Practicing the craft ~ B&W pocket watch

[JBW]

ISO 100 ~ Shutter Speed 1/1.6s ~ F/ 14 ~ Natural Light ~ 14 Shot Stack in Fuji ~ Sony Alpha a58 ~ Tamron 90mm 272E

M'Lady bought a black hot plate. We haven't cooked on it yet but it seems to me it makes a good bg. With a better tripod and the wireless shutter release I can finally do consistent stacking. I was wondering about such a rough bg but I think the fg and bg separate nicely?

Brian

[Stagecoach]

That background is not working for me Brian, I think it competes with the watch too much.

[JBW]

That background is not working for me Brian, I think it competes with the watch too much.

Fair enough. For me it's complimentary rather than competitive. But then I do have unusual tastes.

[xpatUSA]

Fair enough. For me it's complimentary [complementary?] rather than competitive. But then I do have unusual tastes.

Nice watch, is it an Elgin? Here's mine:

http://kronometric.org/tcw/mec/PW1876/mas.html

As a watch-collector/fixer/seller although not so much these days, I feel qualified to comment. The lighting has placed too much contrast in the middle of the body and not enough at the right side, IMHO.

With watches, I use two lamps, one each side, with tracing paper diffusers interposed, plus white cards at the back. Not saying you should, just sayin'. With a single light source, maybe a reflector would help.

[JBW]

Nice watch, is it an Elgin? Here's mine:

http://kronometric.org/tcw/mec/PW1876/mas.html

As a watch-collector/fixer/seller although not so much these days, I feel qualified to comment. The lighting has placed too much contrast in the middle of the body and not enough at the right side, IMHO.

With watches, I use two lamps, one each side, with tracing paper diffusers interposed, plus white cards at the back. Not saying you should, just sayin'. With a single light source, maybe a reflector would help.

Nope it's a Dumal. Your's is a whole different quality.

You know me I like natural light. But a reflector would have made a difference

[Shadowman]

Brian,

The surface could work but I think you need to bring out the detail of the watch. Nice effort.

[JBW]

Brian,

The surface could work but I think you need to bring out the detail of the watch. Nice effort.

I'm working on it.

[Wavelength]

Excellent image; i really liked this; i feel you are more of an inside person than outside, at least in the realm of photography

[JBW]

Excellent image; i really liked this; i feel you are more of an inside person than outside, at least in the realm of photography

really? time will tell.

[mugge]

Brian, you could spend hours dodging and burning this. I think you should - great fun also.
Cheers Ole

[JBW]

Brian, you could spend hours dodging and burning this. I think you should - great fun also.
Cheers Ole

it would certainly be good practice.

[Lon Howard]

I lean toward Nandakumar and to your original thoughts. Not every image has to fit neatly into a popular prescription. For example many acclaimed winter scenes have light backgrounds as well as light subjects. This one is very similar but at the dark end instead. The fg and bg are nicely separated and I love the shading. The only thing I might try to tweak is the degree to which it goes to dark on the right side - maybe a little less of that would be better but it's still very nice.

[JBW]

Brian, you could spend hours dodging and burning this. I think you should - great fun also.
Cheers Ole

I could in deed. And I just might take up your suggestion

[JBW]

I lean toward Nandakumar and to your original thoughts. Not every image has to fit neatly into a popular prescription. For example many acclaimed winter scenes have light backgrounds as well as light subjects. This one is very similar but at the dark end instead. The fg and bg are nicely separated and I love the shading. The only thing I might try to tweak is the degree to which it goes to dark on the right side - maybe a little less of that would be better but it's still very nice.

I wondered about the shading. Everything I read tells me that there should be one area of really black black?

[xpatUSA]

I wondered about the shading. Everything I read tells me that there should be one area of really black black?

Not sure about "area" Brian? My limited reading on monochrome stuff talks about global contrast rather than areas per se.

In other words, the engraving on your watch should be almost black in the valleys or cuts but the surface bits should be really bright (sometimes called local contrast).

In Levels, this might be approached by moving the left slider up to the left part of the histogram and bringing the right slider down to right-hand part of the histogram (pardon the Global Contrast 101).

Other editors e.g. RawTherapee let you play with detail contrast, see Contrast By Detail Levels here:

http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Cont..._Detail_Levels

RawTherapee . . don't leave home without it . .

[JBW]

Not sure about "area" Brian? My limited reading on monochrome stuff talks about global contrast rather than areas per se.

In other words, the engraving on your watch should be almost black in the valleys or cuts but the surface bits should be really bright (sometimes called local contrast).

In Levels, this might be approached by moving the left slider up to the left part of the histogram and bringing the right slider down to right-hand part of the histogram (pardon the Global Contrast 101).

Other editors e.g. RawTherapee let you play with detail contrast, see Contrast By Detail Levels here:

http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Cont..._Detail_Levels

RawTherapee . . don't leave home without it . .

I worked with RT for a while but I couldn't resist a software p;rogram built for my camera. Is this closer to what you are talking about?

[Rent]

Brian Can I ask, is this watch silver, bronze, or what? I get no indication from the photo. If silver I would expect it to be brighter
Roy

[xpatUSA]

I worked with RT for a while but I couldn't resist a software p;rogram built for my camera. Is this closer to what you are talking about?

Getting there but you forgot to move the brightness slider:



Notice where the gray slider is: most of the histogram is to left of it which explains why your brights came out gray. So I moved the white slider as shown; I moved the black slider up a bit; then played with the gray slider to taste. Then I added some micro-contrast:



As always, a bit OTT to make the point!

I ignored the background which I assume you know how to fix with layers, masks and stuff.

HTH,

[DanK]

You can increase local contrast with any editing program that has unsharp mask. You don't need a dedicated adjustment, like clarity in lightroom. Just start with these settings and adjust to taste:
amount: 20
radius: 50 pixels
threshold: 0

I think what people mean by 'an area should be fully black' is just that often, one wants the tonal range to extend all the way to black. Your original already does.

So it seems to me that there are three things to play with:

--an overall brightening of the midtones. This is what Ted was showing; you have most of the image at the dark end, and if you just slide the midpoint of a levels tool to the left, it will gradually lighten it.
--contrast: you could apply a fairly aggressive curve to add global contrast
--you should use USM or another tool to add local contrast

Here's a version with the two tonality adjustments, levels and curves:



Here's the same thing, but with some local contrast added, using the settings above:

[Manfred M]

Brian - a general rule in B&W photography is that the image must contain both a pure black and a pure white value (plus of course all of the shades of gray in between). At the time when publications were printed, this was a requirement from the printers and not meeting this rule meant having the image rejected for technical reasons. When you are restricted to 256 tonal values in a B&W JPEG, you generally need them all to get a strong image.

The other point is that when you have that full tonal range, this will also increase image contrast without having to resort to other tools. That's effectively what Ted has demonstrated in his edit.