Do this! if you want some Ansel Adam Black and White Style 📷

In this video I will show you a little more theory about the dramatic Black and White technic and sow you how I use my presets on many examples. I wish I would have seen that video when I started 15 years ago.

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[philipsmith]

I've been using your presets on my B&W for about 6 months the made my photos go from ok to fantastic cannot thank you enough

[ML-rmvk]

Mr. Adams was a master of photography his prints should be seen in person.the prints have a sence of movement.

[framethemoment.photography]

Great tutorial. Learnt a lot. The free presets are the cherry on top. I don't know any other professional photographer who give away free presets. Everyone is selling them and promoting their presets 100 times during the video. Thanks man your approach is a welcome change.

[susandarby]

I love your presets and use them 80% of the time, been using them for years now! Thank you so much Serge this was as alway, so helpful!!

[tackmack]

Merci Monsieur. What I especially appreciate are the explanation of what your presets are doing and how to personalise them for each photo. Of course as you have the eye of an artist to help in making those decisions is something that I am envious of! Beautiful and clear explanation and great <free!> presets.

[Wolf-]

Thank you Serge, another brilliant tutorial.

[dannyperichlara]

You should also consider that Ansel Adams used the red filter to get darker skies. Before you do the "burn" of different zones, you should change the raw profile to Monochrome Red Filter to emulate the use of the red filter. Most times, you don't need to do anything else.

[VintageRacer]

Thanks Serge. Your educational videos, along with your outstanding photography have helped me explore and expand my creative side. Pushing a button is one thing, creating a “Photograph” is another. You’re the best on YouTube and I’m glad I subscribed.

[danbbrawner]

Hi Serge. I just tried one of your Ansel Adams presets. Wow! These are amazing.

[studio_guing]

thank you so much. I am now getting interested with black and whte

[sdgreen]

Thank you Serge, this is very imformative. I enjoy your bouncy style. Very generous of you to offer the presets. I don't really understand exactly what makes Ansel Adams' photos so special...even though I can see that they are. I don't know enough about the technical aspects of his day & how they apply to his art.

[jonglaser]

Great tutorials. Wish they were based up Capture One. I left Lr after version 6 and all the issues they had years ago.

[TeddyCavachon]

I learned the Zone System in 1970 using a Pentax 1° spot meter which made precise direct reading of shadow and highlights possible (instead of setting shadow exposure using 18% gray card and guessing scene contrast as Adams did). B&W negative / print is the only photographic medium in which negative development can be adjusted to raise or lower the negative density range to fit any range of scene lighting to the range of the print paper. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about Adams System technically because it was the same “Expose for the Shadows (on the negative) and then Develop for the Highlights )on the print.

Prior to the 1930s film as Orthochromatic, meaning it didn’t react to red light. That skewed the rendering of scenes but allowed the photographers to develop their film visually under red ‘safe’ lights and pull it from the developer when experience told them the development of the highlights had reached a density range that fit the print paper they were using. Because overcast lighting has lower contrast than a clear sunny day photos of the same scene taken on overcast and clear days would need different film development times to record a full range of tone from Zone 0 black voids like a cave, to the subtle difference between a smooth sunlit Zone 9 white object and the Zone 10 specular reflections on it.

Silver based films have a much longer range than a print and with negative film it is possible to overexpose by as much as two stop and still get an acceptable print with linear rendering of exposure differences. What the photographer or photo lab does is simply give the print more or less development based on the shadow density of the negative. What made roll film possible was the development of print papers with different levels of contrast so instead of needed to ‘bespoke’ develop each exposure based on the scene range the lab could measure the range of density between shadows and highlights on the negative and then select the grade of paper which matched it. Producing a B&W with the same tonal range as an Ansel Adams print with the Kodak method was trivial if one understood the how the process worked.

What set Adams iconic landscape photos apart from others was realizing he could dramatically alter the contrast of scene at capture by using Panchromatic film with color filters over the lens. The moody dark skies in his photos were the result of using a red filter on the lens which renders anything blue like the sky much darker than seen by eye and anything red much lighter. Photograph autumn foliage on Panchromatic B&W film with an orange filter over the lens and you’d get a brighter unnatural glow from the yellow and orange leaves contrasted by darker than normal skies. A green filter over the lens renders green foliage with UNNATURAL contrast on B&W film. After reading Adams Basic Photo Series book and learning that secret the first thing I did was buy a set of yellow, orange, red, green and blue filters. 😊

The huge difference between B&W film and digital camera is the inability of the camera to record the full range of a sunny outdoor scene in a single exposure. It is critical to expose the highlights optimally because on digital that is the only way to to preserve the contrast between the “Zone 9” smooth white objects like the body of a white car in direct sunlight and the “Zone 10” specular highlight the sun creates on it, the vital clue to it’s 3D shape. Regardless of metering method the Zone 9 whites need to be recorded in the 245-254 range with only the Zone 10 specular reflections clipping the sensor at 255.

In high contrast scenes exposing for the highlights will result in darker than normal mid tone values, loss of detail in shadows and “noise” in them because there is no signal for the ISO setting of the camera to amplify. Adjusting the mid-tones is trivial with digital editing by using the middle slider in LEVELS or moving the middle of the curve in CURVES. The loss of shadow detail can be dealt with at capture by lighting the scene composing it so the loss of detail will not be noticed or by bracketing and combining two exposures with HDR. But that only gets one to the point of record what is actually there faithfully, not the type of artistic interpretation of scenes Adams was able to “previsualize” and capture when making the exposure.

If you want to understand how Adams produced the effects he did I’d encourage you to buy a set of color filter gels you can hold over your eyes and then placed over the lens when recording the images instead of just moving color adjustment sliders to alter the color balance. Even if you don’t use the gels over the lens to alter the RGB recording of the image looking at the scene through the gels will provide a way to pre-visualize what digital editing changes will be needed.

[selvinypinlim]

Great tutorial and many thanks for the presets

[roycaesarcoloscos]

Brilliant as always.
My always favorite of your B and W presets is the “gritty”. Thanks

[janeberrisford]

Another fantastic video Serge. I can't wait to try this. You have a beautiful daughter !

[MichaelsBerlinMovies]

Thank you very much for your presets, I very much enjoy your channel

[hachewie]

Great video and very generous of you. When I get m new computer, I’ll download the presets. Thank you.

[tgchism]

Another great video! I'm learning a lot and enjoying the presets! I was able to Make some photos from Lassen National Park in California really stand out!

[basilbcf]

29 peoplpe (at this time) thumbs down? Seriously? Thanks for another great video, Serge,