Too dark? Too flat? Opinions vary, it seems...

[ImageMaker]

I've posted this image a couple places, once scanned from the negative, and more recently from a straight 8x10 print; Seattle's Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist being repaired from earthquake damage in the spring of 2004, lit by sunlight reflecting off windows of an apartment block across the street.

I've had people tell me it was lovely, the light was excquisite, etc., and then the next comments were it was too dark, too flat, needed more contrast.  I do have some room to print the highlights a bit lighter without changing the darks, and thus gain some contrast, but no more than about one zone expansion over the whole range; the image is (in my opinion, at least for my printing skills) too complex to benefit much by dodging or burning within reason.  Question is, would raising the highlights one zone (putting the brightest patches into Zone IX or IX 1/2) and increasing contrast to keep the darks where they are actually improve the image enough to be worth reprinting?

I also know it's hard to be sure from the scan, as compared to the print -- I've made this scan as close to the print as I have the skill to do, short of spending an hour or more rescanning over and over, but it still has less shadow detail, sharpness, etc. than the print.

Wirgin Auta 6.3, unrecorded exposure (handheld), TMY, HC-110 Dilution G, Adorama MG RC 8x10, full frame from 6x4.5.

[r-brian]

It's definitely flat, no blacks, no whites, no contrast.  Doesn't mean it's wrong or bad.  Just a flat scene.  It does have a nice feel to it though.  It would be interesting to see what it would look like at a contrast level 4.

[connealy]

My guess would be that this is an image which is very hard to translate from a print to the computer screen.  It reminds me of some of the work of Frederick Evans who did a lot of often dark-toned photos of English and French cathredrals which were frequently  in the process of reconstruction.  
    The subtle tonal relationships are very appealling, but it does look a bit flat on the monitor.  I played around with it a bit in PS and it seemed to me that you could do a monitor-oriented image with a bit of dodging of the highlights followed by a slight increase in contrast by using levels to pull in the left and right sides just a bit without destroying the original emotional tone of the photo.

[Don Day]

This is a tough one. When I deepened the left side until the darkest detail just  separated from black, the empty doorway on the right was still a charcoal gray, which is unnatural for a twilight situation.  Have you dodged the lower right side a bit to bring up detail?  If so, the added "base plus fog" noise might be interfering with the evenness of true black across the image, making a lower key balance difficult to effect.

[ImageMaker]

I have done no dodging or burning on this image as you see it.  In the print, under a good light, there is no texture on the right side door (because, as I recall, it was smooth and a solid color) but I can see the stained glass pattern in the window above it.

I wouldn't call this a "twilight" situation -- the negative was exposed around 4 PM on a hot summer day, but this is the shaded side of the building and there are trees just out of frame on both sides.  The patches of light you see are window reflections.  There's a lot of room to print this lighter, and the negative scan I've posted previously (elsewhere) was lighter than this scan from the print.  I'm somewhat handicapped in getting a good scan because for some reason Photoshop 5 LE (which came with my rather old, used scanner) insists on showing images much lighter than any other viewer on my system, so I have to guess how much to lighten the image to make it appear the same in other software (such as a browser).

I may try reprinting this much lighter, to see if I prefer the feeling of "light everywhere" over the "dim with patches" appearance of this print -- more toward the high key, rather than low key.

[connealy]

If you are playing with it in Photoshop it might be worth trying a warm gray tritone or duotone which can give some additional tonal separation in the dark areas.  It seems to me this is an instance where you can do some things with a digital scan that cannot easily be duplicated in the darkroom.  I find that I use the PS capacity to selectively dodge highlights very often.

[melek]

It's not that it's too dark. It's that in some respects, it isn't dark enough.

The shadows are too light. I might try to deepen the shadows and raise the highlights slightly.

I also like Mike's idea about toning. On your PC, I might try a sepia and a selenium tone. I've tried both, and each results in a photo with a different "feel."

[ImageMaker]

Raising the highs and lowering the lows I can do -- cut back on the yellow filter exposure, and increase the blue, all good.  Anything I might do in PS, however, bypasses what I'm trying to do here.  I do own, and occasionally use a digital camera, and have been scanning negatives for a couple years, but what I'm after here is learning how to be a better printer in silver gelatin.  I've spent the last two years, about, trying to do as little manipulation from scanned negatives as possible, in order to get better at making negatives; now I'm moving on to learning how to get the most out of the negative in the darkroom (since I finally have a darkroom).

Next darkroom session, I'll try reprinting this with lighter highlights and stronger contrast and see what I get.  I still have the test prints and the enlarger head is the same place it was, so I won't have to start over, just load up the negative and expose.

[ImageMaker]

Okay, I spent a few hours printing yesterday and reprinted "Under Repair" -- and it does look better with deeper shadows; I don't think I actually had the dark areas below about Value III on the previous print.  I shortened the highlight exposure (soft filter) by 25%, almost doubled the shadow exposure (hard filter), and got a print with a lot more "snap" without really losing any detail.  What I found surprising, after printing it this way, is that the soft character of the light was preserved in a much "harder", higher contrast print.  Good lesson!

The light patch in the lower left, BTW, is a reflection from the glossy print surface; my scanner doesn't hold the print hard against the glass.

[sandeha]

I think the immediate gain in this version is in depth - you now have an image you can walk into.