Sunday 31 August 2014

A Day at Not the Beach


"Don't tell me, you're headed for the beach again right?"

In fact I hadn't quite made up my mind which way I intended to go as I headed out the door, oversize photo backpack and tripod in tow, but my wife's almost chiding tone, with it's implicit suggestion that maybe it was about time to get a bit more creative with subject matter, brought me to the instant decision that whichever way I was headed, it wouldn't be towards the beach. It was the last day uncommitted day I had left out a week off work in which I'd been disappointed time and again by the harsh light and bland, featureless skies that characterize the kind of weather conditions most people refer to as "perfect". The skies were still blue this day but for once there was smattering of cloud to break the monotony - the kind of day polarisers (or for we black and white photographers red contrast filters) were made for. And now I found myself with a small dilemma, if not the beach then where?

After an uninspired hour or so wandering random back-roads of the Niagara Peninsula I found myself nearing subject matter I'd had in the back of my mind for some time but had never really explored - one of the power corridors leading west from the Canadian half of Niagara's hydro electric generators into the rest of Ontario.



I wasn't that familiar with the particular road I had taken that was leading towards the towers, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a small dirt road that lead through the fields traversed by the power corridor. My guess is it was put in place for Ontario Hydro service vehicles, but it looked like it was probably frequented by hikers and signage forbade only motorized vehicles. I had at once a nice computational element and assurance I was free to wander without risk of being considered a trespasser.

I had only recently obtained a set of black and white contrast filters in the 77mm thread size used by all of my Mamiya lenses and this was the perfect chance to try them out. For those who aren't familiar, these are plain coloured filters made to use with black and white film. The point, if that strikes you as a hair-brained notion, is that a coloured filter allows light with a similar colour to pass, while blocking and therefore darkening dis-similar colours. Thus the blue of the sky will be darkened by (in order of increasing strength) yellow, orange and red filters while (after exposure compensation is taken into account) neutral toned clouds are relatively unaffected.  As was done in all of the photos here, using a red filter like this on a blue sky with white clouds gives a result similar to using a polarising filter.


A nice discovery, and this is just one mall stretch of an extensive network. I just may find myself exploring it further.





Thursday 28 August 2014

A Trial Run

What do you get when you test a home-made camera with 17 years expired film that's been stored in a hot attic?
Thankfully better days appear to be ahead.

I expect writing a blog to be a learning experience and lesson one will be that it doesn't pay to plan in advance too rigidly. This post was supposed to be the second part of a series on buying a first 35mm SLR, and was supposed to have appeared some time ago. As I struggled along with that possibly overly ambitious subject on which I may just have too many thoughts, events in my own photographic life, the stuff I really should be writing about as they happen, have been sweeping me along, but as my mind was fixed on making the next post the follow-up to the previous and the aforementioned events were eating up the time I had to complete it... Well, enough of that then. Let's get on with things and let part two appear where it may when I get back to it.

For the past few months I have really been intrigued with the notion of using x-ray film for large format photography. That may sound odd if you've never heard of this before, but when doctors slap those big x-ray sheets up on their vertical light boxes to see where the bone is broken (or whatever) what they are looking at is just an over-sized version of black and white negatives we photographers are used to, that was made on film not that different from the stuff we load into our cameras. The film comes in large sheets, not rolls, but for large format photographers this is nothing new. With a few extra considerations photographers who shoot these super-sized negatives can load and shoot x-ray film just as they do with standard film.

The reason they would do so is simple - cost. It's possible to order 100 sheets of 8x10 x-ray film, the smallest size it comes in, from North American medical supply companies for under $35 US. This breaks down easily enough to 35 cents a sheet, less than I pay per exposure when I'm shooting with my medium format camera. (From discussions I've been in with photographers in the UK it seems they weren't able to find any such cost savings from suppliers there.) Photographers who shoot 8x10 film (and they/re out there my friends) usually expect to pay between $4-7 per exposure when they're using standard film.

