techday: Fog isn’t

crossover.

Knowledge stays in the fog of the past. Terminology that changes isn’t written in dictionaries of the future. Since those who use the term have left the field, those who were never in the field, those who weren’t trained or apprenticed, the story of original meaning, that of direct relationship, those people no longer enforce the meaning.

A crossover was a place, a part in a machine. Just as film machines at a place where the racks could be pulled out or pushed back into the line for additional processing. Pulling or processing from the soup.

Upon the diminution of film as primary image former, commercial labs ceased. Small labs can survive in small markets, erratic markets; dead cat bounces feed a starvation diet.

What (who) remains: people who could have worked in the big time but chose to take a hobby land approach. They learned from the magazines… those who don’t understand the process, those who look for why it won’t work; like a poorly trained law-clerk.

These people hear a word, and cling to the new found term, in hunger for a position of knowledge among others in the darkening room. They apply it widely. To almost every approximation, the word can be fit, it will be chived into use.


Kodak filters for flashing

FilterColorPurpose
47 or 47Bbluereduce yellow density in print
44Acyanreduce red density
58greenreduce magenta density
32magentareduce green density
25 or 29redreduce cyan density
32yellowreduce blue density in print
effect of color flashing

Darkroom lab exposure have 3 stages of exposure possible. Think of them as being in relation to sequence of exposure to the unprocessed emulsion. An exposure before the image exposure, the image forming exposure, and the last being after the image has been exposed. These exposures combined are used to shape the curve shape of the finished image. This method was a key skill in pre-press labs. It was also used by commercial dye-transfer labs to a lesser degree, mainly because few labs had staff skilled in both commercial processes. Industry divided the knowledge into market segments, not the schools.

  • bump [HL] exposure is short exposure without mask or screen
  • flash [S] exposure is short exposure prior to copy, mask, or screen.. also a Raw, or Blank exposure
  • main exposure controls location of midpoint as well as mid-tone scale. Developing is used to provide range of these scales.

In practice, this required multiple (2, or 3) light sources. One was the enlarger, the other(s) were lamps, likely modified to hold filters. In the typical shop, with such a setup, we routinely altered the crossover points of a characteristic curve.

It wasn’t a bad thing, it was routine, controlled, essential…

for more see

Equipment Matters?!

Does equipment matter?

Equipment does matter! — sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn’t. For most people, even photographers, photographic equipment gets in their way, Even if their way is the standardized imagery of the Kodakery.

Equipment Poor

is the phrase once used as epithet about those professionals who bought more equipment than they ever used; buying so much they rotated credit cards. They were made poor by their falling for the pitch of the Camera Monthlies sold at the camera counter. Salesmen could be relied upon to inform their customers about improvements to their vision that lay in their future — oh, and we have layaway.

Lollipops also fell into the trap of buying for something sometime in the future. These people were the ones caught off-guard when the tide changed.

Lollipops were the single person lab barely able to support themself. They may have had aspirations of becoming a mom-n-pop. Lollipops eventually realize they’re just a hobbyist on the brink of becoming a hobo. For most, the only professional thing they did was get a re-sale license

— ANSWERING every question the same. applying one answer for every situation. see it in one case, not the other. variable in the Sinar, not in the souping. BL mode. Cost of souping, not knowing that the person used the burst system to save more than direct cost, and that in that approach they hired an assistant, gaining even more work relief: they could answer phones and other small tasks. [ link site ]

two pathways taken. The first is more popular than the second. Note the view counts.

One sells — they are trying to make a living off of the adventure of photography

the other is the much harder, less certain way. Sometimes it works.

We will never remember the salesmen.

ming smith filmday


also: how the format trips many

Calvin and the Shallow Market

The try-buy: one order to try, then done.

A one-buy try and done. The curious will lead you into market deserts — a product for his own use if more useful.

First Factor of Success: willing to fail

The pigment market exists because of the failures of …. nope. It exists as an extension of the alt-photography born in the alternative 60s. Finding a different way, a distinct path was a significant landscape of the 60s conversion of photography and art. Pigment printing, gum or carbon is advanced as being archival, long-lasting, and durable; far more lasting than dye-based photography.

“After two years of research, the Natural Pigment color pastes are now on sale. I also restocked the synthetic pigments, and updated the yellow. “ 2022

I thought the pigments didn’t succeed in market, but reading his current site, they are all in stock, in different packaging than before, ready to ship.(Jun 2023) ‘rl’

Often, shallow markets are maintained by persons supplementing their worklife, bringing skills of one field into another. Electronics crosses into chemical darkroom.

// pools: why don’t they readily form? LFF /Kodak requires proper intermediate — success bridge gap// age-skill

ability to recover. resilience after failure. time to fail. Salvich/Efke ..

//how does Backer Market work, succeed in funding success.

Can it support you, how well, for how long. Can you grow; more people, more products.

Why aren’t others making, doing what you do? Questions any investor would ask; ask yourself. Sometimes the only answer is that it is the only thing you can do to satisfy the deeper part of yourself. That part unreached by financial analysis.

Your reason can be, as many people’s are: you hangout with interesting people.


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  • Mollick, E. (2012). The dynamics of crowdfunding: determinants of success and failure. J. Bus. Ventur. 29, 1–16. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2088298
  • Mollick, E. (2014). The dynamics of crowdfunding: an exploratory study. J. Bus. Ventur. 29, 1–16. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2013.06.005
  • Burtch, G., Ghose, A., and Wattal, S. (2016). Secret admirers: an empirical examination of information hiding and contribution dynamics in online crowdfunding. Inf. Syst. Res. 27, 478–496. doi: 10.1287/isre.2016.0642
  • Burtch, G., Hong, Y., and Liu, D. (2018). The role of provision points in online crowdfunding. J. Manag. Inf. Syst. 35, 117–144. doi: 10.1080/07421222.2018.1440764
  • Butticè, V., Colombo, M. G., and Wright, M. (2017). Serial crowdfunding, social capital, and project success. Entrep. Theory Pract. 41, 183–207. doi: 10.1111/ etap.12271