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Photo developing in North Jersey

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8 hours ago, Oleg said:

I saw an interview with a person making Henri Cartier-Bresson's prints. He said that a lot of Cartier-Bresson's film was exposed incorrectly and required a lot of work to make it right in print. After visiting a big exhibition of his work I noted that if Cartier-Bresson lived in a digital era his work would be not only properly exposed but also in focus. Equipment has nothing to do with vision if you have one.

Ansel Adams' prints were hard to make too.  Required a 10" x 10" enlarger!  Many older Photogs "lost focus" but still maintained "vision".  Cartier-Bresson was such a fellow.  I've had assistants that were inept with various platforms but still had an eye for a great image.  Training someone how to focus a rangefinder instead of merely looking thru the viewfinder & snapping away was a task I never really accomplished in my life.

Completely disagree on the equipment issue.  Different types of equipment enable the professional Photog to "see differently".  Not having a very long lens or a full frame fisheye tends to limit the creative juices, the very way we interpret our world.  Regardless of format selected OR the platform (digital 35mm, digi cropped sensor, 35mm SLR--digi or film, medium format digi or film, even large format digi or film.  Each format has its' limitations which a trained Pro turns into assets.  Many wonderful iconic images were taken with a Rolleiflex TLR with it's constant viewing and silent shutter & Planar lens that was tack sharp wide-open.  

It's NOT a film vs. digital "thing".  It's about SEEING & KNOWING what ya got when the shutter clicks without having to look at the back of the camera or on a laptop screen. 

When you're standing 12' in front of the bride & groom as they walk down the church steps with arms raised in excitement to greet the crowd of onlookers and you're there with a 30mm full frame fisheye on your Hassy together with a bracket-mounted bare bulb strobe (& high voltage power pack that eliminates recycle time) that covers the entire image field of 180* and you click the shutter (which strobe syncs up to 1/500th sec.) just as their lips meet for a kiss, you know you've captured an EXCEPTIONAL image.  One that you'll make several hundred dollars with because no one else can create "the look" in an "action candid"!  One such couple bought a 600 sq. inch 20" x 30" for $499 with some foreground cropped-out but the entire church, including the steeple, in the shot.  Then I sold them the $400 frame & mat job to go with it!  During my heyday there were just SIX of those fisheyes in NJ.  That one optic was leased to my bidness for $4,800 over 4 years.  Making money with that was like picking free money up off the sidewalk IF you knew how to SEE WITH IT.  You must master the equipment & learn how it SEES as well as learn how to SELL it.  Otherwise all you have is pretty pictures and a lab bill.

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On 7/5/2018 at 11:29 PM, Smokin .50 said:

You must master the equipment & learn how it SEES as well as learn how to SELL it.  Otherwise all you have is pretty pictures and a lab bill.

I don't see anything wrong with pretty pictures. Lab bill? LOL!. Taking pictures for 99% people is about capturing memories. Today, those memories are best taken, stored and shared, digitally.

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4 hours ago, carl_g said:

I don't see anything wrong with pretty pictures. Lab bill? LOL!. Taking pictures for 99% people is about capturing memories. Today, those memories are best taken, stored and shared, digitally.

True.  Photographs are memory keys for most people.  They spark the pleasant emotions and feelings of the event is was taken at.  Digital storage makes sense for that.

A great photograph will produce the emotions and feelings the photographer wanted to convey in 95% of the people. There's that 5% you can't reach anyway. A great photograph is one you can hang on your wall, look at it everyday, and people seeing it for the first time will admire it.

Photojournalism has produced many great photographs.  They capture a moment telling the story in a single image.  One of my favorites is "The Sailor Kissing the Nurse" by Alfred Eisenstadt.

http://www.dodlive.mil/2017/09/01/the-story-behind-the-iconic-kissing-sailor-photo/

Not bad for a guy who started out as a button salesman.

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Eisey had many a great image.  The Sailor kissing the Nurse (dental assistant) was taken with his Leica rangefinder :) 

I was mentored by several award-winning Photojournalists, my dad among them.  I almost went to see Eddie Adams at his upstate, NY "Barn" Class, but couldn't get out of doing assignments as a freelancer since so many full-timers went.  As a member of both the NJ Press Photographers Association & the National Press Photographers Association I got to schmooze with the "Movers & Shakers" of the time in our field.  One such mentor & friend was F. Patrick Burnett, Chief Photog at the Woodbridge News-Tribune, which has since folded.  Pat Burnett was the NJPPA Photographer of the Year several (3?) times during his exciting career as I was just starting in PJ out of high school.  Back then you could smoke cigars in the Photo Lab while you processed film & prints!

