High contrast, high 'grain' B&W with Digital?

[Sekabin]

Hi all, I'm new here so I apologise if this is in the wrong section.

I recently bought Daido Moriyama's 'Shinjuku' photobook. Till now I've been happily shooting reasonably sharp, mostly colour images with my Digital Kiss (300D). However, I'm really moved by the images in the book and would like to try to imitate this style somehow. So I have a question:

Is it possible to produce very grainy, very high contrast B&W images with a digital camera? I'm presuming that the noise on digital will be different to the grain of film, but is it possible to get somewhere close? How might I do it?

I hope someone can help me, thanks!!

Sek.
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http://www.pbase.com/sekabin

[Barb42]

You can do it in Photoshop - just turn the image into BW and add grain. Should be able to use Elements and Paint Shop Pro for the same thing.

[ProAc_Fan]

If you are so inclined and use Photoshop go to the Adobe Studio Exchange website. They have an action for addding film grain and it works great. You can also adjust the opacity and dial in the amount of grain you'd like.

Mike

[PhotosGuy]

What Barb said.
Try adding grain to several layers at different settings & blending them to get the effect you want. I haven't had a lot of good luck using PS though.
Here's a pic that was shot on chrome, then copied with B&W 2475 recording film:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v218/PhotosGuy/Samples%20-%20General/ANR-Riggers_01.jpg

PS just doesn't give me the same effect.

[Sekabin]

Great photo. This is what I'm wondering; how close to that effect can we get? If I'm going to add grain in PS should I first remove noise from the image? I'm assuming that the noise on a digital image doesn't look like film.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Nah.. leave the noise.

[pdrow]

There is a free download for a ps plugin at http://www.optikvervelabs.com/ You can do all kinds of effects very quickly and easily including adding grain and converting to BW all at one time.

[Sekabin]

There is a free download for a ps plugin at http://www.optikvervelabs.com/ You can do all kinds of effects very quickly and easily including adding grain and converting to BW all at one time.

Thanks a lot for the link. The software looks useful! It's only for PC unfortunately, and I'm on a Mac.

[Sekabin]

Nah.. leave the noise.

I've been thinking that, if film photographers used the grain to create an effect, it must be possible to use the noise. Anyone know of photographers who are doing that (on purpose I mean :D)?

[Abdee]

Also try Grain Surgery which emulates grain of well known bw, slide and color films.

[blue_max]

I was able to do this in Photoshop. It may not be the same effect, but is similar. It's just adding noise (gaussian and monochromatic). You have to mess with the contrast to get it to blow out a little.

It's quite controllable, so I am sure you could get the effect you want.

Graham
.

[learjet035]

Yes, for sure using PS you can get that effect. Post a pic of yours, and one you would like to imitate and let us give it a shot.

[Sekabin]

Yes, for sure using PS you can get that effect. Post a pic of yours, and one you would like to imitate and let us give it a shot.

Thanks a lot. Here is an attempt of mine at the look I want to get: http://www.pbase.com/sekabin/image/45758760 (the original is here: http://www.pbase.com/sekabin/image/45759661 - warning, huge file)

I'd like to imitate this sort of high-contrast image: http://www.artincontext.org/images/TPT/0100/TPT0115B.jpg
or this: http://www.photography-now.com/pn/Bilder/Bilder/gross/K07623B004430.jpg

Some more for reference:
http://www.artincontext.org/images/TPT/0100/TPT0113B.jpg
http://www.onoci.net/cartier_3110/upload/moriyama/21.jpg
http://www.artincontext.org/images/TPT/0000/TPT0040B.jpg
http://www.artincontext.org/images/TPT/0000/TPT0042B.jpg
http://www.artincontext.org/images/TPT/0000/TPT0023B.jpg

Thanks so much for all your help.

[Longwatcher]

I am not at home so can't try it myself at this time, but I had a thought on how to make the graininess of PS'd digital images look more realistic (maybe).

This suggestion is base don the fact that PS seems to apply the graininess evenly over the whole of the image.

create three layers
Base layer - apply a very light graininess (in terms of how much it is visible)
Shadow layer - Apply a larger/darker graininess to this layer
Highlight layer - Apply a larger/lighter graininess to this layer
Merge the three layers together.

May find need to reverse Shadow and Highlight layers, but I think I have it right. This should give it a more film look to the grains then what straight PS does.

Just a thought.

[learjet035]

Is this anywhere near what you are lookn for? There are endless adjustments to this pic, I just played with it 4 a few minutes and got about 10 cool looks.
In PS CS2
Image/adjust/channel mixer/ check monochrome move sliders
Duplicate latyer
Filter/artistic/ film grain
Duplicate again for another round of film grain maybe a bit of gaus blur too
Dodge and burn for different areas

[learjet035]

PS, most of the sample pics were taken in daylight, which allows for more highlight etc..

[Sekabin]

Is this anywhere near what you are lookn for? There are endless adjustments to this pic, I just played with it 4 a few minutes and got about 10 cool looks.
In PS CS2
Image/adjust/channel mixer/ check monochrome move sliders
Duplicate latyer
Filter/artistic/ film grain
Duplicate again for another round of film grain maybe a bit of gaus blur too
Dodge and burn for different areas

Yes that's great! If you can do that in a few minutes then I'm quite confident I can get close to the look I want. It would be nice to somehow use the noise from the camera artistically if possible, but I'm not sure ... (why are we obsessed with sharpness all the time). I don't actually have PS at the moment - I tried with gimp but it doesn't seem to like my machine and crashes when I ask it to do anything more complicated than adding a border
:confused:

If I were to enter a photograph like that into a competition (I wouldn't, this is hypothetical), would it be considered to be a 'manipulated' photo, or would adding grain fit into normal post processing generally?

[Sekabin]

PS, most of the sample pics were taken in daylight, which allows for more highlight etc..

Yes that's a good point. Most of the photos in the 'Shinjuku' book that started me off down this path are taken at night, but I couldn't find examples on the net.

[learjet035]

I think you can pic up earlier versions of PS online legally for cheap. 6 or 7 would work fine for you and there are a TON of tutorials online to help, as well as here.