Category: overnight notes

nutshell: Essential Skills

Posted on Posted in overnight notes

the test strip and trial print are necessary steps to making prints. Concept: test strip; ring around.

enlargers using the common lamps can be setup at the same starting point. A normal grade (2) for 10 – 20 seconds at f/16.

make first adjustments in extremes: try to “cross-over” to the other condition in one step. Print is too light? Make it too dark.

printing is discovery. writing is thinking. thinking makes new discoveries.

making ‘cardboard’ jigs — aids to covering emulsions during exposure

[ until she found out she could sing, she was just another horny woman from houston ]

the simple relation is exposure controls density of result. it gets as complicated from this as you may wish to go. there are two forms this failing: short exposure, and long exposure — reciprocity failure isn’t as common in short as long. tests from makers aren’t reliable beyond 10 seconds, nor for multiple short exposures. they don’t have the equipment to test this. (sensitometers)

color paper designed for laser exposure is designed for short exposures. that for common darkroom enlarger lamps is designed for long exposure.

the most essential skill: finding information. first: look the manufacturer. next, look to references published by university, research publications. never use forums as your first nor consistent source of information: they are replays of each other’s opinions. if they haven’t published a book; if they don’t have a website with pictures — they are only magpies not eagles. their opinion is their’s don’t automatically make it yours.

Learning Dye Transfer

Posted on Posted in exs notebook, labnotes, overnight notes

Maybe. Actually, not. Kodak Dye Transfer ran its course — it was a commercial darling, but a market failure.

One difficulty with learning the process was in getting the relevant information together. Too often the beginner was stalled with too little information; more often they were showered with too much information. Like most first steps those first choices of: ‘how much is enough’, and ‘where to get it’ stalled most learners. Like this bit of information:

A Table of Contents:

  • Making color separations
  • Separations from masked transparencies
  • Evaluation of separation negatives
  • Post treatment of separations
  • Masking
  • Fake color and other alterations
  • Controls beyond
  • Materials and tools for separations

AND where is it now? You of this post-Kodak world learn from the survivor — the loud survivor. Many of whom are known more today than they were then. They didn’t participate in the labworld, instead they lived on the edge by writing about the process — word by word. Dollar by dollar. Until in this electronic forum they are the only voice. What do they say? Mostly tales of their purchases and notice of their sales — everything is on layaway.

Off site links illustrating the world view of those that did not, as they talked with one newcome who did — She became the spine of OIC, the only group who rolled new prints with a new matrix film (F18).

Sparks Fly

Posted on Posted in da net, Getting Stuff, overnight notes, the fora

when amateur experts collide. If nobody is right… let’s have a fight.

Power Struggles

Does the answer matter as much as winning, dominating among, what are essentially bullies in boast mode. Aging forums traverse a standard decay. It takes very little to cause the inmates to stomp and shout. So, what happened?

technology designed to serve industry across many nations with differing standards of safety.

Professional labs often operated all day, every day. One workstation was used by different operators on different shifts.

Design standards matured. Knowledge among users of different products was passed to all the involved vendors.

Salesmen talk. Hard to keep secrets that are for sale to anyone at a trade show or a reception room.

Could it get you there? The knowledge thread. Only if you already knew the answer; you’d do fine picking through the several pages collected over many years. And read German. The fact is, most of the knowledgeable from the chemical era began retiring in the 80s. Those most successful labs were being sold by the late 80s. It was clear that growth was over. By 1990 anyone with an accountant knew: the best is done. And asking: what comes next, if they were too young or too poor to stop, to make the next step.

Enlargers are elegant solutions to a simple need. Make this bigger. Make a projection. A light and a lens is all that’s needed.

Mechanical engineering improved over several decades to hold and position the film to be enlarged. How to do this cheaply yet durably. Divide the market into the casual and the commercial. From the 50s onward safety standards matured, so did manufacturing experience and supporting industry with more and more solutions.

The hobbiest’s casual darkroom is likely a converted space, perhaps a shared space. The car, the bar, the enlarger, that spare freezer, all stuck away. And subject to accidents. Water makes a great conductor.

hard to get agreement among them, when they don’t even keep agreement with themself. over time they switch opinion — seems to be based upon who they agree with not that it matters. none of them are the ones who have to fix the broken, possibly dangerous, device.

Lonely, a bully, and a know-it-all meet online to answer questions of the naive. Bullfrogs at a roadside puddle.

Resources

http://www.luigipasto.com/pages/resources/

http://www.jollinger.com/photo/enlargers/chromegatrol_repair.html

http://durst.loremi.com/

Click to access Durst%20TRA450%20Wiring%20Diagrams.pdf


http://www.jollinger.com/photo/enlargers/other/Changes_to_My_Chromegatrol.pdf

Amateurs need to explain, more to themselves than to others, why they ended where they did. It can’t be because of their lack, it must be something you’ve done.

“Galdston was surprised that Evans made better pictures than he did, even though Evans didn’t know much about f-stops and shutter speeds.”

The difference between Iago Galdston and Walker Evans is obvious.