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It has been leaked this week that both Nikon and Canon are set to announce full frame mirrorless cameras coming out soon to directly compete with Fuji and Sony. I can’t wait to see these!! 

Here is an article:  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/canon-and-nikon-are-finally-doing-something-about-sonys-mirrorless-cameras/

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My Polish father-in-law always pronounced film as "FILL-LUM".  

One of my favorite smells growing-up was the smell of a fresh roll of film being loaded into a camera, especially paper-backed 120 roll film as it emerged from its' protective hermetic sealed foil.  It meant that great things were about to happen.  I remember buying Kodak Tri-X Pan film by the 20 roll "brick" for $13.50 at Fishkin Bros. in Perth Amboy to feed my used Mamiyaflex C-2 TLR (twin lens reflex) which my dad bought me for $50 bucks when I was 10.  12 exposures 6 x 6 cm so you had to THINK about what you were doing.  Everything had to be looked at, checked.  Back then a "good eye" wasn't enough, as you had to comprehend your result PRIOR to the shutters' click.  It made real Photographers out of us all.

The OP wanted to chat about FILL-UM.......

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14 hours ago, carl_g said:

It has been leaked this week that both Nikon and Canon are set to announce full frame mirrorless cameras coming out soon to directly compete with Fuji and Sony. I can’t wait to see these!! 

Here is an article:  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/canon-and-nikon-are-finally-doing-something-about-sonys-mirrorless-cameras/

Canon made a fixed mirror SLR back in the 60s called the Pellix.  A friend had one.  Like using a Leica but through the lens viewing.

 

 

2 hours ago, Smokin .50 said:

My Polish father-in-law always pronounced film as "FILL-LUM".  

One of my favorite smells growing-up was the smell of a fresh roll of film being loaded into a camera, especially paper-backed 120 roll film as it emerged from its' protective hermetic sealed foil.  It meant that great things were about to happen.  I remember buying Kodak Tri-X Pan film by the 20 roll "brick" for $13.50 at Fishkin Bros. in Perth Amboy to feed my used Mamiyaflex C-2 TLR (twin lens reflex) which my dad bought me for $50 bucks when I was 10.  12 exposures 6 x 6 cm so you had to THINK about what you were doing.  Everything had to be looked at, checked.  Back then a "good eye" wasn't enough, as you had to comprehend your result PRIOR to the shutters' click.  It made real Photographers out of us all.

The OP wanted to chat about FILL-UM.......

You got that same smell opening a can of 35mm.  The 70s, the demise of the 35mm aluminum film can.  The plastic was okay but the twist on tops of the metal so much more secure.  I used a lot of Tri-X in my time but eventually moved over to Ilford films.  I bought a few hundred feet of Ilford XP1 really cheap when they came out with XP2.  Experimented and processed it in B&W chemistry for grainless 400 speed prints.  I like Efke film for the more classic look.

Mamiya 645 became my usual medium format system.  I still have a 2 1/4 x3 1/4 Graphic I haven't used in a while.  Fairly portable and gave you some perspective and depth of field control.  Roll film backs for when you needed multiple exposures, sheet film when you needed to develop each negative for a specific contrast range. Lenses sucked for color though.  I also have a Mamiya press I can do almost the same with.  Also like my Omega 6x7s.

I still have a supply of sheet film in my freezer.

I remember reading about a guy that taught photojournalism in a college somewhere.  Students would be  assigned to cover different events armed with a Speed Graphic and one sheet of 4x5.  They were supposed to tell the story of the event in one photograph.

BTW, in "Eisenstadt on Eisenstadt" he shows the frames he shot just before and just after "The Sailor Kissing the Nurse".  Yes, I know she was a dental technician but that doesn't have the ring and that's not what the photo became known as.  Even GenXers know that photo.  I saw an original print of it on sale for $30,000 maybe 20 years ago.  You can still get a copy from Wal Mart.  That's how iconic that photo has become.

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4 hours ago, capt14k said:

I prefer the smell of cordite in the morning.


Also wish we could Institute rule .303 with these Antifa scum.


I'm out of references.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
 

Cordite eh?  My dad told me it looked like elbow macaroni only black.  Iowa class 16" .50 caliber rifles burned plenty of it.  We made so much back in WW2 that we were still using wartime manufactured bags of it when Reagan reactivated our 4 Iowa Class BB's!

