Go big or go home, Part Deaux

[venchka]

I added this photo to the W/NW: Something Old thread earlier today.



I scanned the original negative last Saturday night at fellow TPF member Wclavey's home. Thanks Wes! Wes has an Epson 4990 flatbed scanner.

For several days and nights I played with every slider, preset, gizmo and doohickey available in Lightroom. I went for POP! I went for PHIZZZZZZZ! I tried everything. I came really close to printing it several times. Last night I zero'd out all the adjusments. By the time Brooke had been booted off Idol (BOOOOOOOOOOOH! What's wrong with America?) I was satisfied with the picture. In the end I had only made two small adjustments: + or - 0.20 Exposure (can't remember which way) and Lightrooms preset Landscape Sharpening. I then printed the file to a 360 DPI JPEG file. This morning I resized (dumbed down) for the WEB and posting here. I also made two 100% crops. The tall image was dumbed down again for the web and the square image was compressed for posting.

So, what have I learned? Keep It Simple Stupid! All of the tweaking and torquing I did earlier only mased the detail and subtle tonality of the original. BTW, these pictures are several steps away from the original. I would expect the negative to print much better.

Thanks for looking and thanks for all of the help y'all have offered since I got to Texas.

[johnastovall]

Where's the Agfa paper and Dektol? This is serious cheating. Polycontrast not allowed must be graded contrast paper.

[venchka]

Ain't it the truth. I miss Kodachrome 25 & Panatomic-X. But I miss Agfa Brovira paper a whole lot more. Hopefully by mid-summer I'll be up to my elbows in Dektol, fixer and toners. The first papers I want to try as Brovira replacements are the Slavich and Bergger offerings in #2 grade. Fiber based naturally. No plastic allowed.

Bergger Prestige Fine Art Supreme - (Silver Supreme) is an extra-premium, semi-matte photographic paper with a high silver content emulsion coated on a sumptuous 100% cotton - rag paper base of 320g/m2. It a single grade emulsion (approximately grade 2) which is particularly high in silver content and gives extremely deep blacks and wide range of mid-tones. It has excellent toning capability and due to the quality of its paper base and surface softness, it allows un-matched possibilities of hand-coloring.

Changing horses in mid-stream...

I've been looking for an oprtunity to post this link. Richard Avedon. Portrait lighting. Printing on Agfa Brovira paper. Anybody here spend 10 hours making a print? I'm going to get some real photography information on this Forum if it kills me.

This link is to one page of many pages of good reading.

Avedon. Lighting. Printing.

I hope someone picks up some useful information. Enjoy!

[studiocygnet]

So was that a 4x5 neg to start with? You didn't mention the size. And I'm with you on the less is more processing, when you're starting out with a great neg.

[venchka]

Tom,

That is one of my smaller negatives taken with either a Rapid-Omega and 90mm lens or Pentax 6x7 and 105mm lens. I had both cameras back to back-sold the Rapid to buy the Pentax. I really can't remember which camera took that picture. I don't have a 4x5 negative for comparison. Yet. I'm working on it.