
How Photography Was Optimized for White Skin Color - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/how-photography-was-optimized-for-white-skin/
======
briandear
I disagree with this nonsense. I was a photojournalist for Reuters during the
tail end of the film era; 1996-2002 and the issue with black subjects had
nothing to do with color balance but of the latitude of the film; we used Fuji
almost exclusively and since I did tons of sports and low light spot news, It
was mostly 800 speed occasionally pushed hard.

Shooting NBA meant I had mostly black subjects. The film didn't discriminate:
in most arenas if the time, we shot at 500/2.8; for a darker arena, we'd
increase the processing time (or if we had an especially important shot,
increase the chemical temperature, effectively overclocking the processing.)
my point is that dark skin or light, the color balance made no difference; it
was about exposure. Since we held shutter speed and aperture constant (2.8 was
the fastest aperture for 400mm lenses and anything below 1/500th would get
motion blur,) our exposures were relatively constant regardless of the
subject's skin color. The problem is if you have a bunch of white guys and one
black guy, auto-metering would expose in such a way as to render the scene
equal to an 18% grey card. So the black guy would be under exposed. However,
if you took a photo with 20 black guys and 1 white guy, the white guy would
look like he was made out of white light: he'd be dramatically overexposed
because autometering it exposed for 18% grey. If you had used an incident
light meter, generally the scenes would be fine because the meter wouldn't be
trying to 'grey card' the scene.

As far as Jean Luc and his 'racist' Kodachrome, I suspect that's apocryphal.
Kodachrome is notoriously difficult to expose correctly; meaning you typically
want to expose for highlights because it has a very narrow latitude and
blasting out highlights is a real concern. There's nothing racist about it, it
is just a very difficult film to light correctly, especially if he were
shooting on location in Africa.

But what do I know, I am a white guy so I obviously don't quite understand the
struggle to make everything into some kind of racist conspiracy.

The fact is that if film were racist, Spike Lee and others would have been
screaming about it. This is the first I've ever heard of this theory and I was
a film junkie for a long time as well as a fan of Ernest Dickerson and Bob
Richardson; never once have those guys mentioned racist color balance. The
argument is just absurd.

If we want to talk about racism in Hollywood, we have about a million
potential topics, but film stock isn't one of them. What next, lenses are
racist?

~~~
danilocampos
So you worked with film at the apex of its technological development and that
makes you an expert on the beginning of the color era, when that technology
was exceptionally expensive?

Cool story, bro.

~~~
briandear
Do you have any facts or relevant anecdotes to add to the discussion? I am
very interested in other points of view. I don't claim to be right, I am only
attempting to add to the discussion, providing a counterpoint to the claims
made by the article. If you have some evidence supporting the article's
premise, let's have it! I'd love to see more evidence about racism in
photography.

It seems like your main goal is to affirm your closely held core beliefs that
everything and everyone is racist. The world isn't so black and white. Not
everything is a conspiracy against the black man. You also might realize that
there is certainly an incentive to fan the fires of sanctimony. There's an
entire industry of people who have a vested interest in finding racism under
every rock.

Let's just allow for a second that film is racist. So what? What are you going
to do about it? Maintaining your rage or perhaps doing something positive to
actually make the world a better place? Look forward; Don't let your own
hatred stunt your potential to do something positive! Chips on shoulders can
be exhausting!

~~~
danilocampos1
Remember that time where you had no idea the racist history of public swimming
pools, but still wanted to be treated as an expert on what made things racist?

Ah, good times.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9436623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9436623)

~~~
brandonmenc
It's obvious he was referring to the _physical_ characteristics of swimming
pools. You mistakenly put the "public" in there.

~~~
danilocampos1
Oh, _obviously_. We very conveniently live in a world, after all, where
physical constructs are always divorced from structures of power and politics.

------
tomp
> Focus it on a dark spot, and the camera is inactive. It only knows how to
> calibrate itself against lightness to define the image.

I don't know much about photography, but AFAIK, modern cameras need _contrast_
to calibrate themselves, not _lightness_ (or _darkness_ ). Point the camera
towards a dark corner, nothing. Point it towards the sun, nothing. Point it
towards a sharp edge of a shadow, or any other high-contrast area, an voila,
focus!

~~~
fennecfoxen
You're not just going for focus, though. You're going for a finished product
with dynamic range -- it's easy to perfectly focus onto a dark black blob, but
that doesn't make it recognizable as a human being.

