Edge of Darkness

Edge of Darkness: The Art, Craft, and Power of the High-Definition Monochrome Photograph

Though the book’s title, Edge of Darkness, may sound like the title for a soap opera, it’s attached to a book which contains invaluable real-world black and white photography gems of knowledge. In it, the late Barry Thornton details the process for producing ultra-definition fine art monochrome photographs. Barry provides detailed technical explanations, example photographs, experimental results, and enjoyable personal narratives, all of which entice one toward the world of black and white photography.

Chapter One — Look Sharp

Chapter one is an excellent short introduction into the concepts of sharpness. Barry also dispels his first of many photographic “old wives’ tales,” as he puts it, …

Photography is full of old wives’ tales and well known facts that are blatant lies. You may well have seen one perpetuated with regularity in photographic magazines. It’s as artificial as the ‘customer service’ counter assistant’s smile. It goes like this. ‘The standard lens on a camera’ (i.e. about 50mm on a 35mm camera) ‘gives about the same angle of view as the human eye’. (pg. 20)

He then provides an experiment, which anyone can perform, even without a camera, to show why this “old wives’ tale” is false. This is typical of his approach to photographic questions; perform an experiment and analyze the results.

This chapter also introduces resolution and acutance, and details their differences. What I found quite enlightening was his explanation of why higher resolution does not necessarily produce a sharper image to our eyes. I suppose this is standard knowledge amongst professional photographers, but seeing it so thoroughly demonstrated with photos drove the point home.

Chapter Two — Lamb in Wolf’s Clothing

This chapter discusses the relationship between negative size and print size. That is,

What print size do we need from our negatives that show ‘perfect’ sharpness? … Once we know that print size we can work backwards to decide the negative format that will consistently provide the definition we need. (pg. 29)

(“Definition” refers to his discussion throughout the previous chapter.)

Barry points out that “consistently” is the operative word here. Even a small negative will occasionally produce superb quality sharpness.

Yet another chapter which is concise and informative.

Chapter Three — Through the Glass Darkly

Having just covered the relationship between negative and print, with regards to sharpness, Barry then walks the reader through the pros and cons of different camera formats as they relate to image sharpness. He covers reflex, coupled rangefinder, and view cameras (i.e., SLR, medium, and large formats). Here again he carries out sharpness experiments, provides results, performs analysis, and draws conclusions, some which may surprise you.

What looks good on paper may not suit in real life. What suits one person may be anathema to another. (pg. 36)

Chapter Four — Inner Eye, Outer Eye

Optical performance is covered next, i.e. how lens choice affects image definition. Barry doesn’t pull punches either when it comes to his view on the benefits of prime lenses over zoom lenses. That discussion, plus his views on the three errors of thought below, make for some enjoyable and informative reading.

… there are three other errors of thought about lens use that occur so frequently that maybe we should just deal with them here. …

1. The wider the maximum aperture of a lens, the ‘better’ the lens.
2. The more you stop down, the sharper the lens gets.
3. To reproduce the depth of the subject that you want sharp in the image from nearest point to furthest point, use the depth of field scale on the lens — right? Wrong! (pg.55, 58)

Chapter Five — Hold It Right There

This chapter covers how tripod, subject and camera movements adversely affect sharpness. Again, Barry performs an experiment which vividly shows the effects of stabilization choices; whether hand-held, light tripod, heavy tripod, or heavy tripod with mirror lockup. The observational results, from his simple and elegant experiment, mostly reinforce widely held beliefs, but, as seems to be the case in this book, produce counter-intuitive results as well.

I also want to point out one nice photographic technique covered in this chapter that really caught my eye. Barry explains why the oft seen cliched image of flowing water, captured via slow shutter speed, looks so unnatural. He describes a different approach, which is quite novel and produces a far more realistic looking result.

Chop the longer exposure up into multiple short exposures on the same frame i.e. multiple double exposing. So for instance, if the overall required exposure were 1/30 second at f5.6, we could try ‘building up’ the exposure with about eight exposures of 1/250 second at f5.6 on the same frame. (pg. 68)

You’re going to have to get the book to see the result, or try it yourself. The image, in my opinion, really has a far more pleasing and realistic look — and he explains why in the book.

Chapter Six — Against the Grain

This chapter was a real eye-opener for me. Barry writes about the effect of grain on sharpness. The results, again obtained through extensive experimentation, are somewhat counter-intuitive; causing another old wives’ tale to bite the dust.

As print after print proved, finer grain does not mean greater sharpness. It usually does mean greater resolution, but resolution, as we already know, does not, on its own, mean higher definition. (pg. 74)

This quote only hints at his findings and I chewed on the results from this chapter for a while. I’m still trying to process how best to incorporate the knowledge into my photography skill-set.

Chapter Seven — Three Feet and Reducing

Most of us have heard about the exposure triangle consisting of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Barry talks about another triangle in this chapter consisting of film speed, graininess and sharpness. Though the discussion targets film processing, it also does a nice job explaining the interplay between these variables.

Chapter Eight through Chapter Fourteen

This book, copyrighted in 2000, approaches its subject from the medium of film, with nearly half of the book devoted towards darkroom techniques. These last chapters thoroughly cover the topic from the perspective of producing high-definition prints.

Pros

• convincingly strikes down widely held “old wives’ tales” which are no more than myths,
• really makes the art of black and white photography look fascinating and fun, and
• one of the more enjoyable and readable photography books I own

Cons

• photographs used as examples are not exceptionally inspiring, but they were meant to illustrate a textual point and, therefore, appropriate,
• not a book for novices in the sense that it assumes a basic understanding of concepts such as the Zone System, and
• half of the book is devoted to darkroom techniques

Summary

As half the book is devoted to the art of processing black and white film, one could reasonable ask if it is of any value to the digital photographer? Yes, it is of value! The information in the first half of the book alone justifies the price; though I actually took the time to read the entire book. I will be re-reading, at least the first half of this book, multiple times and, no doubt, it will be my reference source for high-definition photography.

I have read scores of books about photography and this is one of the better ones. It is well worth your time to read and study what Barry committed to print before his untimely death. I only wish he were still with us as the photography world needs more like him.

Comments

[JWP]

Looks like an excellent book. Regarding sharpness and resolution, a few years ago Popular Photography discussed an interesting study that showed how most eyes could not distinguish between a 300 dpi and a 200 dpi print. As you indicated in the review, I've also found that many books written from a film perspective have a lot to offer to photographers in the digital age. Thanks for bringing this book to my attention.