Tag: lab notes

Using TMax

Posted on Posted in dye transfer, Getting Stuff, overnight notes, the foraTagged , , 1 Comment

Formulations change even without a branding change. This is done for reasons their maker knows. We can guess. If the item is intended, or is expected to serve the same utility, why introduce a New Name?

Super-XX and Kodak Pan Matrix film become one example

Super -XX1938 – 1955was the founding emulsion in speed and sensitization for Pan Matrix Film.
Super -XXafter 1955 became the film used for seps.1953 Kodak had moved to Safety Base
Pan Matrix 55111949dye washed out. see Defender process notes
Pan Matrix 51491957black didn’t wash out
Pan Matrix 4149(63 ->) the Matrix film most knewblackjet
Pan Matrix

open questions

The past can be used to provide answers for those open to reading.


TMAX, Super-XX, and Separation Negative 1 &2 were sold during dye transfer’s ending days.
tmax was not the replacement film… it just became so after Super-XX was dropped. After separation negative film (I and II) was dropped, TMax was the Kodak film that many experimented with. 
The Versamat also fell to the change in commercial photography world. The change had begun in the 70s, accelerating in the 80s. Retouching was the key to the kingdom.
With dye transfer’s passing, several lab films were not longer needed. 
They were replaced by the scanner.

this date (1985), the process was ending. 
These are list prices. Labs got discounts over 40%. Our discount may have been a secret kept from other labs. Nothing much else could be. Certainly nothing about the process. We hired from the same schools. Hired from each other. Some printers worked different shifts at different labs. 
I, for one, travelled among labs across country working on projects.

TMAX as the savior

One Film to rule the world.. often repeated — the repeat began with one person. Seemed reasonable. No one disputed it. Some out of ignorance, some, likely, out of politeness. In one case out of knowing better than to spend time making repeated corrections.

TMAX and Pan Masking film co-existed… TMAX was not the suggested fillm for masking.

Optical Printing… isn’t enlarger printing. At least it wasn’t. Notice the guidance for exposing duplication film. Use an optical printer, an enlarger, or a camera.

the great OPTICAL print.. sitting alongside the Enlarger and Camera.

Calling a photograph an OPTICAL seems like a call for help. A big word for something very common.

The optical printer has short enclosed separation between original and duplicate — or, negative and positive (print). An enlarger was also called ‘projection’ or ‘arial’ printing.

Optical is a code word of those who oppose this century’s vocabulary for inkjet printing.

Print Finishing.

Posted on Posted in overnight notes, the Lab, The PostTagged

The Print… between books and followings: Mortensen or Adams.

William Mortensen (1897 – 1965) was one of the most well known and respected photographers in America in the thirties. Ansel Adams called him ‘the Antichrist’ and wanted him written out of history.

Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) 

The Print… Adams (outlasted ..)

Print Finishing.. Mortensen (came first)

Should you want to make prints, the Mortensen is overlooked; it shouldn’t be.

The contents, shown below, is why. Much more content.

Adams is about curves and chemistry… in search of a print, whereas Mortensen is about how to retouch, to introduce the hand, while also providing specifics about drying, flattening of the print.

Even though he was there before Adams, we all know Ansel Adams.

Mortensen’s method required the hand. It was all about the final print; what could be done by the individual photographer… using haptic tools in addition to the optics.

Not the Zone System. A tone system.

In "Venus and Vulcan" -- a series of 1934 Camera Craft magazine essays -- Mortensen defended Pictorialism against criticism from the f.64 school and other "straight shooters":

Photography, like any other art, is a form of communication. The artist is not blowing bubbles for his own gratification, but is speaking a language, is telling somebody something. Three corollaries are derived from this proposition.

a. As a language, art fails unless it is clear and unequivocal in saying what it means.
b. Ideas may be communicated, not things.
c. Art expresses itself, as all languages do, in terms of symbols [William Mortensen, "Venus and Vulcan 5 - A Manifesto and a Prophecy," Camera Craft 41, n. 6 (July 1934): 310-12. As quoted in A. D. Coleman, "Conspicuous by His Absence: Concerning the Mysterious Disappearance of William Mortensen" in Coleman, Depth of Field (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1998).]

Mortensen could draw. Had a larger world to draw from than Ansel’s insulated Carmellows. Limited by his piano, limited by playing to predetermined steps; not the human voice, rather the machine one. Chartable. The Adams universe prevailed since it relied less on human spheres. It is something that can be done on the weekends, alone. All that is needed is money and weekends.

Ansel gave us Coffee Cans and Canned Landscapes. Mortensen… another voice from the past, even though it seems possible that his whisper remains stronger than Ansel and the Newhalls wanted

The digital age is the age of retouching, even more than the chemical age.