Archive

In October, 2009, I remodeled this website. I had a lot of articles on various subjects. Nearly all of those articles got abandoned in the remodel.

Some of it was abandoned because it no longer reflected my current thinking. Some of it was abandoned because with the advance of technology, it was no longer meaningful (e.g. articles on films that are no longer produced.) And some of it was abandoned because it was just too much work to reformat the article relative to how worthwhile I thought the material was.

So some of the stuff, I'm not willing to bring back. I've gone through, and made a sort of index of stuff that's gone that I'd be willing to resurrect. If it's not on this list, I'm sorry, I'm not resurrecting it no matter what. If it's on this list, it's something I'd be willing to consider resurrecting. Digging up the article, reformatting it to match the current website, adding any explanatory disclaimers needed, and putting it online again is a nontrivial amount of work for me. If I don't impose some cost on people who want to bring things back, everyone will value my time at zero, and I'll spend countless hours resurrecting stuff that isn't actually important.

So, if you want me to resurrect an article you find listed below, you need to follow the following procedure:

I'll then go dig up the article, reformat it to match the new site, and post it in an archive section. This scheme generates a little cash for those charities, is not overly burdensome to someone who really wants an article put back on the web, and at the same time keeps people from squandering my time by making requests they aren't really serious about.

Here's a list of the stuff that was abandoned. It's grouped in more or less the way that the original articles and reviews were grouped.

Musings on Art

The Monday Night Group (or, how to improve your photography in one hour a week)

I've been a member of the Monday Night New Work Review Group since 1998, and I think it's done wonders to improve the quality of my photography.

The principle is simple - meet every other week with a bunch of photographers, everyone brings new work, and you spend the evening reviewing the new work.

It's simple. It's fun. It's inexpensive. And, it works.

Film Development and Scanning

Scanning B&W negatives in color

I took a few minutes off from the process tuning work, and checked out the results of scanning B&W negatives in color and converting to grayscale in Photoshop. The results surprised me, and they'll probably surprise you, too!

Tuning the Hybrid Film/Digital process Part one - film calibration

Although I'm always looking at the current contenders for replacing large format film with digital capture, they're not there yet. So, I've decided to see how much the hybrid film/digital process can be optimized if we are willing to tailor negatives to scanning instead of printing on gelatin-silver papers.

The first step in this optimization process is to get complete control of film development for a variety of developers and the films I regularly use.

The result is a huge table of film development times and temperatures, for N-2, N-1, N, N+1, N+2, for D-76 (both straight and 1+1), Microdol-X (both straight and 1+3), and XTOL (straight, 1+1, 1+2, 1+3).

[Note: all the films used in this article are older versions of the current emulsions. You won't be able to just use the times from the tables. This article would be useful only to someone interested in the methodology I used.]

Digital Printing

How Big Can You Print?

The first question everyone asks when they find out I'm using an EOS-5d is "How big can you print?" That turns out to be a simple question with a complicated answer. Prints from digital capture and film capture scale differently, so the answer is "It depends". In fact, it depends on a lot of different factors.

Digital Myth #1 - Staircase Interpolation

For some time now, I've been very dubious about claims that you're better off uprezzing an image in steps of 10%, rather than just doing it all in one shot.

It's time to put it to the test. I compare the results of photoshop's bicubic, bicubic smoother, and the much ballyhooed Staircase Interpolation method, and we look at the results to see which is best.

Conclusion: don't bother with staircase interpolation.

Anatomy of a Photograph

Some time ago, a really great photographer (Doug Plummer) came over, and we did some digital printing of one of his photographs so he could get a feel for what digital output is like.

Afterwards, Doug commented that he'd wished he'd seen me edit a photograph (using Photoshop) from scratch, so that he could see how I went about it. That idea stayed in my mind, and just recently it occurred to me that I could write a very interesting article which showed each step taken.

And that's what I've done with Anatomy of a Photograph - and you can switch back and forth between 'before' and 'after' versions for each step, by rolling the mouse cursor onto and off of the image.