However I didn't set down to write about x-ray film, not today anyway, but rather where the notion has lead me. You see one place where x-ray film really seems to shine is when it's used for contact printing. That is making prints by placing the negative in direct contact with the photographic paper to yield prints that are exactly the size of the original negative. I have a 4x5 camera, though it's little used these days due to a wonky shutter and a budget that's been devoted almost entirely to medium format this year, but while an 8x10 sheet of x-ray film can be trimmed nicely into 4 4x5 sheets ($.09/per exposure, less than 35mm film) 4x5 contact prints aren't ideal for hanging on the wall. If I'm going to shoot with contact printing in mind then it would be much better to stick with shooting on the 8x10 sheets as they come. This is especially so as I don't even have an enlarger at this point and chances are the one I get won't handle 4x5 negatives. Also, I've been keenly eyeing up alternative processes, especially carbon transfer printing, which are done exclusively by way of contact printing. So while 4x5 is nice it almost seems to be a waste to put resources into it when 8x10 offers this huge advantage and the cost of x-ray film makes the cost of shooting it more reasonable than I could have hoped.

The ironic thing is that all of this is coming down to why I built another 4x5 camera. It's a big part of what I've been up to since you heard from me last, and here's the result so far:


Ain't it pretty? (You can humour me just a little here.) To see why I did this I should first note that while x-ray film makes shooting 8x10 cheaper, it doesn't make it any cheaper to get a functional 8x10 camera, a significant necessity especially considering the sizable chunk of precision glass that goes out front. It could easily surpass everything I've spent rebuilding my not insubstantial medium format kit over the last year in one go, and this at a time when I'm hoping to re-assure the missus I'll be giving the budget some more breathing room.

This all presumes the usual sort of 8x10 camera - the kind with bellows and tilting movements and a big black cloth thrown over your head while you play Ansel Adams with an upside-down ground glass image.

Ansel using an 8x10 camera
But that's not the only way to make an 8x10 camera. A simple pinhole camera made from a big enough shoebox is an 8x10 camera if you can manage to fit a full sheet of 8x10 enlarging paper in the back. And while the average nine-year-old can often obtain surprisingly good results with a simple project like this, more thoughtfully crafted pinhole cameras can be serious tools. Pinhole photography has an aesthetic all its own. Images often take on a unique haunting quality that many photographers are drawn to.

Here are a few examples from photographers whose work I've enjoyed:
The pinhole images of Paul Mitchell on Flickr
8x10 pinhole images by Jochen Hartmann
The pinhole images of Adrian W on Flickr
(the link is to a particular image, but check out the rest of his gallery featuring many other fine pinhole images.)

I would also be remiss if I did not mention the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day website. One day each year is designated Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (I believe it is the last Sunday in April but don't hold me to that). Photographers are invited to submit pinhole photos made on that day and that day only which are collected into a massive online gallery. (My entry in the 2014 gallery is number 888.)

And so it was that the idea of building an 8x10 pinhole camera presented itself. Now when it comes to building things let's just say I usually manage. The results are usually functional and while they aren't generally hideous to look at neither are they to be admired as examples of high craftsmanship, try though I may. This wouldn't be a first go at a pinhole camera for me either. The first shoots 6x9cm negs on 120 film and while it's functional, I managed to make enough mistakes during its construction to cause me to limit its use to special occasions like WPPD. The experience was enough to make me wary of diving into an 8x10 pinhole camera project with a completely different design without some assurance I wouldn't be tempted to scrap the whole thing and start over rather than work around the mistakes I made along the way. Further, since I'm planning to use standard 8x10 film holders which themselves aren't cheap I hoped to have that assurance before biting the bullet and committing to their purchase.

And so the natural thing to do was build a scaled down proof of concept version first so that hopefully I could make all my mistakes in advance of the real thing. I already own a bevvy of 4x5 film holders so there's the hardest part out of the way. In many ways this is a simpler design than a roll film camera since there is no advance mechanism to worry about there's no need for a shutter that stays closed at all times, only between the time the dark slide is removed to when it is replaced. A decent well made box should do as long as there's some way to keep the film holder in place, and most large format pinhole cameras seem to be just this, but I wanted to introduce a few wrinkles. The first was to make things a bit lighter than a straight box of 3/4" wood, and the second was to allow the front end to be changed out to permit different "focal lengths", or whatever you would properly call that with a pinhole camera since there is no focus per se.

