The Online Photographer

So, would those be considered photoshopped (as in cheating)titles or photoshopped pictures?

1940 wins with '87 a close second.....will 36mp bring it back????

"So, would those be considered photoshopped (as in cheating)titles or photoshopped pictures?"

(Sigh) I was really hoping I wouldn't have to explain the concept here, at least not immediately. Yes, those illustrations (not demonstrations) are SIMULATED (as it says) digitally, from a digital original (the same one, obviously), to illustrate the point that styles in B&W have changed over the years. As a fun way to make the point visually instead of saying it verbally.

You *really* don't get that? I'm disappointed.

Mike

Looks, like we've come full circle (except for the darker blues in the last photo).

"I'll take that first shot every time."

I wish my Photoshop skills were a little better. I didn't quite nail the look. Should have added a little simulated cosine 4 falloff, for one thing...those nice old Ektars did hotspot a bit.

Mike

Wait, I'm confused, either those trees haven't grown an inch in 72 years or am I really looking at pictures of a picture?

I'm impressed that you have the perseverance to go to the same location year after year and take the same photo. What's most amazing is that you are able to coax the birds to fly in the exact same flight patterns - following the wings, as it were, of their now long gone predecessors.

I love the 1940 and 1987 versions. That 2001 Dimage version is nasty...but it does show what I've seen a lot of from that time. The "most recent" image is one of the reasons B&W is suffering right now. We have people who are afraid to have shadows with no detail...so the pull them up so much we get that horrible pseudo-HDR look.

Wow, so Photoshop has a filter that simulates what an image looks like using an Acute-matte screen..... and boy does it make a difference

Is it the look of bw that has changed over the years or the methods by which we get there that has changed over the years? You might be illustrating that too. A chicken and egg thing, which comes first, the tools or the look?

I'd argue that the tools still drive the look and we only think that the look is just a style to be applied. In the actual taking of the picture, all of those cameras would produce different results, and not just in tonal aspects. Different cameras produce different pictures which is obvious, but the ability to mimic as you have done I think tends to mask that.

I'm currently shooting a project with a 5D and a Mamiya 7- I can make all the prints converge on an average so that it is hard to tell which comes from which, however, they are different and I shoot differently with each.

So I'm not so sure that the title of the post is accurate- is it paths to bw over the years? But it raises a good point.

This is awesome. It took me a while to get it, since you cleverly moved the crops around a bit so it wasn't instantly obvious that the clouds were the same. I'm reading Errol Morris' book now, so I have recently been soaking in the various older styles dictated by emulsions and tastes.

Well done, placing them all together like that.

I think it would be FASCINATING to correlate birth date with preferred image:

Born: 1965
Prefer: 1987

1940 for me.

Presumably the 20 year gaps between the pictures is down to how long it takes to train a flock of birds to exactly recreate the scene :-)

But seriously, if we're going to compare the look of different equipment and processes, wouldn't actual pictures be a better comparison?
Otherwise we're just comparing the way that 5 different photoshop filters look.

FWIW, I prefer the first one.

Can I just get a Lightroom preset for the 1940 and 1987 one? :)

"I'm impressed that you have the perseverance to go to the same location year after year and take the same photo. What's most amazing is that you are able to coax the birds to fly in the exact same flight patterns"

John,
That's impressive, true (birds are damned hard to train), but what's *most* impressive is that I took that first shot seventeen years before I was born!

Few people have that skill.

Mike

David:
" We have people who are afraid to have shadows with no detail...so the pull them up so much we get that horrible pseudo-HDR look."

Part of that is that printing on paper crushes the shadows. < a bunch of pointlessly confusing stuff about monitor calibration and paper profiles goes here >

Part of that is bad taste.

Similarly what looks sharp in a large print looks like mush on screen and vice versa.

Wow, the 2012 version is so strikingly the most interesting.

I guess that's why I'm so fond of digital, eh?

I was looking closely, and noticing the different bird patterns. I briefly thought (before you made it clear at the end of your article) that you might have actually done a series of new pictures, using retro tech for much of it (which would have been a huge amount of work).

The question I now have is, how accurate do you feel the simulations are?

(Hasselblad is second-best, then 4x5 Verichrome, for me.)

Hasselblad..... Sigh.

Despite growing up in the film twilight/digital dawn (born 1990), I find myself drawn to the 1940 one most. Such delicate tonality...

Perhaps this post should be called "glass half full/glass half empty". As in, an optimist could say that we didn't lose anything with progress; a pessimist could reply that there doesn't seem to be, ahem, much progress either.

But I am really glad not to be back in 2001!

