Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Q&D BW (updated thrice)

I sorta liked those pics of the plugs that I took in BW by accident, so I made a few Quick-And-Dirty black/white photos as an experiment. Played a bit with sharpness, contrast, and such. I can see it going places potentially.
(The big versions (click) are different. The million tiny scratches in the sink for instance look kinda kewl.)







(I like how there is just one tile in the linoleum which has a darker flower.)

This started with me wondering last week, like many, why it's harder to get good BW prints with inkjets than color prints, despite all the factors at least matching traditional methods. Well, I just now printed the sink photo, and I must say, it looks pretty good. I have learned for prints to lift the shadows, and for BW digital to boost contrast and sharpness more than expected. This is one I could exhibit without it falling through next to the color prints.
So with a bit more experimenting with papers and inks, we should get somewhere nice. I might get up to prints the quality of Brooks Jensen's (see here and here), whose inkjet prints are at least the match of any traditional BW prints I've seen.

Update: I warm-toned the picture (not so easy, just a two percent change is very visible), and printed on the fancy glossy paper. Hey, not bad. A beautiful BW print!
I think I'll look into the special Lyson warm-tone BW inks.

Update: Once again I'm struck by how Google is on the ball. Literally less than one minute after posting the paragraph above, I googled: - lyson warm tone bw inks canon - and this post came up amongst the results!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now you are getting somewhere with your B&W work.

If your tastes are somewhat like mine the Contrast slider will become your friend. For me nothing like a dark, contrasty image to spin my prop.

The other day I mentioned a book by DeWolfe, but failed to add a link to his site.

http://www.georgedewolfe.com/index.html

I notice you follow Brooks Jensen/Lens Work, so the following link may not be news to you. It is a site I often visit for my B&W inspiration.

http://www.mitchdobrowner.com/index.html

My best in your digital B&W journey.

Steve

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks, dude.

(It's been a while since I've been around Brooks', though, admittedly.)

(New post 20 minutes ago about a dedicated BW print system.)

Anna said...

You are obviously seriously spied by Google. Beware...

***

They are good !

But what the heck is the second picture ? It looks like those monsters in Star Wars that have a round mouth with teeth all around and swallow you...

No wonder you are spied at if you post suspect pictures like this !

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Maybe the spy is the reader who guessed correctly in an email to me that the second picture is the inside of my big orange bowl. Pretty impressive.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I quite like them myself. But they really are "Q&D"... to the degree that the plant and the cutlery would both have been sharper if I had just taken the five seconds it would have taken to pull the curtains further for more light!

Al Wright said...

Eolake- Those are scrumptious images! I can see why you like the sink; I'm partial to the cutlery-look at the back of the fork up close!

Al W

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thank you very much.

Yes, it has all those micro-scraches in the steel which allows both tones and lines to come to their best in a BW photo.