George Schaub

Backlight has been bedeviling photographers for years, particularly in landscape
pictures and those where you want to take a shot but simply showed up at your
location at the wrong time of day. Backlight in and of itself is not the problem;
it's how your meter behaves and how you make the reading that creates
it. Simply put, when the subject falls within its own shadow because the brightest
illumination is behind it the meter can be overwhelmed by the illumination and
"fooled" into thinking it has more light for the exposure than the
main subject dictates.

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This photo was made in Raw file format, then enhanced using a Raw processor. Doing so allowed me to get exactly the color, contrast, and richness I wanted. Shooting in Raw is what allowed me to get the most quality out of the image file later.

This issue is dedicated to digital techniques, but I feel it’s important to have a discussion on the differences and similarities between black and white film and digital photography. I do this for two reasons—the first is that I figure some of you may have made the transition from film to digital and have carried over some assumptions about how things work. The second is that even if you have never shot film you have probably been exposed to information passed on from film photographers about how things work. Either way, there are a number of matters at the heart of black and white photography that have changed, or at least should be looked at in a new light.

Black and White Imaging: Ilford's Perspective

by George Schaub

Given that we all have seen a shrinking in silver-based materials in general
in the last year, and in light of Kodak exiting the black and white paper business,
and Agfa leaving the black and white (and all photo) business altogether, we
were all leftwo...