[RKKS08]

Unfortunately, the target of the following link is in German only.
Right now, I don't have the time to translate it (and I am not sure whether it woul break ciopyright restrictions in either Switzerland, Germany, or the USA).

Rassismus in der Fototechnik - Die Kamera ist rassistisch ? Google und Snap wollen das ändern - Kultur - SRF

It is about the color models used for skin tones. which do not allow to show reasonable details about the skin of dark colored people without ruining the rest of the picture.
It seems all this started with the "Shirley card" of Kodak in the 1940s. There were many improvements to this card, but all ment to show the skin tones of white people more realistical.
Maybe some people remember that Jean Luc Godard refused to use Kodak materiaL for a Cinema film in Mosambique, calling the Kodak movie film material "rassist".

When Kodak started to offer real improvements in the 1970s, it obviously was not to improve photographies of black people, but because booming advertisments had difficulties to show realistic colors/shades of chocolate and furniture.

The reason for the link right now is the fact, that (according to the Swiss souce) both Google and Snapchat have annouinced changes in their color models in respect to dark skin tones.
We will see.

You Tube

You Tube

[BigMackCam]

For the benefit of other readers, here's the English-translation from Google Translate:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https://www.srf.ch/kult...en-das-aendern

Someone's going to have to say this, so it may as well be me...

With no offence to the OP (or any other members) intended, I think it's utterly bizarre and mis-placed to judge a camera, film and/or colour profile as "racist" in any way, and it does nothing, IMHO, to help the noble and vital fight against issues of genuine racism, which deserves our utmost clarity, focus and common sense.

For an alternative view, it's worth reading the following short article from ten years ago (when things weren't quite so crazy):

Photographing People of Color : NYIP Photo Articles

TL;DR - If you're used to photographing lighter-skinned people, there can be different considerations and techniques required when photographing those with darker skin... and, importantly, vice versa. There's no racism at play here... we simply adjust our technique to suit our subject, as we should for any photo.

That said, I've no problem with the development of new profiles that are optimised for certain subjects, and I'd be very happy to try them...

[RKKS08]

For the benefit of other readers, here's the English-translation from Google Translate:

Google Translate

Someone's going to have to say this, so it may as well be me...

With no offence to the OP (or any other members) intended, I think it's utterly bizarre to judge a camera, film and/or colour profile as "racist" in any way, and it does nothing, IMHO, to help the noble and vital fight against issues of genuine racism, which deserves our clarity, focus and common sense.

For an alternative view, it's worth reading the following short article from ten years ago (when things weren't quite so crazy):

Photographing People of Color : NYIP Photo Articles

TL;DR - If you're used to photographing lighter-skinned people, there are different considerations and techniques when photographing those with darker skin... and, importantly, vice versa. There's no racism at play here... we simply adjust our technique to suit our subject, as we should for any photo.

That said, I've no problem with the development of new profiles that are optimised to assist with such photography, and I'd be very happy to try them...

I agree with you (mostly).
But keep in mind that with movie films the only way to improve color tones of dark people was using illumination - and this only in a controlled environment.
Godard found it was impossible to show realistic color tones with a Kodak film - so for him the film material itself was the culprit. Which indeed it was.
I don't think he wanted to pin the "racist" label to the people who developed the technique. The development obviously follows the needs of the film industry.

[pschlute]

Perhaps Godard and anyone else pursuing this line, should learn about exposure rather than how to jump on a band-wagon.

[BigMackCam]

I agree with you (mostly).
But keep in mind that with movie films the only way to improve color tones of dark people was using illumination - and this only in a controlled environment.
Godard found it was impossible to show realistic color tones with a Kodak film - so for him the film material itself was the culprit. Which indeed it was.
I don't think he wanted to pin the "racist" label to the people who developed the technique. The development obviously follows the needs of the film industry.

Don't get me wrong, I do understand the problem. The Kodak film Godard used, and the colour profiles in today's digital cameras, didn't and don't provide the required results for darker subjects, especially in less-than-ideal lighting - whether it's my brown suede brogues on the slightly darker door-mat, my dark-chocolate-brown cat "Boo Boo" in a dimly-lit room, two different shades of brown tables in a product catalogue, or a darker-skinned movie star performing along-side paler-skinned co-stars).

From the Google-translated article (which may, of course, contain errors in translation):

The Franco-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard refused to shoot a Kodak film in Mozambique. Godard insulted him as racist - the facial expressions of dark-skinned people were barely visible on the recordings.

"Photos of dark-skinned people hardly work, especially with settings in poor lighting conditions - then you cannot see them well. The interdisciplinary artist Deun Ivory sees these technical limitations as structural discrimination: "It reinforces the idea that dark-skinned people are not worth being seen."

