Category: film

Notes: Kodak Research Lab

Posted on Posted in dye transfer, film, morning wood, The Biz, the Lab

change over in 85/86 caused disruption within KRL

John Capstaff at the Kodak Research Laboratory in Rochester from 1914 to 1918.

director of research Kenneth Mees

  • C. E. Kenneth Mees, From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film; a Story of Photographic Research. (New York: Ziff-Davis Pub. Co., 1961).
  • Mees, From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film, 293-301.
  • Journey: 75 Years of Kodak Research (Rochester, N.Y.: Eastman Kodak, 1989).
  • Robert L. Shanebrook, Making KODAK Film. The Illustrated Story of State-of-the-Art Photographic Film Manufacturing (Rochester, NY: Robert Shanebrook Photography, 2010).
  •  Carl W. Ackerman, George Eastman (Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930); Elizabeth Brayer,
  • George Eastman: A Biography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
  • Douglas Collins, The Story of Kodak (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1990).
  • Reese Jenkins, Images and Enterprise: Technology and the American Photographic Industry, 1839 to 1925 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).
  • Gary Jacobson, “KODAK: Research is in the Driver’s Seat,” Management Review 77, no. 10 (1988): 32- 32; J. D. Ratcliff, “Eastman Kodak’s Research Odyssey: Profitable Sidelines Add to Company’s Earnings from Photographic Products,” Barron’s, June 23, 1941, 3; Martin Sherwood, “Photographic Research in Focus,” New Scientist (February 8, 1973): 301-303.
  • E. Roy Davies, “Reports of Meetings. Scientific and Technical Group’s Second After-Dinner Lecture – 15 February 1962”, The Journal of Photographic Science 10, no. 4 (1962): 252-257.
  • G. B. Harrison, “The Laboratories of Ilford Limited,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 220, no. 1143 (December 22, 1953): 9-20.
  • Fritz Wentzel, Memoirs of a Photochemist (Philadelphia: American Museum of Photography, 1960).

Key Mees Books

  • Mees, C. E. Kenneth and John A. Leermakers. The Organization of Industrial Scientific Research. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950.
  • Mees, C. E. Kenneth and John Randal Baker. The Path of Science. New York: J. Wiley & sons, Inc., 1946.
  • Mees, C. E. Kenneth and Samuel Sheppard. Investigations on the Theory of the Photographic Process. London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta: Longmans, Green and Co, 1907.

Mees Bibliography

  • Mees, C. E. Kenneth. “Amateur Cinematography and the Kodacolor Process.” Journal of the Franklin Institute 207, no. 1 (1929): 1-17.
  • ———. Dr. C.E. Kenneth Mees: An Address to the Senior Staff of the Kodak Research Laboratories, November 9, 1955. Rochester N.Y.: Kodak Research Laboratories, 1956.
  • ———. “Fifty Years of Photographic Research.” Image, the Bulletin of the George Eastman House of Photography 3, no. 8 (1954): 49-54.
  • ———. From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film; a Story of Photographic Research. New York: Ziff-Davis Pub. Co., 1961.
  • ———. The Fundamentals of Photography. Rochester N.Y.: Eastman Kodak Company, 920.
  • ———. “The Kodak Research Laboratories.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 192, no. 1031 (1948): 465-479.
  • ———. “On the Resolving Power of Photographic Plates.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A 83, no. 559 (1909): 10-18.
  • ———. “The Organization of Industrial Scientific Research.” Science 43, no. 1118 (1916): 763-773.
  • ———. The Organization of Industrial Scientific Research. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, 1920.
  • ———. “A Photographic Research Laboratory.” The Scientific Monthly 5, no. 6 (1917): 481-496.
  • ———. Photography. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937.
  • ———. The Photography of Colored Objects. Rochester N.Y.: Eastman Kodak Company, 1919.
  • ———. The Photography of Coloured Objects. London: Wratten & Wainwright Ltd., 1909.
  • ———. “Planning a Research Laboratory for an Industry.” The Scientific Monthly 7, no. 1 (1918): 54-67.
  • ———. “The Production of Scientific Knowledge.” Science 46, no. 1196 (1917): 519- 528.
  • ———. “The Publication of Papers from Research Institutions.” Science 70, no. 1821 (1929): 502-502.
  • ———. “The Publication of Scientific Research.” Science 46, no. 1184 (1917): 237-238.
  • ———. “Recent Advances in our Knowledge of the Photographic Process.” The Scientific Monthly 55, no. 4 (1942): 293-300.
  • ———. “Research and Business with some Observations on Color Photography.” Vital Speeches of the Day 2, no. 4 (1935): 117-117.
  • ———. “The Science of Photography.” Sigma XI Quarterly 19, no. 1 (1931): 1-19.
  • ———. “Secrecy and Industrial Research.” Nature 170, no. 4336 (1952): 972.
  • ———. “The Supply of Organic Reagents.” Science 48, no. 1230 (1918): 91-92.
  • ———. The Theory of the Photographic Process. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1942.
grain, dev, chemists
haist; cube grain, d-23, etc
henn: tab grain, xtol, etc

