Traditional Photography
Film
Photographic film material is heavily affected by light, when used in a camera or other recording device, when the button is pressed and the shutter clicks, the light that enters into the camera based on it’s field of view is recorded on the roll of film. This is because the light causes a chemical change within the roll of film, as there are many different ultra-thin layers that filter the light or control the reaction, however the material that records the image is Silver nitrate, as it is known for being able to work as a very effective photon detector.
Once the silver has recorded the image it is stored within the film and must be treated very carefully for the development stage, as any other light that now touches the silver will cause the images to blur or come out looking much different to the original picture that was taken.
Processing and Developing Film
When a roll of film is ready to be developed, it must be taken to a processor, the film contains the images of the exposure and must be amplified and stabilized to make a colour negative that can be printed and looked at by reflected light.
When turning a colour negative film, the processing chemistry is much different to doing a black and white image, the development process involves turning the silver crystals into pure silver, as this occurs, a chemical called Oxidized developer is produced and this then reacts with chemicals called couplers in some of the film layers, which then causes a colour to form, varying on how the silver grains were exposed to the light.
To stop the development process the film is washed or is taken to a stop bath and the unused silver crystals are removed using a solution and the pure silver is bleached off. This then leaves you with a negative image that needs to be washed in order to clean the chemicals off, and is then dried.
Printing
The negative image that we now have will be printed, this is a process that is largely done by professional companies and large laboratories. Colour print paper is used which is similar to film in that it has silver to receive the light and record an image. The silver is exposed and left with the negative image in a printer, oxidized developer is used to combine with couplers in the paper once again, this produces a silver and a dye image, once this reaction has occurred the paper is washed to stop the reaction. The remaining silver is removed in a bleach and fix solution.
The remaining print is then washed to remove any remaining chemicals and then is dried. Once this process is complete the print will now be in colour, much like the positive converted image above, it may turn out that the image does not look entirely realistic and is washed out, some of these steps can be fixed before the processing stage, or afterwards using video editing if the entire film is recorded or the picture is taken to photoshop.
Adjustments
There are many different types of adjustments that can be made to the print, the first of which being burning, this involves adding light to certain parts of the image, resulting in them being darker when the negative is produced, or just making them darker in a program like photoshop.
Dodging is the opposite of burning, where instead of making the pre-processed image lighter, it is made darker so that the positive image will come out lighter, and like burning, the opposite is used for photoshop where the dodge tool will simply make things lighter.
Contrast is the last one, this makes light clash more together, as increasing/decreasing contrast will define the separation of light and dark areas more or less, different papers are needed for this however as changing the contrast is not easy on the pre-processed image without special paper, with photoshop however it is easy to press a button and have the image corrected.
Sharpness can be used to define the contrast around the edges of objects, an example would be making a building stand out from whatever is behind it, and also to bring it into focus more. This is not easily possible on the film however image editing will make this fairly easy.
Saturation is similar to contrast in that instead of increasing the difference between lights, the difference between colours is changed, this typically will have no effect on a black and white image, but a colour image can be made to look much different by editing the colours around.
Finishing
Once everything is complete and the image is produced it can then be mounted, cropped, printed onto glossy paper or a textured surface to be used in a gallery or for use at home as a wall mounted photo. Once again, photoshop could also be used to play around with the image by adding filters or different effects like sunbeams.
Photographic film material is heavily affected by light, when used in a camera or other recording device, when the button is pressed and the shutter clicks, the light that enters into the camera based on it’s field of view is recorded on the roll of film. This is because the light causes a chemical change within the roll of film, as there are many different ultra-thin layers that filter the light or control the reaction, however the material that records the image is Silver nitrate, as it is known for being able to work as a very effective photon detector.
Once the silver has recorded the image it is stored within the film and must be treated very carefully for the development stage, as any other light that now touches the silver will cause the images to blur or come out looking much different to the original picture that was taken.
Processing and Developing Film
When a roll of film is ready to be developed, it must be taken to a processor, the film contains the images of the exposure and must be amplified and stabilized to make a colour negative that can be printed and looked at by reflected light.
When turning a colour negative film, the processing chemistry is much different to doing a black and white image, the development process involves turning the silver crystals into pure silver, as this occurs, a chemical called Oxidized developer is produced and this then reacts with chemicals called couplers in some of the film layers, which then causes a colour to form, varying on how the silver grains were exposed to the light.
To stop the development process the film is washed or is taken to a stop bath and the unused silver crystals are removed using a solution and the pure silver is bleached off. This then leaves you with a negative image that needs to be washed in order to clean the chemicals off, and is then dried.
Printing
The negative image that we now have will be printed, this is a process that is largely done by professional companies and large laboratories. Colour print paper is used which is similar to film in that it has silver to receive the light and record an image. The silver is exposed and left with the negative image in a printer, oxidized developer is used to combine with couplers in the paper once again, this produces a silver and a dye image, once this reaction has occurred the paper is washed to stop the reaction. The remaining silver is removed in a bleach and fix solution.
The remaining print is then washed to remove any remaining chemicals and then is dried. Once this process is complete the print will now be in colour, much like the positive converted image above, it may turn out that the image does not look entirely realistic and is washed out, some of these steps can be fixed before the processing stage, or afterwards using video editing if the entire film is recorded or the picture is taken to photoshop.
Adjustments
There are many different types of adjustments that can be made to the print, the first of which being burning, this involves adding light to certain parts of the image, resulting in them being darker when the negative is produced, or just making them darker in a program like photoshop.
Dodging is the opposite of burning, where instead of making the pre-processed image lighter, it is made darker so that the positive image will come out lighter, and like burning, the opposite is used for photoshop where the dodge tool will simply make things lighter.
Contrast is the last one, this makes light clash more together, as increasing/decreasing contrast will define the separation of light and dark areas more or less, different papers are needed for this however as changing the contrast is not easy on the pre-processed image without special paper, with photoshop however it is easy to press a button and have the image corrected.
Sharpness can be used to define the contrast around the edges of objects, an example would be making a building stand out from whatever is behind it, and also to bring it into focus more. This is not easily possible on the film however image editing will make this fairly easy.
Saturation is similar to contrast in that instead of increasing the difference between lights, the difference between colours is changed, this typically will have no effect on a black and white image, but a colour image can be made to look much different by editing the colours around.
Finishing
Once everything is complete and the image is produced it can then be mounted, cropped, printed onto glossy paper or a textured surface to be used in a gallery or for use at home as a wall mounted photo. Once again, photoshop could also be used to play around with the image by adding filters or different effects like sunbeams.