Technotes

I have collected links to the best black and white photographer’s Web sites on my Favorites page if you want to see what I like.

 
  Want to see what 99 percent of my photos look like? How bad are they? I have a selection of contact sheets for your enjoyment. A source of encouragement and inspiration for anyone who thought they were the only ones shooting lousy pictures.
Go to Contact Sheets		  
  See why black and white is better
Fewer and fewer people are using black and white film these days, and only a handful use large format. If you don’t know anything about view cameras, I hope you are curious enough to take a look at a few pages of comparisons that I have put together.
       First, take a look at what 4x5 film looks like. More square inches translates into more quality. Much more. Do the math.
See the film 		 
  Now, look at a comparison of enlargements made from a 35mm negative and a 4x5 negative. I show two comparisons; first both at 70 percent scale and then both at 500 percent scale.
Go and see the difference.
If you don’t have an exact idea of what a view camera looks like, I’ve made a composite illustration to show you. See it broken into parts as well as assembled.
See a 4x5 view camera.		  
  I have been making, developing and printing black and white pictures for thirty years. I am self taught, so if there is a mistake that can be made, I have. My first camera was a box brownie which I loved. My first developing was done from a kit my sister Lisa bought me from Sears. One of my other sisters, Nathalie, and I spent two hours locked in the bomb shelter trying to “separate the film from the paper backing.” We were afraid to turn the light on, but couldn’t get that paper to split in two (box brownie film was 2 1/4). We found it eventually.  
  When I got my first view camera, I had never seen one except in pictures. It came in the mail and they evidently assumed that anyone who bought a large format camera already knew what they were doing. I didn’t. For the first few days I had the lens on backward. Really.
      Since that meant I couldn’t find the shutter release, I wasn’t taking any pictures. Since I hadn’t figured out how to put the camera on the tripod, that wasn’t an issue.		  
  I used to take nice sharp f/45 pictures like all the other black and white large format people, but it got so boring. Things are so relentlessly what they are. I wanted just the shape; just the light. See my photos heading the short story to see pictures I really care about (you don’t have to read the story).  
  I used a Sinar 4x5 camera for all the photos that accompany the short story Animal Rights. I always use Plus-X film for all my large format work. I also shoot with an 8x10 Sinar, but none of those pictures are shown here.  
  I develop with HC110, dil.B, tank development for 4x5. I use trays for 8x10.  
  Almost all the photos in the Free Photos section are 35mm. (Though the Water photos are all 4x5). Many are very old; two were taken when I was in the seventh grade.  
  If you’d like to see my messy darkroom, here is a page of photos taken while I was in the middle of doing some 8x10 negatives.
my darkroom
Go to the darkroom page		  
 

I have a section of Photoshop Tips written for beginners. Like it or not, digital is probably the future of photography.

 
  Large format tips:
  • If your tripod has little rubber feet like mine, spray paint them orange or silver so when they fall off in the jungle, you can find them in less than an hour.
  • Always carry a spare cable release.
  • I use a dark flannel sheet folded in four as a cover cloth. It’s soft, warm and just the right weight.
  • Use your dark slide as your lens shade. You can hold it right where you need it.
  • For $6.95 get the Calumet exposure calculator to figure bellows factor.
  • Bellows factor becomes relevant as follows:
    90mm-2ft.4in., 120mm-3ft.4in., 150mm-4ft., 210mm-5ft.8in., 240mm-5ft.5in., 360mm-9ft.8in., 480mm-12ft.3in.
  • Figure bellows factor first then reciprocity.
  • Kodak only gives you reciprocity figures for 1, 10 and 100 seconds. The values I use for in between times with Plus-X film are:
    2 goes to 6.7
    3 - 11.6
    4 - 16.6
    5 - 21.8
    6 - 27.2
    7 - 32.6
    8 - 38.3
    9 - 44.1
    10 - 50
    15 - 1:22
    20 - 1:58
    25 - 2:37
    30 - 3:20
    40 - 4:58
    50 - 6:51
    60 - 8:59
    1:20 - 13:59
    1:40 - 20:00
    2:00 - 27:11
    2:40 - 44:03
    3:20 - 65:07
    4:00 - 90:10.
    These times were figured up for me by my physics-professor brother-in-law, Jim, and they have worked very well for me.
  • Watch your background. Everyone gets the foreground right, because that’s what they’re interested in. The background will ruin many of your best shots.
  
 

Darkroom tips :

  • Wear rubber bands on your sleeves to keep them up and out of the solutions.
  • Solution’s temperatures behave differently at different times of the year. Keep notes.
  • If you tray develop your negatives, you can go as slowly as you need when putting negatives into the developer, so long as you go just as slowly getting them out.
  • Get one of the UPS battery back up doodads they make for computers and run your timer off of it. That way if the power goes off, as mine often does, you have about ten minutes to finish up.
  • Watch out for those little black hairs of film residue that show up on cut film when you put it up to dry. Get them off with a wet finger.
  • Learn about drydown factor for your enlarging paper and figure it in on your final print.
  
  No matter how long I do this, I never get over the excitement of bringing something totally new into the world each time I develop a batch of film.  
 
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jay@arraich.com