My solution was to build the front end out of fiber-glass and have that attach to a much narrower box in the back where the film was held. This will allow me to build front ends of different depths to act as, in effect, lenses of different focal lengths. Now while fiber-glass weighs much less than 3/4" hardwood as you may know it is hardly light tight, so to address that the whole thing was coated front and back with spray on black PlastiDip. The pinhole was made from an aluminium soft drink can using a sewing needle and some super fine sandpaper and its diameter and general roundness were checked by putting it on a flat-bed scanner and using the ruler bar in Photoshop. The film holder is kept in place with a couple of straps that are attached and released at the top with Velcro as seen in this view from the back:


It is here that I made what appears to be the only real mistake during the build, at least so far, by assuming that using this to press the film holder against the wood surface of the camera would be enough to seal out light. The light leaks visible in the photo at the top of this post, especially to the top left, are testament to the fact that I was wrong about this. Thankfully a thin strip of self-adhesive felt all around seems to have addressed this as the test shot currently hung to dry in my office appears to attest. The remaining image flaws you see I attribute to a combination of doing my testing with a box of film I recently found stored in my attic (that gets roaster hot this time of year) with a 1997 expiry date and fiddling too much with the developer formula to try to compensate.

So it would seem at least that everything is on track and working according to plan. Which is good, because I made the commitment and pair of knackered looking but apparently perfectly functional 8x10 film holders are on their way to me now.










Saturday 9 August 2014

Choosing a Camera: 35mm SLRs Part I

Issue number four, time to get down to brass tacks already shall we? I intend to be doing this for a while after all, so audience retention is a priority. (On a totally unrelated note, I was wondering if everyone had noticed the 'subscribe' button over to the right.) Curiosity about shooting film may bring some here, but I imagine only active film shooters are likely to stick around long. To that end, for the benefit of those who may be at the dipping a toe in the water stage, let's get you all up to speed. (Don't worry, I mix developer far better than I mix metaphors.)

It starts with a camera of course. You can't do much without a camera. Maybe you have one you've yet to use, which is fine. Whether or not it's ideal you can start with pretty much any camera so long as it doesn't take some oddball film size that you can't get anymore. If you don't have one though all is not lost soon you'll have the benefit of every penny's worth of my free advice giving you a better chance of starting with one that is ideal.

An overview of every decision you could make in the process of choosing an analog camera these days is more of a book length topic and even I'm not that long-winded. Fortunately, when it comes to choosing a first camera, there's a quick way to boil much of the process down to a simple choice of either a) a 35mm SLR or b) something else.

The Nikon FE, one of countless potentially excellent choices for a first 35mm SLR
This one happens to be mine. For some it might be too much, or too little.
For others, maybe even you, it might be ideal.  (No, it's not for sale.)


If it's the something else option then you have your mind on something already and a 35mm SLR isn't it. Smashing! Something's got you inspired and who could argue with that? Maybe the thought of instant photography really appeals to you, or you were drawn to film photography by the low-fi approach and were thinking of something more like a Holga. Well, good on ya in either case, but the title pretty much gives it away, that's not what we'll be discussing today. These are both good topics for future posts though so keep half an eye out but at the same time don't hold your breath.

