Category: overnight notes

Harman Phoenix Unmasked

Posted on Posted in labnotes, overnight notes, The Negative, Valley Hi

MAR 8,2024 UPDATE: The march shipments have arrived. Same film, or so it seems; same price. The allotments have increased. Two sample points:

  • A: large seller– December product less than 2K rolls; this shipment over 2K rolls available
  • B: small retail shop– December product 300 rolls; this, march shipment, 1K rolls available.

They may have worked on coating/drying procedures; the making of foundation supplies. They haven’t received much adverse comment, in fact, most of the onliners seem pleased.

the maskless returns. A new phase of color film — flashing back to the middle of last century.

Shooting the Moon — not a moon-shot, rather, it means aiming for something you don’t intend to hit; your reason could be a signal, gesture to investors, an effort at proving, or testing yourself. You do something to see how others react.

2022 Numbers. Not a great business.

Consider you are in a shrinking market, you may have maxed out your customer growth. Your standard item is a dominant in this shrinking market, even so, newer companies seem to have great multiples of growth in both top and bottom line. These folks are tapping into a younger group having more expendable funds. They don’t print in a darkroom. Your the dominant darkroom vendor, but this is to an aging population — a population with reducing need. They just don’t shoot, nor print as much as just 5 years ago. This isn’t the analog rebound group.

Analog rebound is among the 35mm 35 year old photographers. They may shoot film, but they send it to a lab to soup and scan. Some of them have process only, these are the ones with a camera-scan setup. Camera-scan has become a dominant imaging platform in just a decade. In 2013, talking about it was segregated on the Forum boards — it was ‘HYBRID’ — a bastard not suited for inheritance in the Church of Photography.

The December rumor holds that Harman will produce another Phoenix for shipment March, 2024. They can easily make film. Will they alter, by how much, a rev. 2? Will this remain a film-for-scanning.

Are they prepared to make a color paper if(when) FujiFilm drops *Archive. Three labs that produced large RA-4 prints in the US have closed their wide-format Poliettronica [https://webionaire.com/2022/06/26/ra-4-big-lab-printing/ ] lines; switching to ‘dry-lab’ printing for their display clients.

Sensitivity Isn’t Output

Spectral sensitivity curves depict the film’s “shooting” conditions. Its response to the colors depicted. The manufacturer tells you the color of the testing light used. The Spectral Dye-Density curves represent the absorption of the dyes formed after processing. These are used for adjusting the system used for making prints(or scans.) Sensitivity is used during camera setup and use. Dye-Density is used during output. Without this DD curve, you don’t know what the emulsion is expected to produce. Harman doesn’t publish this with “December 23” Phoenix.

What Next

effect of DIR upon color emulsion. neutralizing secondary absorptions of the M and C image dyes

CC:: colored coupler | UC:: uncolored coupler

DIR: Development Inhibitor Releasing compound. An example of a well regarded DIR is 1-phenyl-5-mecapto-tetrazole. This can be imagewise generated and eliminated from the coupling postion during dye formation. DIRs have been patented which enhance sharpness, reduce ‘graininness’, and, via interlayer interimage effects, produce color correction.

[color coupling and masking can be separated]

DIR compounds are disclosed in “Developer Inhibitor-Releasing (DIR) Couplers for Color Photography,” C. R. Barr, J. R. Thirtle and P. W. Vittum in Photographic

Terms:

  • block dye: theoretical dye having equal absorption of light at each wavelength within a given continuous range of wavelengths and no absorption at all other wavelengths of interest. [Giorgianni]
  • calibration: procedure of correcting for ay deviation from a standard. [Giorgianni]
  • coupler: an organic compound which reacts with oxidized developing agent to form a dye.[Giorgianni]
  • cross-talk: transfer of information from one color channel to another.[Giorgianni]
  • interlayer effects: chemical reactions that take place among the various layers of a photographic medium. …used for color signal processing.[Giorgianni]

foundations of emulsion making.

Amateur Quest.ions

Posted on Posted in babl, da net, overnight notes, the LabTagged ,

The outpost of the bachelor herd. Those old timers who didn’t do the stuff they will be asked about; they’ve become the experts.

  • they ask shopping questions. They use the forum as if it were a sales counter on Saturday, the day the weekend warriors get to pretend they do THIS for real.
  • the same group rejects, out of ignorance and arrogance, the question of a newcomer. New in the process, not in imagination– at least imagination prompted by broader reference imagery than the Snobby Hobby.

Stages of the meaning of amateur: what do they provide us? How can the task of understanding be accelerated? Follow a thread, re-constructed for revelation of the question-response cycle of early participants in an online community of practice.

One person. the OP, is a professional lab printer with many years of experience. As he ventures further away from the longtime standard darkroom print, he seeks out answers from the unknown members of a forum. [this took place in 2016 (over 2 days) ] The general topic filters doesn’t seem to be retained; it becomes a topic in which expertise dissolves — it doesn’t stay with the group, no matter how many times it is repeated — the group mind has no memory. They don’t learn.

Oddly, the professional lacks the knowledge, therefore, must ask a group of unknowns. He, likely, assumes they have more experience than they do– he is, even more likely, hoping they have more experience than he does.

Why would he assume that they know how to make studio photographs with filters that will be solarized? None of them exhibits solarized work. Few of them show anything other than landscapes; typical outdoor scenics of the great west.

Effect of filter. Effect of solarization.

Effect of lacking foundation skills to be a professional: will rely upon those of lesser skills. Probably meaning you haven’t become an independent, valuable provider to those with ability to pay well. Your chances of survival go down if the skill in your market rises. As widespread darkroom skill declines, you get to survive. Luckily, that is the course of the century. The lights are being turned off.

// success is timed. Multiply your costs factor. A well defined question provides pathway to correct, useable answer. They are right about one thing: a book is better than them.

Wratten 12 (Y)
Wratten 11
Wratten 44 (cyan)
Wratten 25 (red)
contrast with BW film is relative to other colors.

Light source matters, as does color sensitivity of the BW film.

along similar lines, at least in the same quadrant of that (above) 2 year old note: we get another request for information from the same professional.

an adage pops up: you can lead a horse to water…

The person who can’t find information on their own, isn’t the person who will use the information well. Locating a vendor is an elementary part of running a business. Asking the hobby world makes you a hobbyist — and a foolish one, in this case.

Reliance upon a small group makes you either on the advance or the decline. The hobby forums are not the leading edge of chemical photography.

The conversation is complete. My observation: the newcomer should leave, so should the old timers.

Advise, constant, recurring: don’t ask the forums. In old ‘cology it was said: “don’t give away your eyes.”

You will learn more about your work by doing it. Don’t ask them, they really never did succeed. The Fromm’s and Friends are only noticed because they hang out in a space someone else provided. The tour bus drops you off where they can park, not where you need be.