Rule .303 is cute, but let the Brits take the lead on that caliber :) 

War is HELL, and Willie Pete made Hell even HOTTER :) 

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3 hours ago, GRIZ said:

Canon made a fixed mirror SLR back in the 60s called the Pellix.  A friend had one.  Like using a Leica but through the lens viewing.

 

 

You got that same smell opening a can of 35mm.  The 70s, the demise of the 35mm aluminum film can.  The plastic was okay but the twist on tops of the metal so much more secure.  I used a lot of Tri-X in my time but eventually moved over to Ilford films.  I bought a few hundred feet of Ilford XP1 really cheap when they came out with XP2.  Experimented and processed it in B&W chemistry for grainless 400 speed prints.  I like Efke film for the more classic look.

Mamiya 645 became my usual medium format system.  I still have a 2 1/4 x3 1/4 Graphic I haven't used in a while.  Fairly portable and gave you some perspective and depth of field control.  Roll film backs for when you needed multiple exposures, sheet film when you needed to develop each negative for a specific contrast range. Lenses sucked for color though.  I also have a Mamiya press I can do almost the same with.  Also like my Omega 6x7s.

I still have a supply of sheet film in my freezer.

I remember reading about a guy that taught photojournalism in a college somewhere.  Students would be  assigned to cover different events armed with a Speed Graphic and one sheet of 4x5.  They were supposed to tell the story of the event in one photograph.

BTW, in "Eisenstadt on Eisenstadt" he shows the frames he shot just before and just after "The Sailor Kissing the Nurse".  Yes, I know she was a dental technician but that doesn't have the ring and that's not what the photo became known as.  Even GenXers know that photo.  I saw an original print of it on sale for $30,000 maybe 20 years ago.  You can still get a copy from Wal Mart.  That's how iconic that photo has become.

Back in the day when I was freelancing I had 2 Canon F-1 bodies & a Ftbn, along with (all Canon optics) 20, 24, 35, 50, 50 macro w/ ext. tube for 1:1, 85, 135, 200 F2.8, 300, and 400mm F4.5 FD SSC IF (their first IF---made w/ fluorite elements), I also had a Canon Pellix w/ stationary transparent mirror.  No black-out from mirror going up but you still got a briefly darkened viewfinder due to lens stop-down lever being triggered just prior to shutter trip.  Outside at F5.6 or wider the viewfinder didn't go dark like F16 would cause.  A great candid camera and when used with strobe, you could see the actual image illuminated by the strobe in the viewfinder!  Great for sports action as well as kids faces.  You always caught the blinks!  A bit of history:  The Canon High Speed Motor Drive Camera, invented for the Sapporo Winter Olympics in 1972, got around the 3-4 fps "standard" back then and by using the Pellix's mirror system was able to sustain NINE frames per second!  Nikon couldn't touch it and when they tried, you had to lock the mirror up & use an auxiliary viewfinder that completely lacked the ability for focusing.

I went to the Pentax 6 x 7 cm as my first 2 1/4 SLR system, and had lenses from 45mm - 500mm, with their 90mm F4.5 as my "standard" 'cept when the longer 105mm F2.4 made more sense (like for oblique aerials in a Cessna 172).  A pregnant Pentax Spotmatic, those huge negs would make creamy 8 x 10's especially on good 'ole Kodak Verichrome Pan Film which I rated at 100.  1/30 sec. strobe sync limited some syncro-sun & syncro-shade shots, so I bought the 90mm F2.8 leaf shutter lens for it which synced up to 1/500th sec!

Baby Graphics (6 x 9cm) were very popular and offered 8 shots on a roll of 120 film.  You could also take the same insert & swap it with the Graphlex back on a 4 x 5 Graphic & use the 135mm standard lens to take very respectable head shots with just the "sweet spot" of the center image field being employed.  Then along came the 6 x 7cm insert for both cameras, and again their interchangeability.

Lorstan-Thomas yearbook company in Union, NJ used to give ya a single roll of 20 exp Tri-X and you had to come back with 20 "worthy exposures" before they'd consider hiring you.  Imagine today's kids trying to do THAT!  Oh the PRESSURE!