If you don't already have a particular camera in mind already that's not a 35mm SLR, may I humbly suggest the 35mm SLR. This is probably the kind of camera most people would think to look for on their own, but whether or not you're aware of them, here's a few reasons to go for one.
  • They are widely available on the used market (though you can still get them new) which means...
  • They can be fantastically cheap, often representing so little financial commitment that if you shelve it a short while later after finding one you like better, you still got your money's worth.
  • Even an entry level model is capable of making gallery worthy images if you know what you're doing. (Always a catch, eh?)
  • It's the cheapest to use in terms of film and processing costs, meaning you can afford to shoot more and mistakes aren't as costly.
  • 35mm is the most universal film size. Even in the digital world when they talk about “full frame” sensors, this is in reference to the size of a 35mm negative. This translates into a wider choice of films available and less chance you'll have trouble getting film when you need it.
  • They're the best cameras to learn on. Though other cameras may be easier to pick up and use if you don't know much about photography, the fact that there's so little to learn means you probably never will. Also, most of the instructional literature you are likely to encounter will be based around the 35mm SLR.
  • Like any SLR (including DSLRs), the 35mm variety are modular, accepting a wide ranges and other accessories. This allows you to start small and expand.
  • There's plenty to choose from when it comes to available features, from fully manual cameras to models that, aside from the need to load film and no temptation to chimp, feel a lot like using a DSLR.

If we take it as a given that a 35mm SLR is what we're after there are still a lot of factors to consider. That will, for the most part, be the subject of Part II. One of those considerations tends to be the first one most people are just itching to have answered, so for the impatient types among you let me address the question here.

“What brand should I look for? What's a good one?”

I promise I'll get to that, but not before I get something off my chest. If you've been looking elsewhere for advice on buying any kind of camera and this or any similar question about what brand to get has passed your lips, stop it. Asking a photographer what brand of camera they think is right for you is like asking a priest what religion they think is right for you. Virtually any photographer is apt to tell you is the best brand is whatever they use. The temptation of course is to think that, well, they know a lot more than you do and that's what they chose. Ask yourself, though, if there might not be photographers out there that are even better who use different brands.

Okay, now that that's out of the way let me go on and once and for all give you my answer to that question:

A good brand of 35mm SLR is any brand that managed to survive in the market long enough to bring a 35mm SLR to the market.

For example, Miranda is a good brand. It might not be the brand for you, but they made good cameras and a lot of Miranda owners just love 'em. It's not one of the more likely names for you see when you're looking for a camera because the were out of production by the end of the 1970s and weren't one of the bigger 35mm SLR makers before this. You never know though. The point is they were on the market for over 20 years and thousands of perfectly smart people who could have chosen any of the other competing brands bought a Miranda instead. More than 35 years after they stopped making them there are still plenty of working examples out there so they can't have been all that poorly made. If you're looking to forgo more modern automated features for a classic manual camera and don't need a huge assortment of available lenses and accessories, a Miranda might be just right for you.

The Miranda Sensorex. It's not likely to be a camera anyone recommends to you,
but who knows, one of these could become your new best friend.
(Image by Flickr user 'squeak' licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0)


For the record, I don't own a Miranda and never have. Out of all the brands I could think of I chose it as an example because it was a) the one that seemed least likely any photographer would recommend if asked and b) one I couldn't say they'd be steering you wrong with if they did, at least if something that decidedly vintage suited you.

I don't want to go to the other extreme and suggest brand is meaningless however. It could mean more or less depending on the situation. If you find a working 35mm SLR at a yard sale for less than the loose change floating around in your pocket, buyers remorse because over the brand name isn't a big concern. If instead you've decided to commit a fair chunk of the discretionary budget, 35mm SLRs being system cameras, you might want to put more thought into what you're committing to. That said, here are a few things you might, and might not, want to consider.

Bad reasons for choosing a brand:
  • A really good photographer I know uses that brand and they know more than me.
  • A really good photographer I know told me it was the best brand.
  • They seem to go for more on eBay so they must be good.

Good reasons for choosing a brand:
  • You got a camera for free, or close enough to it, and it happened to be that brand.
  • Other brands seem to go for a premium when I know the quality is no better. It's probably because of all the professional level lenses and accessories those other brands have available, but I'll never need those.
  • Even though other brands might be a bit cheaper, I'm planning to expand and upgrade as I go and they're just not available with those other brands. Considering what a bargain a 35mm SLR system is these days why not spend just a little extra and start out right.
  • You have some sort of emotional attachment to a particular brand.