How do cameras become more inclusive?

If the article you linked to had explained the problem as a technical matter, rather than turning it into a socially, culturally and politically charged issue of discrimination and inclusivity, I'd have found both the article itself and the new development activity far more interesting and appealing.

For what it's worth, my Pentax cameras aren't great with bright red flowers either... Is that discriminatory in some form? Did the manufacturer disregard inclusivity where red flowers are concerned? Of course not. It's just a technical limitation of the Bayer filter, sensor and colour profiling.

I'm very much against racism and any other forms of discrimination or intolerance, and a big supporter of equal rights, opportunities and respect for all. The current trend of seeking to identify racist and/or discriminatory narratives where they don't exist simply cheapens and confuses the on-going struggle to address the real issues... in my opinion, of course.

[Dartmoor Dave]

I don't know if any other UK members have been watching "The Great British Photography Challenge" over the past few weeks, but there was a moment in the very first episode that I think is relevant to this discussion and that made my teeth grind.

The host/mentor Rankin took studio portraits of the six contestants in that first episode, and his approach to the one woman of colour among the contestants was quite startling. He lit her face with powerful key lights from just a couple of feet away and exposed so that her skin in the resulting photograph was rendered as white.

I'm not going to do anything as simplistic as accusing Rankin of racism, because I know that he's as far away from that as he can be. A couple of years ago he did an excellent BBC 4 documentary about black photographers in South Africa and I know that he's as anti-racist as you and I. But he still lit that woman's face to make her look white, and maybe it was just because the camera he was using wasn't intrinsically good at capturing dark skin so he had no other choice, but it was a moment that made me cringe and it's there on iPlayer for UK members if you want to decide for yourselves.

[Wheatfield]

I read a story about this a short time ago. It appeared that the author was trying to pin some sort of racist intent on the industry.
Which is, to be polite, a pile of horse manure.
Color photography, for that matter, photography in general, has always been a pastime of people with a disposable income sufficient to play the game. Like it or not, that's historically been Caucasian people, at least in North America.
Picking on Kodak because they catered to their market is small mined ignorance regarding the realities of the times.
Kodak's market was Caucasian. Period.
As an aside, I worked in the industry in the 1970s to mid 1980s in a couple of the major commercial labs in Canada. As a quality control manager I worked in close contact with TSRs from Kodak. The Shirley test target was set up by Kodak's QC department as a means of defining and standardizing color for labs using Kodak chemistry and paper. There was no conspiracy of racism attached to it. The technicians needed a flesh tone to drop into their scene, and literally picked the first person who walked past the lab.
Her name, by coincidence, was Shirley, and she had white skin.
It's de rigueur these days to blame everything possible on some form of racism. Remember, when you point a finger, there are three pointing back at you.

BTW, the reason black skin is black, from the perspective of the camera, is because black skin reflects less light. It's pretty simple physics. There can be six stops or more between the darkest black skin and the whitest Caucasian skin. When the film industry was dealing with a technology that had at best a 7 stop range and a marketplace whose skin tone was almost entirely on the paler end of the spectrum, it's not a difficult leap to understand why film has difficulty with Black skin tones.

---

Last edited by Wheatfield; 06-08-2021 at 09:37 AM.

[stevebrot]

Evidence for race-referenced color response for past films was pretty slim (mostly by inference) and continues to be so for current materials. Whether such exists at all for digital work is hard to say, though one would might argue that it might related to JPEG presets more than anything else.

To go a step further, none of the racism claims address the very real challenges posed by extremely dark or light skin tones, from perspectives of both exposure and lighting spectra.


Steve

[Dartmoor Dave]

This thread is likely to blow up in our faces and get closed down quite quickly, so I just want to make a quick point. I'm a middle aged white man and I don't get to define what is and isn't racist. The only people who get to decide on that question are those who are on the receiving end of it.

Yes, there are valid points about the technical issues involved in photographing darker and lighter tones in general, but in the context of this thread I think the discussion will always end up in trouble. Could I suggest a zone system thread where we talk about the technical issues involved in photographing zones 0 - IV from a subject neutral perspective?

[Wheatfield]

This thread is likely to blow up in our faces and get closed down quite quickly, so I just want to make a quick point. I'm a middle aged white man and I don't get to define what is and isn't racist. The only people who get to decide on that question are those who are on the receiving end of it.

So as a somewhat past middle aged white male, should I shut up when I hear something racist simply because a person who is referenced by the racism isn't in the vicinity? I mean, obviously I'm not equipped to define racism towards people outside of my skin color.
Just curious.

