Embracing Harsh, Contrasty Light: Part 1 - Photo Premium
Tutorial Details
Difficulty: Intermediate
Video Length: 33 minutes ...
Contrasty Light: Image number three that accompanies this article exemplifies a situation with a difficult exposure condition. The background sky is bright and there’s a dark overhang of the arch.
Contrasty Higher-than-normal contrast including very bright and dark areas. The range of density in a negative or print is higher than it was in the original scene.
CONTRASTY - A scene or an image that has an abnormally wide range of differences between the amount of light in highlight areas and the amount of light in shadow areas is said to be "contrasty." ...
Contrasty. Having higher than optimal contrast.
Crop. To trim an image or page by adjusting its boundaries.
Contrasty
A scene or image with high Contrast.
Cookie, Cucoloris, Cucaloris
A device almost as strange as its names.
-Contrasty - negative, print or scene with great differences between the highlights and shadows.
-Contre-jour - backlighting. A photograph taken with the camera pointed directly at the light source.
-Converging lens - see Convex lens.
Contrasty
Describes a scene, negative, or print with very great differences in brightness light and dark areas. Opposite: flat.
Higher-than-normal contrast including very bright and dark areas.
A contrasty scene shot at wide angle and/or a large aperture (small F number) can introduce noticeable purple fringing along the edge of white areas of the image (especially nearer to the corners).
AVOID CONTRASTY SITUATIONS by Jim Zuckerman
Extremes in contrast are a problem for both film and digital photography, but it is especially a problem when shooting digital.
The negative must then be examined to determine the contrast (flat, normal, or contrasty) and the approximate exposure time required to produce a quality print.
Normal films will give very contrasty duplicates. You have to use flash to lower the contrast or overexpose and underdeveloped (pull process) the film.
To those who say about traditional B&W films "X is too flat, Y is too contrasty": manufacturer's development times and exposure indexes are just starting points.
Such an emulsion is contrasty (steep slope in the H & D curve) and, when solarized, gives a low minimum density.
+2 is used when the light is extremely contrasty and important shadow areas are much darker than brightly lit areas.
For this early morning contrasty image the sun was behind and to my left. The tall spike is the sky area and the graph area to the right of the spike represents the boats.
Avoid bright sun as this tends to be too contrasty. With the ISO adjustment set on DX, shoot a frame. Then adjust the ISO to one speed less than the films nominal rating and shoot another frame.
Have you ever seen those hyper-real and ultra-contrasty photos and wondered how they're done?
Slow, saturated, contrasty slide film gives a completely different feel to a picture than fast, grainy, high-latitude color negative film.
if the image had a loss of shadow detail due to a contrasty tonal curve, the photographer could simply reconvert the file with a less contrasty curve). In fact, she can reconvert the image as many times as she wishes with different settings.
I look for something that isn’t too contrasty and somewhere that’s sheltered from direct sunlight such as under a tree or by a wall.
Fixed grade - or graded - black-and-white papers are available in different contrast grades, numbered 0 to 5, with 0 being the softest, or least contrasty paper grade and 5 being the hardest, or most contrasty paper grade.
With photographs of men, you can use overt camera angles, harsh, contrasty lighting — you name it. The choices are limitless when it comes to selection of lenses and lighting balances when shooting guys.
Multi Focus automatically selects between a number of AF frames and focuses on the most contrasty subject closest to the center of the frame.
Lens aberration effects show up along contrasty edge detail in the photo near the actual edge of the frame. The best solution is to enlarge the photo so you can better see the defect. You'll see edges that include extra colors, often green or red.
In general, the slower the speed of the film, the more inherently contrasty it is. Thus, a 100 ASA film is more contrasty than a 400 ASA film.
Fringing, commonly associated with less-expensive lenses, describes the 'bleeding' of color along the edges of contrasty portions of a digital image.
As mentioned above both characteristics are closely related so a lens with a high resolution is usually also very contrasty. Many lenses are often just quite contrasty and bottom end lenses tend to be pretty bad in both respects.
As we hype the contrast to progressively higher levels, we are reluctant to settle for something less contrasty, even though the less contrasty verion is usually both technically and stylistically a better image.
Seek out or create "contrasty" lighting, perhaps a dark room with a single strong light source or the shadows created by a bright noon-day sun
Shoot close-ups of people or objects against a pure white background, like a hanging sheet ...
As a general rule of thumb, we want black & white images to be a bit more contrasty than their color equivalents. The image above left is probably an accurate conversion from the color but the one on the right is more satisfying.
Grain (Filter > Texture > Grain) offers more control over the patterns generated: Regular, Soft, Sprinkles, Clumped, Contrasty, Enlarged, Stip-pled, Horizontal, Vertical, Speckle. All of them are useful.
While it has a vintage quality, overall I think it's bit too contrasty, and the light could be softer to render the skin in a more flattering, less “bumpy' manner. I would have pulled back the blanket/towel from covering his left eye.
Contrast: the difference and distribution of light and dark tones in an image. An image having mostly black and white tones is said to be contrasty whereas an image composed mostly of middle gray tones would be considered to be flat.
When light is strong but contrasty, the sensor can switch to DR (Wide Dynamic Range) mode to get the optimal balance between highlight and shadows.
If the sun is shining, the lighting can be very contrasty. The best conditions are under a light cloud cover that diffuses the sunlight but doesn't weaken it much. This can be hard to find. Many monkeys and the mountain gorillas, too, are black.
Look for objects that add color and contrast to your scene. Colorful ski clothes and dark contrasty shadows abound in winter. Use them to add emotional weight as well as interesting compositional devices to your pictures.
Contrast. If your photo looks too flat and lacking in sparkle, it may be a problem with contrast. This is easy to adjust. Or maybe it is too contrasty and you want it to look less harsh. You can go both ways.
However, the Sensia II also appears to be slightly more contrasty than the Extracolor/100 VS, and as a result I have sometimes had trouble holding highlight detail when shooting into the sun with the Sensia II.
Just nice to be inspired for my next B&W film assignment! But my prof would not like these. They are too contrasty for him! :b
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On the other hand, direct sunlight that enters through a window is usually just as uncomplimentary and unflattering as direct sunlight is when it is used in the middle of the day outdoors. It is harsh, contrasty, ...
Compensating positive - image on translucent material that can be printed together with the negative of the same image. When combined the result makes printing contrasty negatives easier.
Keep your histogram's bright light values side from being clipped off, but get it really close, and your image will probably look a lot better. If the light is too contrasty, then you must resort to filters and reflectors, or overcast skies, ...
you and your subject to a minimum so that the contrast is as high as possible. Adding extra light will also increase the contrast but may cause further problems by lighting up suspended matter. Fortunately, modern films are much more contrasty than ...
scene with low contrast will have low dynamic range; an outdoor scene in bright sunlight with bright highlights and deep shadows will have high dynamic range. Put very simply, a digital camera with high dynamic range will reproduce a contrasty scene ...
There is a trade-off when performing sharpening: as the image sharpness is increased, the subtleties of gradation between the darkest and lightest elements of the image are reduced. the result is a more "contrasty" picture.
The blue marble to right right sucks the view from the first look. This is a natural reaction because the brain scans for the most contrasty subject first. The isolation of the object due to its "outstanding" sharpness is very significant here.
The most useful feature of an auto camera is Flash Off so you can avoid flash when you want to shoot in low light and Flash On to force the flash to fire to get good fill-in light in contrasty conditions.
 See also: Contrast, Image, Camera, Light, Photograph
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