Given how we're trained since birth anymore to be hard-nosed rational consumers it might seem like I put this last one on the wrong list. Well, we're talking about a camera here, not plumbing supplies. A significant part of the value you get from owning a camera is the relationship you develop with it (in fact I'd say a failure to develop the same kind of relationship with any of the DSLRs I've owned had a lot to do with my getting out of digital.) If you get the warm fuzzies when you remember the old Pentax Spotmatic your parents dug out when it was time to do holiday pictures, it could incline you to feel more attached to a Pentax, more at home with one, so why not get one? Maybe you can even find another Spotmatic. (Or if end up looking into what ever happened to that thing, who knows, maybe the same Spotmatic.)

So in Part II I'll be having a look at some of the things that might make a 35mm SLR right for you. We've established a bit about the proper roll brand name might have in that choice but one thing I won't be doing is getting into specifics about particular brands. I'll leave you to do your own research there. Whatever you find though I urge you to consider the source. The emotional attachments people often form with their cameras means biased opinions are the norm out there.




Wednesday 6 August 2014

A Word to my Fellow Planet Killers

I love my fellow film photographers, I really do. We are, all of us, comrades. I had plans of getting into some of the more nitty-gritty practical stuff with this post but the winds of my inner musings have blown us off course a bit. (ADD can be a fickle mistress.) And so it is with heavy heart that I feel compelled instead to call a good lot of ya to task over something. Hopefully this doesn't include you personally dear reader, but if so, well, call it tough love.

While I hope I never come across to anyone as a film fan-boy I do strive to be a good ambassador for this most excellent medium. If you're here reading this you may even feel the same way. At the very least I assume you have some interest in shooting with film and therefore there should be no need for me to explain how it's in all of our best interest to keep film photography as viable as possible or the benefits of being part of a vital and vibrant a community of fellow traditional photographers. So of course the last thing you would ever do is outright disparage the practice, especially by contributing to the spread of misconceptions, half truths and straight out falsehoods.

Now imagine yourself at the local establishment enjoying a nice vessel of whatever's your pleasure when a conversation between two photographers you couldn't help but overhear turns to the subject of shooting film. “All those chemicals though,” one of them says, “they have to be bad for the environment.”

“Of course,” the other responds, “photo chemicals are poisoning our waterways and drinking water. They're just awful for the environment. They contain highly toxic heavy metals you know, so even small amounts have severe effects.”

Would you imagine the latter speaker is:
a) a passionate digital photographer who is baffled by the fact that anyone at all would still bother with film given it's obvious inferiority in every category not to mention the toxic waste it generates.
or

b) a passionate film photographer, eager to interact with others who share their love for the medium, especially when it comes to sharing their knowledge with newcomers.

The correct answer is 'b'. Though the second photographer is of course fictitious, their statement is an assemblage of various statements I pulled from posts in various online forums devoted to film photography in threads discussing the disposal of waste home darkroom chemistry. The point is if the a statement like this had been made by someone who was anti-film they could justifiably be called distorted, dishonest and flat out slanderous. So why do people who care enough about film photography to visit and participate in forums devoted to it so regularly slam it in ways that would be unconscionable for a film detractor?



In my early adulthood my job, part of which involved dealing with the chemistry for a 1 hour photo lab, brought me into contact with representatives of environmental agencies concerned with the handling of waste chemicals. The message I got from them was that in general waste photo chemicals were considered no more hazardous when poured down the drain than the dirty mop water from a janitor who does the same. This was the actual analogy they used. The one concern they did have was the fixer (actually bleach/fix as this was of course a colour process), not because it was particularly nasty in it's own right but because once used it contained the dissolved silver washed out of the film that had been run through it. It was easily removed however, and we were happy to do it because, hey, free silver.

At no point in all the years since did waste photo chemistry become any more of a hazard than it was back then (arguably less in fact) and at no point since did anyone discover that it represented a danger that was then unknown. But while waste photo chemicals weren't really on anyone's radar screen back then, somehow an ill founded notion that they represent some special and significant hazard has taken hold in the years since so that now I find it's something even photographers have started buying into. Most baffling of all from my point of view is that it seems to be film photographers in particular who are trumpeting these misconceptions most loudly.

