I an getting the itch to go "retro"!

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STM

Senior Member
I have been wanting to do this for a while now, going back to the "good old days", the 60's and '70's, they hayday of modern SLR black and white photography. I have wanted to so some nudes and bodyscapes but give them the feel that images had back then. Back when we really didn't care about grain, it was all a part of photography. We lived with it. It is possible to take digital images and give them grain in Photoshop, but honestly, nothing looks like film except kFILM. I may shoot some in digital but was originally going to shoot film with the Hasselblad but now I am thinkng I more along the lines of using 35mm Tri-X and develop it in D-76 undiluted and at 75 degrees F to bring out the contrast and grain. Below is a model I have been talking with about this project and she is pretty psyched about it. I took a photo from her online porfolio (and no I am not going to give you guys the URL) and reworked it in Photoshop to kind of simulate the effect I am looking to create. Below is a link to the image and it is NSFW! I am only posting a link because Nikonites resizes things so much and the feel of what I want to achieve will be lost. When you click on the link, make sure that if your browser resizes it to fit, go back to full size. It is a pretty large image.

http://scottmurphyphotography.org/images/virginia grain.jpg

Below is a link to an image I found on the web and reworked it too. I really want to bring back that old wonderful 60's feel

http://scottmurphyphotography.org/images/nude grain.jpg
 
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STM

Senior Member
FredKingston said:
Just as an exercise, you might want to look at Topaz' B&W plug-in... They explore replicating grain in a couple dozen pre-sets...
Click to expand...

Thanks, I will go check it out. I have never been successful at installing plug ins into photoshop. How the heck do you do it?
 
R

Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
STM said:
I have been wanting to do this for a while now, going back to the "good old days", the 60's and '70's, they hayday of modern SLR black and white photography. I have wanted to so some nudes and bodyscapes but give them the feel that images had back then. Back when we really didn't care about grain, it was all a part of photography. We lived with it. It is possible to take digital images and give them grain in Photoshop, but honestly, nothing looks like film except kFILM. I may shoot some in digital but was originally going to shoot film with the Hasselblad but now I am thinkng I more along the lines of using 35mm Tri-X and develop it in D-76 undiluted and at 75 degrees F to bring out the contrast and grain. Below is a model I have been talking with about this project and she is pretty psyched about it. I took a photo from her online porfolio (and no I am not going to give you guys the URL) and reworked it in Photoshop to kind of simulate the effect I am looking to create. Below is a link to the image and it is NSFW! I am only posting a link because Nikonites resizes things so much and the feel of what I want to achieve will be lost. When you click on the link, make sure that if your browser resizes it to fit, go back to full size. It is a pretty large image.

http://scottmurphyphotography.org/images/virginia grain.jpg

Below is a link to an image I found on the web and reworked it too. I really want to bring back that old wonderful 60's feel

http://scottmurphyphotography.org/images/nude grain.jpg
Click to expand...

I can recall a six month timeframe of doing nothing in 1969 but increasing the asa of tri-x to achieve max grain, twas a good time, I just caught a wiff of the chemicals. Thanks for sharing.
 
S

STM

Senior Member
WJYPhoto said:
I can recall a six month timeframe of doing nothing in 1969 but increasing the asa of tri-x to achieve max grain, twas a good time, I just caught a wiff of the chemicals. Thanks for sharing.
Click to expand...

When I was in High School in the early to mid 70's I learned a trick to push TX to 1250 using Acufine and believe it or not, hydrogen peroxide. You developed normally in Acufine, then placed the film, still in the reel, in another tank with some peroxide in it and another reel, so the film did not touch the peroxide and closed the top and let it sit. I forget how long I kept it in there but I will be damned if it didn't work!
 
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crycocyon

Senior Member
The 60s have more of a grainy feel than the 70s for some reason. Of course there was more b&w in the 60s. But nice look you are going for there. I remember spending an entire summer in a dark room the size of a closet back in the 80s and after that I had literally lost my sense of smell from the chemicals (bad ventilation). Thankfully after a few months the olfactory neurons regenerate (some of very few in the nervous system that do), so I got my smell (and taste) back. So what do you plan to push it to? 1600? Or maybe 3200? It certainly could be pushed that far. The funny thing about noise from film is that you can't really do anything with it in PS because then the effect begins to look digital again. Are you shooting with the F2S?
 
S

STM

Senior Member
crycocyon said:
The 60s have more of a grainy feel than the 70s for some reason. Of course there was more b&w in the 60s. But nice look you are going for there. I remember spending an entire summer in a dark room the size of a closet back in the 80s and after that I had literally lost my sense of smell from the chemicals (bad ventilation). Thankfully after a few months the olfactory neurons regenerate (some of very few in the nervous system that do), so I got my smell (and taste) back. So what do you plan to push it to? 1600? Or maybe 3200? It certainly could be pushed that far. The funny thing about noise from film is that you can't really do anything with it in PS because then the effect begins to look digital again. Are you shooting with the F2S?
Click to expand...

I have to agree about grain in the 60's. Some of it may have been the "flavor of the month" as this discipline sometimes has. But also Nikkors in the 60's were slower than the ones we have now so some people may have pushed TX to 800. The TX of the 60's is definitely not the TX of today though. It was not near as good back then as it is now.

I don't really think I will need to push it at all. If I process it in undiluted D-76 at 75 degrees, I should get some good grain out of it. I will do some test shots before the shoot and see what i get. I want apparent grain, not grain the size of golf balls. If I have to bump it to 800, that is no biggie, I have the technology (and a 2X ND) to make it happen!
 
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