And YES Carl, I'm OLD!  Old enough to have read books containing Pulitzer Prize winning photos by famous Photogs.  Like Joe Rosenthal (no relation), on Iwo Jima, who used his Graphlex Co. Speed Graphic 4" x 5" Press Camera w/ 135mm F4.7 lens & Kodak Super Panchro Press Type "B" Daylight film to record the Flag Raising on Iwo.  Exposure was (if I remember correctly) 1/125th sec. at F8 for the 2nd Flag Raising (the first they used too small of a flag that couldn't be seen by the Admiral's Flagship).  So yeah, I'm not quite a fossil.  FWIW, the Photog's expression of "F8 & BE THERE!" came from that historic photo!

Rosey

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Cordite eh?  My dad told me it looked like elbow macaroni only black.  Iowa class 16" .50 caliber rifles burned plenty of it.  We made so much back in WW2 that we were still using wartime manufactured bags of it when Reagan reactivated our 4 Iowa Class BB's!

Rule .303 is cute, but let the Brits take the lead on that caliber [emoji4] 

War is HELL, and Willie Pete made Hell even HOTTER [emoji4] 

"I love the smell of cordite in the morning" comes from Patton book "Smell of cordite on the battlefield", Apocalypse now "I love the smell of napalm in the morning", Lawrence Arabia Peter O'Toole interview in Esquire "I love the smell of cordite, after firing a gun", then the exact quote was used in Soldier of Fortune Inc TV show and Metal Gear Solid Video game.

 

Cordite actually looks like uncooked pieces of spaghetti. At least the Cordite inside of a .303 MkVII round does.

 

Rule .303 comes from the Breaker Morant movie based on the true story of Harry Breaker Morant. During his trial he testified that orders were given to shoot Boers on sight. When asked at trial under what rule or right did he shoot them he responded "Under Rule .303".

 

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, capt14k said:

"I love the smell of cordite in the morning" comes from Patton book "Smell of cordite on the battlefield", Apocalypse now "I love the smell of napalm in the morning", Lawrence Arabia Peter O'Toole interview in Esquire "I love the smell of cordite, after firing a gun", then the exact quote was used in Soldier of Fortune Inc TV show and Metal Gear Solid Video game.

 

Cordite actually looks like uncooked pieces of spaghetti. At least the Cordite inside of a .303 MkVII round does.

 

Rule .303 comes from the Breaker Morant movie based on the true story of Harry Breaker Morant. During his trial he testified that orders were given to shoot Boers on sight. When asked at trial under what rule or right did he shoot them he responded "Under Rule .303".

 

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

 

 

 

Always loved that Robert Duvoll quote, lol!  "It's the smell of VICTORY!" :) 

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8 hours ago, Smokin .50 said:

And YES Carl, I'm OLD!  Old enough to have read books containing Pulitzer Prize winning photos by famous Photogs.  Like Joe Rosenthal (no relation), on Iwo Jima, who used his Graphlex Co. Speed Graphic 4" x 5" Press Camera w/ 135mm F4.7 lens & Kodak Super Panchro Press Type "B" Daylight film to record the Flag Raising on Iwo.  Exposure was (if I remember correctly) 1/125th sec. at F8 for the 2nd Flag Raising (the first they used too small of a flag that couldn't be seen by the Admiral's Flagship).  So yeah, I'm not quite a fossil.  FWIW, the Photog's expression of "F8 & BE THERE!" came from that historic photo!

Rosey

I’m not a young whipper snapper either and I spent the majority of my HS and college years in and around a dark room. So I get and appreciate all that old gear and process.  That doesn’t mean I would still want to do that anymore and I am not sure that makes me any better than some HIgh school art kid today who has only shot with a digital camera of some sort.  Just think if the guy who shot the Iwa Jima flag raising picture had a new iPhone, he wouldn’t have had to lug that large format camera up that hill, most likely would have gotten a better exposure and sharper picture and after he took it he could have texted it to the general in charge or time magazine or whoever :)

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20 square inches of film IS "Hi Res" lol.  If you've never done a darkroom wall projection via a 4" x 5" near-grainless neg onto photographic paper because the enlarger's baseboard was too small, then you haven't experienced "Hi Res".

Joe Rosenthal didn't need a light meter & took SHARP images :) 

MacArthur & Patton would have loved iPhones, lol!

 

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3 hours ago, Smokin .50 said:

20 square inches of film IS "Hi Res" lol.  If you've never done a darkroom wall projection via a 4" x 5" near-grainless neg onto photographic paper because the enlarger's baseboard was too small, then you haven't experienced "Hi Res".

Joe Rosenthal didn't need a light meter & took SHARP images :) 

MacArthur & Patton would have loved iPhones, lol!