[BigMackCam]

I'm a middle aged white man

Same here, David.

... and I don't get to define what is and isn't racist. The only people who get to decide on that question are those who are on the receiving end of it.

Here we differ slightly [Give me a little rope, because it's relevant to the OP's linked article]...

I agree that those who believe they've experienced racism in some form, whatever their heritage or colour of their skin ("black", "white" and anything in-between), are best placed to highlight the issue for discussion, debate and possibly action... but I reserve the right - through freedom of thought and speech - to hold an opinion and respond thoughtfully and respectfully, whether in support or to challenge what I feel is a misunderstanding or misaccusation. In amongst the many genuine instances and undercurrents of racism, there are, unfortunately, too many questionable claims to racism in all sorts of matters these days, especially on social media and in the press. With regard to the article in question, I respectfully disagree with anyone who claims the tonal properties of film and digital media are an issue of race discrimination. The photographer may not do his or her subject justice by their technique (as per your very interesting post on Rankin - and I intend to watch that series on iPlayer), but the film or colour profile simply can't be an issue of racism or lack of inclusivity. If such exists in the scenarios described, that lies with the photographer or filmographer, IMHO.

Yes, there are valid points about the technical issues involved in photographing darker and lighter tones in general, but in the context of this thread I think the discussion will always end up in trouble. Could I suggest a zone system thread where we talk about the technical issues involved in photographing zones 0 - IV from a subject neutral perspective?

That's a great idea, and it's a discussion I'd be very interested (not to mention far more comfortable) participating in. I'll have to learn the zone system first, though Ansel Adams, where are you when I need you most?!

I'm grateful to the moderating team for letting us discuss this, and I don't believe we've breached forum rules (yet), but given the senstive subject matter, I'd understand if they feel it should be brought to a close...

[Dartmoor Dave]

Just curious.

Just curious, but prising open the lid of a can of worms that I'm not going to get into because this forum isn't the place to do it.

As I've said, I'd rather keep it to the technical photographic issues involved in photographing Zones 0-IV. I was photographing a mid-nineteenth-century book bound in dark grey leather a day or two ago to list it online for the charity I volunteer for, so I think that might be a more neutral subject for another thread. It was an interesting exercise in lighting for a Zone 0 background with a main subject in the Zone III-IV range. I'll try to get a thread started in the morning.

[Wheatfield]

Just curious, but prising open the lid of a can of worms that I'm not going to get into because this forum isn't the place to do it.

As I've said, I'd rather keep it to the technical photographic issues involved in photographing Zones 0-IV. I was photographing a mid-nineteenth-century book bound in dark grey leather a day or two ago to list it online for the charity I volunteer for, so I think that might be a more neutral subject for another thread. It was an interesting exercise in lighting for a Zone 0 background with a main subject in the Zone III-IV range. I'll try to get a thread started in the morning.

I'm not sure if, on a forum dedicated to photography, it should be considered dangerous to discuss the technical challenges of photographing people of all races. If that falls into the subject of racism, we are doomed as a species.
There is no problem photographing subjects in the Zone 0-4 range, the problem comes in when you want to hold full detail in a Zone 2 subject and a Zone 7 subject at the same time with a medium that can only hold full detail across an at most 5 stop range, which is where most slide films and photographic papers sit. Color print films do slightly better, but not so well as to make much difference.
This was the conundrum facing Kodak and other film manufacturers.

[house]

the author was trying to pin some sort of racist intent on the industry.

Without having read the article I doubt it.

Picking on Kodak because they catered to their market is small mined ignorance regarding the realities of the times.

I don't expect many people today to think that racism is only about bigoted racial prejudice. Yet you seem to think so. For most people racist idiots are a smaller matter than a social and economic system tilted, by thousands of small "rational" and blameless actions, against people of colour.

They probably didn't under research the rendition of dark skin due to racist ideology. It still happened due to racism. This shouldn't be very complicated to understand and within scope of any one being able to deal with Pentax cameras.

[Dartmoor Dave]

Without having read the article I doubt it.



I don't expect many people today to think that racism is only about bigoted racial prejudice. Yet you seem to think so. For most people racist idiots are a smaller matter than a social and economic system tilted, by thousands of small "rational" and blameless actions, against people of colour.

They probably didn't under research the rendition of dark skin due to racist ideology. It still happened due to racism. This shouldn't be very complicated to understand and within scope of any one being able to deal with Pentax cameras.

Well said. I hope the mods close this thread sooner rather than later, because although the issues involved are hugely important they are way outside the remit of this forum.