom technique.

It's funny, when I shoot digital, I try to find as soft of light as possible when shooting people. When I shoot film, I just put people's backs to the sun, and RARELY do the backgrounds blow out. It's so much easier!

 

[robertandrewphoto]

thanks for the advice switch and maris. that really does help me out. I am using just a standard 35mm though with bw film so i'll have to test it out a little to see how much DR I will be getting of any given subject.

and i've heard about cutting negatives before slick, but that just sounds like it could be very tough...so maybe if i'm feeling good one day i'll try that out but we'll see.

thanks again, really great advice there

 

[Helen B]

Why have you got two threads going on this?

 

[robertandrewphoto]

Why have you got two threads going on this?

so i can get as much help as possible. not every film junkie will go into the hdr section of the forum and vice versa

 

[Helen B]

You aren't supposed to cross-post. It means that the discussion is fragmented and you waste the time of others.

 

[Overread]

I've locked the other thread rather than merge it since merging will put posts in odd positions (they merge in a time order) and break up what is already being said in this thread.
In addition don't worry too much about missing out on people noticing by posting in one section over another - many of our members surf the site mostly in "New Posts" rather than section by section so there is a good chance most will come to see the thread.

 

[Helen B]

Here's my earlier post.

 

[Helen B]

One thing to note about the wide dynamic range of colour neg is that the full range is easiest to obtain by scanning, not by wet printing. This is because the gamma (contrast) of the film in the more exposed parts rolls off (the slow shouldering of the exposure-density curve) - ie it is lower contrast in the upper 7 stops than it is in the lower 7 (much over 15 or 16 stops of dynamic range is difficult to use, unless flare and/or diffraction happens to help by reducing the overall contrast - that is how you can claim more).

If you want to go into compensating development (ie a wet equivalent of HDR for small-format film) split-grade printing or chemical dodging (ie wet equivalents of tone mapping) just ask.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

Damn Helen, I swear you have got to be the most knowledgeable person on this forum about the technical side of photography. I learn something new every time I read one of your posts, and I've got a degree in this! WOW!

 

[ann]

:thumbup: isn't that the truth, I also read her comments even when I don't /do know what the question is about as I always pick up something and I have been doing this a long time . Just proves we all have something new to learn regardless of our ages and experience