People, people, people,

Of course they're all original photos-- that's the famous Wisconsin Petrified Larch! It's been photographed more often than Yosemite's Half Dome. It was easy for Mike to find dozens of nearly identical photos over the decades.

As for the apparent sameness of the sky and birds, well, that's all just a backdrop. The place has been a tourist attraction since the 1920's and the owners built a pretty background so folks could get nice snaps without showing the gift shop, concession stand and parking areas.

Trust me, would I lie?

pax / Ctein

I am very intrigued by the different look of the clouds. Also, you should try an IR look, just for fun. Very interesting.

I'd like to see prints before reserving judgement on what is 'best' for me, but I take the point that you were illustrating the effect of changing tastes oover time.

The book Ansel Adams at 100 makes the point by showing AA's work reinterpreted over time with some signature pictures. In another medium, a fascinating CD set (2 discs) is Glenn Gould's take on the Goldberg Variations (A State OF Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations), recorded decades apart (1955 and 1981).

Patrick

The 2001 version compared to everything else is very reminiscent of my recent re-discovery of a photo I took a few days after I bought my first digital camera (a 1.2MP Casio ca. 1999). Blown highlights, blocked shadows, poor definition, an ugly nasty mess. Lately I've been using the 35mm P&S that it replaced, scanning the negs and realizing that, in hindsight, that old digicam was a good example of how a fool and his money are easily parted. Oh well.

I'll still take the 2001 version over that god-awful abomination of an HDR though ;-)

I'm partial to the 400 ASA because in expensive days I shot that to be sure I'd get the most usable prints - the print grain is actually better than pixel-peeper blowups would suggest. Generally agree with others that the 1940 and 1987 are best - would go on to say the others are just not very good in any year.

Ctein, Made me laugh out loud and almost spill my coffee with the 'the gift shop, concession stand and parking areas'

Like the 1940s best but its all preference.

Craig

Born 1948. Prefer 1987.

Is it weird that my preference greatly change when I click the pictures and look at the larger versions, versus just looking at the small versions in the blog post?

Either way, I'm a little dumbfounded that people (well, commenters anyway) seem to prefer the 1940's one so much. The whole thing is like looking through gray tinted, slightly fogged glasses.

Maybe the sun was weaker back then?

It's truly breathtaking to see how much more details and resolution that Hassy shot has. You really CAN tell the difference even on a web sized pic. If I squint hard enough, you can even see the chromatic aberration differences too. It has so much more MORE comparing to the dinky 4/3 sensor. Truly an excellent test.

Now excuse me while I unstuck my tongue.

At first the top one seems overly gray, but there is just enough black to keep it interesting. So I vote for that one, at least at 800 pixels, and even though you weren't asking for a vote. If you save the preset, just call it "Mike's Old Fashioned" and sell it for $5.

Another vote here for 1940 closely followed by 1987.

And, if I may be so bold, the 2012 rendering doesn't do a thing for me - in fact I actually dislike it.

W

Oh! Verichrome. I swear, they whispered Verichrome Pan in D-23 and then Kodalk as they handed us our diplomas in Rochester. Shoot Verichrome Pan with a Hasselblad, mount a Y2 filter up front. Process in D-23 and Kodalk. Negatives so long even I could make great prints. Those were the days when men were men and the sheep were nervous.

So technology always wins over art? The images represent what was possible at that time. 2012 sharpness, high ISO and HDR is what every photo needs!? - And how any camera is measured.
But when we see the tonality and a more gentle rendering from the 50's we go nostalgic. The quality then was what we could get.
The 1987 image is liked by many, me included, as it resembles todays ideals, yet has a more natural presence.

You left something out.

1940
Illustrators special

1965
DuPont Velour Black #3 (diffusion enlarger don't you know).

Nice idea

Wow, the 2012 shot comes complete with halo around the trees so that must be sort of holy and therefore the best. A little disappointed that the clouds did not look quite sooty enough, and a token piece of radioactive glow could've been left.

How about a waterfall scene, with the final 2012 shot inevitably looking as if a milk tanker has had an unfortunate accident upstream?

And where's that place with the empty jetty extending out into the lake? 2012 has the water with a smooth homogenous luminescent glow and ne'er a sign of a ripple. Always.

Finally, that famous rock strewn beach at twighlight, continually plagued by a misty fog for 30 seconds every evening from 2008-2012. Someone will know the location, it's on every camera magazine cover.

Mike, so you reached your peak, at least in terms of craft, 17 years before you were born? Say it ain't so!
It makes me glad that I have a freezer full of Verichrome (as well as Tri-X and Panatomic) I should spend some time shooting digital vs. the B&W classics and see what it takes to match the results.
I do that quite often with Portra and digital, and it's quite interesting.