You might need to overexpose the rest of the frame, so that the skintone darks
are bright enough to be interesting. That's doable, but it takes either a
human touch or a digital camera with facial-recognition technology to figure
out that's what's happening instead of just going for the bright zones. (And
then you get a bright white blob if there's a white guy in the frame.)

~~~
omonra
You can't auto-focus on a black bob. You need difference in lightness (also
known as contrast) - pls see:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsDJ8g2qx5k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsDJ8g2qx5k)

------
Torgo
Yeah even the paper cited notes that it's a technical challenge to make
multiple races in the same shot look good using either film or video cameras,
and so in the past things were just optimized for the predominant racial
category in the largest markets they sold to. But at the same time, they were
always improving their ability to capture more. Kodak created different
emulsion properties for the Asian/Japanese market since they weren't white,
consistently improved the ability of their films to capture contrast and
detail, and created test cards that featured multiple racial groups in one
image. Obviously Fuji was not "optimizing for whiteness," since they uh,
weren't white. Well, not exactly true. The paper mentions that there are
widespread cross-cultural beauty preferences for lightness. Kodak improved
their film to capture multiple races, and created test cards for multiple
races. Imagine you're making film and you can capture 85-90% of people within
the existing scope of technology. You do that and you sell it, and you work on
improving it.

There was a ton of interesting history and information in the paper, but I
didn't even think it totally supported their own thesis, I kind of thought it
worked against it. Film and video weren't "optimized for whiteness" they were
optimized for markets and huge parts of those markets weren't even white, so
they optimized for non-white in those markets. They wanted to sell more, so
they improved their film by spending time and money on technical innovation.
These things aren't free, early cameras made everybody look like shit. They
got better and still are.

edit: here's the paper: [http://www.cjc-
online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2196](http://www.cjc-
online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2196)

And there was racism happening, I am not denying that, but it was overstated
imo.

------
mullingitover
Is there actually a primary source from someone at Kodak saying "Yeah, we
intentionally limited the dynamic range because we didn't care about
photographing people with dark skin"?

It would be very easy to believe that the limited dynamic range was for
financial reasons (lower cost of manufacture) and not overt racism.

~~~
danilocampos
Everyone needs someone saying something like the N word in an official
document before they can buy that racism exists. It's not possible that
capital follows racial lines (spoiler: it does) and that therefore
incentivized products to develop in a particular direction, to appeal to the
folks with money? You don't need "overt racism." You don't need a guy twirling
his mustache, spouting white supremacist rants.

You just need wild, race-based income inequality.

Guess what?

That happened.

~~~
briandear
Do you know anything about film? If you do, then please contribute; if you
don't then I would encourage you to actually get educated about the topic
involved rather than just knee-jerking your way to validating your own bias.

~~~
danilocampos
Twenty years of Photoshop and actual, honest-to-God darkroom experience enough
for you?

This community is so intellectually bankrupt.

~~~
coldtea
Using Photoshop as a "Mobile interaction designer + developer" does not an
expert in photography technology makes. Doesn't even count actually -- the
issues behind film dynamic range have nothing to do with Photoshop. As for the
"darkroom experience", well it doesn't mean much. Plenty of photography
enthusiasts don't know their chemistry and physics -- just barely enough to
develop photographs.

If you have a specific technical comment about how they could easily optimize
dynamic range in those crude early films and didn't (because of racism), then
tell it.

If you also think that film companies shouldn't had optimize for the main
market for a commercial product regardless. Would even a black film company
owner optimize for the 20%, less afluent to buy cameras, US market?

------
anateus
This article is about a thousand assumption and biases, each of them small,
that together accumulate to create a disadvantage for a group. This is what
racism is. It doesn't mean someone wearing a pointy hood decided the film
formula.

~~~
briandear
There is a Dave Chapell skit just waiting to happen here..

------
omonra
FYI - this seems to be the original article on which this is based (granted
this is more neutral): [http://www.buzzfeed.com/syreetamcfadden/teaching-the-
camera-...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/syreetamcfadden/teaching-the-camera-to-
see-my-skin)

That said - I think her chief complaint is misplaced. Ie - it is mostly a
technological issue - shooting black subjects well (whether people or objects)
is hard. Cameras have only so much "dynamic range" \- meaning ability to
capture light and dark matter. So if you expose for black skin, it will render
rest of the image blown out (meaning you can't see anything else).