What's behind all this. Here's a few highly speculative contributing factors that have no particular validity beyond the fact that I thought of them and therefore feel somewhat attached to:
  • The internet. There was no internet back then, or at least hardly an internet. Now it has become a breeding ground of rumours and myths unchecked by the need to back anything up with references or facts. You should stop reading the internet. Well, wait a few minutes then stop.
  • When digital was new and the big push was on to get everyone to update to the new way of doing things one of the angles taken was to float the idea that digital was the environmentally friendly choice. The idea that film is a dirty technology and digital was sparkly clean persists to this day even though waste photo chemistry isn't and never was ever considered a significant hazard, but today electronic waste is. Nuff said.
  • Over the years the word “chemical” has become a sort of short hand, tacitly understood to mean “nasty bad stuff”. If somebody talks about chemicals in our food for example that's never a good thing. In photography our developers, fixers etc have always been referred to collectively as “photo chemicals” so the inference that has grown up around the word just came along for the ride. We have other terms for our laundry chemicals, medicinal chemicals, baking chemicals, germ-killing chemicals, power storage chemicals. These things are no less chemicals than are photo chemicals. We just don't call them that. I wonder how we'd feel about them if we did.
I  like to have a bit of fun when I label bottles of darkroom chemistry.
 This is my jug of Dihydrogen Monoxide. If it's not familiar as an ingredient
used in photo chemistry that's probably because most published formulas
\refer to it by its more common name, distilled water.

All of this has gotten my goat a bit (removes “Captain Obvious” hat), and I've spent a more time than is reasonable in aforementioned forums crafting exhaustive challenges to the received knowledge that Mother Earth dies a little each time we develop a roll of film. The few responses I've received have amounted to something like we should always act with the utmost caution with any chemical, there can always be unforeseen hazards, better safe than sorry and so on. Great, except there's no reason to single out photo chemistry for this treatment. Virtually everything we do involves chemicals, so until you're ready to treat your dirty dish water like hazardous waste let's look at some more realistic approaches.

If you stick to reasonably standard photo chemicals then the silver dissolved in your spent fixer presents a bigger potential environmental hazard several times over than all other chemistry concerns combined. Removing it is as simple as placing it in a container with either a crumpled up piece of aluminium foil or steel wool. Dissolved silver will replace the atoms in the metalic wad of your choosing and collect as a sludge in the bottom of the container. After a few days simply pour off the liquid, retaining the sludge. Most of the silver that remain will combine with sulfates in the fixer to form inert compounds that aren't harmful to anything.

That leaves developer and stop bath. So far as pH levels go the alkalinity of developer and the acidity of fixer more or less cancel. It won't really matter to the environment if you dump them separately but combining them first may be easier on your plumbing. I should note that all of this applies equally to film and print chemistry. If you do colour developing bleach and fix are normally combined (blix). Treat this just like black and white fixer.

Lastly, don't confuse environmental hazards with health and safety concerns. Fixer and stop bath can have strong odours that without adequate ventilation can easily become overwhelming in the confined environs of a darkroom, but the strong smell of stop bath comes from acetic acid, the stuff that makes vinegar vinegar, and vinegar is the widely touted environmentally friendly replacement for so many other chemicals. The characteristic smell of fixer meanwhile comes from the sulphur compounds that , the same ones that help neutralise some of the silver and which, I'm told, are good for the garden if you use the de-silvered as plant food (I'm no gardener, believe that at your own risk). Metol, a common ingredient in many developers, should be treated with some caution because some people have, or acquire with repeated exposure, a skin reaction when they come into contact with it. Released into the environment however it's one of the most benign chemicals used in the darkroom.

One final thought, it's one thing to err on the side of caution, it's quite another to allow excessive caution to become a substitute for being informed. Safety first is just a hollow phrase if you lack the understanding to know what safe looks like.