Darkroom Effects / What Is the Original Image?
11 33 Share TweetThe possibilities in a dark room are as unbelievable as they are endless. Although many people argue about “The Original Image”, they mostly don’t know about possible image manipulations within a dark room. However, I think that scans should be as honest as possible and they should not be enhanced by digital color filters. Be honest.
I often hear lomographers arguing about “The Original Image“. Is it the unmodified negative? Is it the print of your lab? What if you decided not to order any prints? What about your scanner?
Some even say “I only scan them without modifying the settings” which mostly leads poor images. And don’t think that your lab’s prints are perfect either, since (i am sure) all of them enhance the pictures before printing. Once, I got almost normal looking prints from a redscale film, although the negatives were completely cyan…
With some other Viennese lomographers, I participated in a dark room workshop and we were astonished by the analogue possibilities and achievable effects. The image used is taken on a DM-Slide-Film so we expected a slightly green print.
You can completely modify the photo’s colors:
Or you can increase the vignette:
Or you can cause the Sabattier effect, known as “Solarisation”:
I think that one can continue the discussion about “The Original Image” for years, but now I know, that enhancing images is not only possible in the digital world. When developing an analogue print, you can easily enhance the colors and the vignette effect, it is as simple as it is in Photoshop.
However, I believe that you should be honest about your scans. Don’t over saturate your scanned image just to make the colors pop, don’t use some x-pro-filters and please don’t apply a vignette-increasing-effect.
Just be honest.
written by floriansimon on 2011-04-14 #gear #tutorials #vignette #colors #lab-rat #tipster #development #darkroom #effect #prints #solarisation #analogue-effects #darkroom-special-effects #film-processing
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