Printing the Image - Q2MR Night Images
In many ways, developing these images was much more difficult than the images photographed during the daytime. Not only was there more grain, given the super-high ISOs these images were made with due to the fact that they were hand held at night, but there was the resulting decrease in dynamic range that comes with higher ISOs and possibly an even greater dynamic range than even urban areas in sunlight. The difference in luminance values between streetlights at night and dark, shadowy corners at night is tremendous. I just had to learn to deal with it, which usually means letting the street lights blow out.
The first image didn’t give me much of a problem given that the focus was on the well-lit sign and its reflection, as well as the glow coming from it. Letting everything else drop to black was no problem in that it added to the effect I wanted with the image.
My first struggle really came with one of the other shots, made when the sky wasn’t jet black. No matter what I tried, everything just felt a bit harsh. Also, on the monitor the grain seemed horrible, and the grays within the image really seemed to have no subtlety.
The results from this image were mixed. The print, in part because it was only an 8.5”x11” print, hardly showed any grain at all. Which is a good thing. It seems that monitors really exaggerate grain in a way that prints do not. That was good. The harsh contrast of the image though comes out in the print. I really like this image, but I may have to figure out a way to make it appear less harsh.
My self-portrait from the playground . . . well that turned out well. For the print I brought out the graffiti person on the right, the graffiti on the stairs and the sunrise more than in the image below (I’m using the copies I’d developed for the web and used previously). In this case, the print seems alive and very three dimensional.
I think the one thing I’ve learned about these night images is to look for well lit areas, even if it’s low lighting.
The last image I wanted to experiment with was one that had a very wide range of lighting conditions. Again, I have to say I was pleased with the results. I had to take a lot of care with my exposure at the time I made it (getting that illuminated bus station sign to have detail required a lot of attention), but that allowed me to have an interesting range of detail throughout the image.
I guess the lesson I learned from the two printing sessions was to not worry too much about whether the camera can render the tonal qualities well (it can) or whether the printer can produce a print with the qualities I want in an image (it can). All I need to do is to focus on making a good black and white image at the time I’m photographing and making sure I don’t allow the high values to blow out. I really can trust this sensor to retain an incredible amount of detail. That’s a refreshing thing to know.