 

@Smokin .50 remember some things often dismissed as "bad" can be used as tools for the creative photographer to convey a message.  Soft focus and grain are two of them.

Slight underexposure with transparency film enhances color.  Slight overexposure does the same with color negative film. Don't shoot color just for the sake of color.  If you're interested in expanding or contracting the tonal scale in a B&W negative you really need to use a light meter. Yes there are things you can do in the darkroom to achieve some control over this.  None of them gives you the range of control that you can achieve if you do it with exposure and altering development time.

I can't remember who said it but there was a known photographer who said something like, "If you want to turn a mediocre photo into a great photo make it bigger".  Most people don't realize you need to consider viewing distance in order to get the proper perspective in a print.  Arm"s length works good for a 5x7. Maybe 7 or 8 feet for a 16x20.

Non standard print sizes are another creative tool.  For example a lot of my 35mm prints are 6x9 in order to use full frame.  

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15 minutes ago, carl_g said:

@Smokin .50 @GRIZ

Are you guys seriously still shooting film or are you just reflecting on the old days?

99.9% digital.  If I want to do something special in B&W I use film.  Still have everything to print 16mm to 4x5 film.  Still have the cameras too.  My most recent film camera purchase was a nice pinhole camera I bought from @dajonga a couple of years ago.

I also have the ability to mix my B&W chemistry from component chemicals.

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36 minutes ago, GRIZ said:

99.9% digital.  If I want to do something special in B&W I use film.  Still have everything to print 16mm to 4x5 film.  Still have the cameras too.  My most recent film camera purchase was a nice pinhole camera I bought from @dajonga a couple of years ago.

I also have the ability to mix my B&W chemistry from component chemicals.

Very interesting thread.  I held onto film for longer than average (35mm and 6x6 MF) but I have to admit the time and costs pushed me away.  After my last move, I retired my darkroom equipment.  I still shoot the occasional roll and use pro mail order to process and print.  However, the current digital resolutions (24+ MP) I use give me digital options not available earlier.  

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40 minutes ago, JerseyJim said:

Very interesting thread.  I held onto film for longer than average (35mm and 6x6 MF) but I have to admit the time and costs pushed me away.  After my last move, I retired my darkroom equipment.  I still shoot the occasional roll and use pro mail order to process and print.  However, the current digital resolutions (24+ MP) I use give me digital options not available earlier.  

Thing is if you really need higher resolution film is the way to go.  The best 35mm films give over 80 megapixels of resolution.

https://kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm

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18 hours ago, GRIZ said:

Thing is if you really need higher resolution film is the way to go.  The best 35mm films give over 80 megapixels of resolution.

https://kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm

You are of course correct, 'cept to say that no one here owns a Sinar 4" x 5" View Camera w/ a YUGE digi back or a digi Hassy, both of which cost tens of thousands just for the bodies.

Some "ancient history" for us film buffs:

I have a 600 square inch 20" x 30" full-frame wall portrait of my then 10 year old son hanging in my living room that I did in Cape May in the summer of 2000.  Printed from a Kodak Portra 160 neg (rated at 100 for more "meat" on the neg--we're a LOT alike) taken with one of my four Leica M6-TTL rangefinder camera bodies w/ a Leica APO 135mm F3.4  lens (longest lens made that's commercially available for Leica rangefinders) at around 7:30-ish w/ "sweet light" approx. 45 min. prior to dusk.  The mirror-less, almost silent exposure was approx. 1/125th at F4.5, giving me exactly one stop's worth of depth-of-field.  Tack sharp from corner-to-corner thanks to the PERFECT glass of the APO, I could have made it even bigger!  The lab printed it on an Italian "Pollei" self-contained "daylight" printer/processor that uses 20" wide Fuji Crystal Archive wet process paper.  The well-composed & unretouched print has a tonal scale & shadow detail that earned it a blue ribbon in the Professional Photographers of New Jersey semi-annual "Off-The-Wall" Print Competition held by their Central Jersey Chapter.  The panel of 3 Master Photogs commented it "is an interesting crop from a Hassy neg"  :) 

FWIW Leica is now on its' 5th or 6th digital full-frame rangefinder model.  I played with their M240 at my son's wedding 2 yrs ago this coming October.  The images I got were stunning.  Every piece of Leica glass I own, from 21-135mm, all fit on every model.  For only $4k MSRP today (I paid $1895 20 yrs ago at Foto Care in NYC Photo District) :)   Megapixels?  I have NO idea!Leica 135mm f3.4 Lens: Picture 1 regular

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