I found the paragraph describing how the Whoopi Goldberg show is shot
illuminating - two separate cameras have to shoot Whoopi and her guests.

~~~
tedunangst
A lot of both articles actually comes from this Guardian article:
[http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/25/racism-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/25/racism-
colour-photography-exhibition)

What's funny is how the two articles interpreted the same fact differently
(the one about the 42% flash boost). Priceonomics and the Guardian note that
the extra light feature was there so that black subjects wouldn't be
underexposed. But buzzfeed says this:

> The ID2 has a flash boost button engineered to add 42% more light on its
> subjects. Its effect would result in a deliberate darkening of dark-skinned
> subjects.

That's the exact opposite of what would happen! The extra flash was there so
they wouldn't be erased.

That said, I'm still trying to find where Broomberg got his numbers. Did none
of the authors of these three articles question the claim that all black
people have the same skin tone? I guess the buzzfeed author did as she didn't
repeat that claim, only the one about the flash being 42% brighter, but if you
think the guy's pulling one number out of his butt, why trust another number?

I haven't had much luck finding any other information about this special South
African flash feature (or the magic 42% number).

------
kissickas
Anyone have side-by-side versions of the same image with one version being
"less racist"? I'm having trouble seeing it.

Although what the author says conceptually makes sense, the photo of the
schoolchildren looks fine to me. And I believe many scenes of 12 Years a Slave
were intentionally dark - I'm sure the outdoor scenes or the indoor scene at
the end when Solomon Northup comes home had much more contrast on purpose.

------
cjensen
In the TV industry, it's well-known that the human eye is unusually sensitive
to the color of skin. If a tree is the wrong color, no one will notice. If
skin is even a little bit wrong, it looks horrifying.

I've always worried that, being of Northern European ancestry, perhaps my eyes
are evolved to be more sensitive to white skin. I know I'm nowhere near as
sensitive to color shifts in dark skin versus skin that is close to my own
shade.

Does anyone know of any studies on this subject? I'd love to know whether or
not my perception is universal or not.

------
GauntletWizard
It's entirely possible that knock on effects of the standards used for
designing and calibrating film, color or non, have caused most mass-produced
color film for generations to be better at capturing pale skin tones than at
capturing dark ones. This article has done a terrible job of making this
argument. That alone is not enough reason to dismiss the argument completely,
as I find myself itching to do and many of the commenters before me have
already done.

It's a sad statement on our state of news, or perhaps it has always been that
way. I'd love to do a comparison of news article comparing the plight of the
negro from the '60s or the debates over slavery from the abolitionist era to
the modern race debate. I'm afraid we've not changed at all; That the color of
skin is fundamentally divisive, and we won't get past it. In fact, the final
line of the article seems to confirm it: "that the tools used to make film
[and] the science of it, are not racially neutral". She is blaming the
physical laws of nature for being racist. I don't get how we get post-racial
if we're expected to change the unchangeable to suit.

------
michrassena
The dynamic range limitations that slide film has and early color negative
film had during the last century is a technology limitation.

The progression of film development is toward more dynamic range, finer grain,
greater speed (sensitivity to light), and to truer color and color fastness.
If Kodak, or any other film maker were able to make a color film which could
capture the wide dynamic range of skin tones, it's likely they would have. The
benefits of a wider dynamic range have implications that even if the thesis of
this article were true, would have driven the marketplace to adopt this better
film. Greater dynamic range is a generally desirable feature.

Film, as a technology, is limited. What I would consider to be a more
interesting discussion, would be to address the decisions made by
photographers that resulted in the underexposure of non-white skin tones.

I'm fully willing to believe that a photographer took a photo of a group of
people of mixed races, exposed the image such that the white people were
properly exposed and called it a day, simply because in their estimation the
proper exposure of the black faces was unimportant. I can also believe that
this happened quite a lot. This can seem rather passive, on the part of the
photographer, who can claim that film just can't capture the dynamic range,
rather than taking the time and effort to light the people properly, or other
measures necessary.

One could also argue that 18% gray, as the default for exposure metering,
prioritized the white face over the black one.

The substance of the argument that film is racist, could be rooted in these
sociological issues, in the choices that were made by individuals everywhere,
their assumptions and their decisions about who mattered.

------
jejones3141
I think I'd be interested in finding out whether, say, Gordon Parks had
anything to say in regard to photographic film being subject to racist
influence.