(going off) The Silver Standard

For something like 80 years, black and white photography has been dominated by what I call the Silver Standard - the air dried, glossy, fiber-based gelatin silver print.

Inkjet printing has changed all the rules. It's time for us to let go of the Silver Standard and move on. It'll be ok. Really. Everything is going to be fine.

Putting Away the Silver Prints (a few more thoughts provoked by digital printing)

I took all the silver prints I had around the workroom, and I put them in boxes and put them away because I no longer refer to them when I'm making a digital print. The digital prints are now the standard of comparison.

That provoked some thinking about gelatin silver prints, digital prints, the properties of both, and why I seem to be drifting permanently away from conventional projection printing on gelatin silver paper.

Toning Black and White Digital Prints

Black and white images printed on my epson 9600 printer are perfectly neutral - which makes them look a bit lifeless. I spent some time exploring ways to 'tone' the images, including duotoning, color balance, and curves. In the end, I chose the curves technique as the best of the choices. You can download the curves I use in this article.

This article is still a rough draft - watch for refinements and examples to be added.

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him

For years, I produced hand made, labor intensive gelatin silver prints. Then I tried digital printing, and got great prints. And now, everything I knew about prints, the value of prints, and print pricing has been made obsolete.

Some Early Thoughts on Digital Printing

I've just started doing some digital printing. Here are some early thoughts and observations on the whole thing.

Traditional B&W darkroom work

The Zone System and Variable Contrast Paper

When Ansel Adams and Fred Archer introduced the Zone system in 1939 there were no VC papers, and so one of the goals of the Zone system was to plan negative exposure and development so that the visualized print could be made on Grade 2 paper. Instead of graded papers, Variable Contrast papers now dominate the market, allowing a printer to vary the contrast of the material across an extreme range. This raises the question - Why not just give all of our film the same development, and then make any needed adjustments using the controls VC paper gives us?

That's what I wanted to know, and when I went looking for the answers, I found very little information. This article summarizes the results from my first experiment.

Tmax-100 and Neopan 100 Acros Compared

My recent move (and switch from municipal water to well water) forced me to recalibrate all my development times. I took advantage of the opportunity to do a rough comparison of the two black and white films available in packets - Kodak Tmax-100 (aka TMX and 100Tmax) and Fuji Neopan 100 Acros.

Variable Contrast Printing

My article on calibrating a dichroic enlarging head for use as a VCCE light source when printing on variable contrast black and white printing papers. This is an updated version of what appeared in Photo Techniques in February 1998.

VC Paper Myths and Color Theory

An article I wrote discussing color theory, how it applies to VC papers, filtration, and a whole host of myths surrounding black and white printing on VC materials.

Choosing Black and White film

I teach one on one darkroom lessons. This was written as a handout for the first session, dealing with selecting black and white film and covering the basics of exposure.

Black and White film developing

This was written for the second session, covering film developing. It covers loading tanks, reel type, developer choice, and the whole process of developing film, from getting the film out of the cassette and into the tank through drying it.

Large Format

My Large Format Kit

Recently, Tuan Luong posted an excellent article to www.largeformatphotography.info which described, in detail and with photos, what Tuan carries.

I found that pretty interesting, as did others. Here's what my large format kit looks like.

Choosing a Large Format Camera

Here's a first draft of some thoughts on choosing a large format camera.

Other Stuff

Dry Mounting Prints

A brief rundown on how I dry mount prints.

Theater Photography 101

My lessons learned (and suggestions) from my very brief (so far) period doing production photographs for plays. Tips on technique, equipment, materials, etc.

Reviews of equipment

Canon EOS-5d Dynamic Range Test

Canon EOS-5d digital SLR camera body

4x5 film packet systems, including the new single sheet Readyloads from Kodak

Linhof Technikardan 45s

Wisner 4x5 Technical Field

Filmholders - regular, readyloads, quickloads, grafmatics

(last updated 2/12/2010)