Dear Michael,

Well, that's what the billboard says.

I imagine a petrified larch looks somewhat different from a live one. Extremities gets shmooshed and distorted during the process of petrification (a constant problem for paleontologists) and when the surrounding sediments got eroded away no doubt some bits of the harder fossilized tree broke off.

I know all this stuff 'cuz I live with a geologist.

pax / hyper-educated Ctein

Born 1964.
Prefer 1987.

I can hear the birds in the first photo. Not so for the others, especially the last—they're more like confetti.

"I'm impressed that you have the perseverance to go to the same location year after year and take the same photo. What's most amazing is that you are able to coax the birds to fly in the exact same flight patterns - following the wings, as it were, of their now long gone predecessors."

That's what I thought ;-)

Mike, maybe you should have posted these randomly numbered without the info under each, but then have all the specs at the bottom of the page, randomly. Then we could have played "match the photo to the year."

How many would have picked number 1 as 1940? Does nostalgia skew preferences?

Can you do the experiment over again, or have we all cottoned on?

and again, all the commenters are missing the point for me: is STYLE just the way something looks, or is it the result of process? And is a fake STYLE equal to a real PROCESS?

don't working methods come as the result of some restrictions? If you can do anything with anything doesn't that result in nothing?

I think this post illustrates exactly what is wrong with imaging v photography.

any takers?

Its a little hard to tell but surely an outdoors picture like that airy 1940 farm scene didn't necessarily call for the dual emulsion, contrast taming Verichrome, notwithstanding the sunlit patches?

Anyway, between Verichrome and Tri-x and careful choice of format and paper I think we had B&W photography covered, circa 1965. No progress since then, I think.

I vote for the 4x5.

Also, having seen actual wet prints from a Hassy (shared darkroom with a photographer who used one), I have to say your 1987 simulation is pretty close!

(In the wet darkroom) I have always preferred to print like the 1940 picture. But such prints were never popular-- most everyone thought they were "too gray." Split grade printing made everyone happy- I got to keep my beloved midtones, the masses got the shadows they wanted. I ended up printing halfway between 1940 and 1987.

And I learned one thing from this exercise: people today, they're contrast junkies.

As soon as I saw the first photo I thought" "if this were made today, every edge would probably be glowing because someone couldn't keep away from the 'clarity' slider." Scrolled down to 2012, and yep, there it is.
I've noticed that I sometimes actually grimace when I see overtly manipulated photos, and I almost always find local adjustments far more offensive than global adjustments.

Global contrast increase: "Sure, bright stuff is bright, and shadows are dark, no conflict with how the world looks."

Local contrast increase: "Why is that tree glowing?, and why is the sky menacingly dark around that guy's white pants?"

Maybe, it's my curmudgeonly tendencies, but I like photographs that at least look like they could believably represent reality on first glance, without distracting gimmickry meant to "highlight" specific elements.

Born: 1985, Favorites: 1940, 1987

I got most of these camera or lens or similar even now ... It seems the 1988 Hessy is winner for me. Have to go for this next round then. Do not have the seagull paper though.

Your 2012 image is so 2010. 2012 in my mind would be something like: "iPhone 4S, Instagram, Inkwell filter, selective focus and nasty Facebook jpeg compression"

Untrained eye: All, except the 2001, appear to me as though they could be unaltered photographs of a natural scene.

I drive past a whitewashed barn on my my into work each morning. Lately I have been taken notice of how different the barn looks every morning. I can't say why, but the realization of this has added quite a bit of enjoyment to my morning drive. Something to look forward to.

I like the 2016 one the best. The Photoshop CS8 shot where the "content aware reconstruction tool" has incorporated the attractive cows, changed the time of day to midnight and the season to mid winter, and included those fabulous star trails. Now that's a great photo...except we don't call them photos anymore.

This was a great little experiment. I'm actually very encouraged by what I think is one of the lessons to be gleened from it. While digital photography and its associated post-processing makes it possible to create what we see in the 2012, it also makes it possible to create the 1940 and the 1987 (which I think is very impressive, including the crop to square).

The decionmaking behind how and WHY you made the adjustments to make 1940 and the 1987 should be required reading for every photographer, especially beginners who are sure to see all those HDR tutorial sitres as well.

Am I the only one seeing the direct connection to this post:

http://the_online_photographer/2012/02/context.html

THAT is the brilliance of what you have done I think.
BTW: born 1960 pref. 1940 and I KNOW that has something to do with it's "title"