Darkroom Privileges

Posted on Posted in da net, film, meaning, morning wood

taking pride, and gaining privilege.

Working in the darkroom was necessary for most photographers in the 20th century. There were some who used it as relaxation; a place apart from others. It served as backdrop to many photographer’s conversation. Craft remain the common conversation topic; often the only thing photographers speak about, can speak about, or will permit as point of conversation is craft.

They don’t, oddly, engage in big definition of what they mean by ‘craft.’ — That being obvious. A big silent gestured “you know” being enough.

Honor, prestige for something in your life. Most people are printers, not printmakers. They do think they are the grand ones; those who have mastered the work. What they, the weekenders, committed workshopaholics don’t understand, or won’t say, is they are not the Sammallahti’s of the world. They make prints; this doesn’t make them printmakers. Not even the Sammallahti’s are printmakers.

Pentti Sammallahti (born 1950 in Helsinki)

“For [Sammallahti] making prints is part of his art. The frog peers from a silver-gelatine image taken from a black-and-white negative, one of his preferred techniques, but he experiments ceaselessly.”

  • The Russian Way.
  • Pentti Sammallahti.  Photographs by Pentti Sammallahti. Text by jukka Mallinen and Taneli Eskola. Musta taide/Finnfoto, Helsinki, 1996. 
  • Pentti Sammallahti. Photographs by Pentti Sammallahti. Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, 2001.
  • Pentti Sammallahti. Photographs by Pentti Sammallahti. Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2002.
  • Archipelago. Finnish Landscapes. Photographs by Pentti Sammallahti. Helsinki, 2004.  
  • Photo Poche 103: Pentti Sammallahti  Photographs by Pentti Sammalahti. With an introduction by Gerard Mace. Actes SUD, Paris, 2005
  • Ici Au Loin. Photographs by Pentti Sammallahti. Actes Sud, 2012.
  • Here Far Away. Photographs by Pentti Sammallahti. Dewi Lewis Publishing, Manchester, 2012.
  • Des Oiseaux. Photographs by Pentti Sammallahti. Text by Guilhem Lesaffre. Editions Xavier Barral, Paris, 2018
  • Me Kaksi.  Photographs by Pentti Sammallahti. Atelier EXB, 2021.

Craft is certainly a part of any doing, making; it isn’t the only thing, just an early, and frequent thing. A point of conversation. 

Art or Craft
easy to tell
when you look at a photograph, do you ask what lens was used?
-- you’re “craft”
If those are the key questions you ask after years, then you aren’t in the conversation about art.
craft is conservative
the hobby world is like the big store Hobby Lobby
conservative imagers

skill badges around the making of items for gift and sale

reduced range of variance (happens in all learning - *shops)

even across medium : watercolor, photography; the image modeled to judge ‘art level’ is siilar or same. rules applied to guide the selection of subject, topic treatment set out the parameters of skill exercised.
the feedback : learn do see is the same
the training corpus guides them.

craft poles
Arbus --- Porter
Arbus -- Adams

style, demeanor
mode of action, interaction within the world outside the frame
experience of world produces actions within the frame.

worst of singers makes a mannerism of song

art isn’t an exhibition of craft
I don’t shoot film because it is harder, slower, better, longer lasting... none of those things. I shoot film because I like the cameras and understand the process to a great depth with many thousand hours acquiring.
I prefer digital because of the greater flexibility, responsiveness and likely future growth. It also is much more amenable to direct, same process alterations.

photography, by 1890, had demonstrated that difficulty of task wasn’t the catalyst of art./

Art isn’t a craft fair, no matter what the camera salesman says.
craft online
not locate silver mine, or build corona discharge multi-slot coater

but log into a forum of unknowns and ask if they know what you don’t
ask where to buy something.

craft sets your limits; delimits your imitation range
craft can’t be hired?