It
is still one of the most talked about subjects Visit any forum
to do with photography digital or traditional and you will find
threads relating to the perfect negative or capture. What developer
to use, how to manipulate the raw file, what does a well exposed
negative or histogram look like and so on. But this post is not about
our digital friend or for that matter the negative it is to do with
the photograph - the positive end of the process. I cannot get there
without some negative chat first though!
After
the recent deluge it is nice to be sitting back in the garden office
writing this post and enjoying the late afternoon sun with my friend
the cat. It is quite surprising how peaceful it can be in such a
built up area. Not as negative as you thought but I digress.
It
was Ansel Adams and Fred R. Archer that gave us a proven method of producing a properly
exposed negative every time with the zone system. They divided the
black and white negative up into eleven sections if you include zero
from pure white to full black. Adams then said that really there are
only nine zones if you are in pursuit of the perfect negative and
then only seven of those will give texture. This is all well and
good if you are using a plate camera but most of us don't. We use
cassette and or roll film where all our carefully exposed negatives
get a one time fits all development. In a round about way Mr Adams is
saying that film sees the world in a more limited way to us. So we
have all engineered ways of finding our perfect negative. What do I
look for? A negative that has detail from high light to shadow and a
good density above base clear in other words defined rectangles of
tones the length of the film.
 |
| The day was very bright that the light meter read a six stop difference between the house wall in the background and the shadow cast by the barn. I over exposed the negative by two and a half stops. |
We
all strive to produce the perfect negative but it was not until
recently that it dawned on me that it does not necessarily translate
to the perfect print. So what is the perfect print? One that is easy
to print but what do they mean by easy to print? One that does not
require a lot of dodging and burning. A single exposure success
wouldn't that be the perfect print! With the way the negative sees
the scene in front of it and all the variables in its path is it not
inevitable that you will have to manipulate the image projected onto
the base board of the enlarger to produce the perfect print?
Recently
I came close to my interpretation of the perfect print, one that does
not require a lot of manipulation. By placing the test strip in such
a way that the area that needed burning in was exposed to several
different timed exposure segments this allowed me to add the extra
time for that area to the first print. With experience the hit or
miss aspect of the test strip process is lessened. It still doesn't
take away that bit of a buzz when it all falls into place. Something
I've never had with digital.
