Technical Forum / Bulletin Board
Welcome to the Alan Ross Tech Page! My intent in posting the information and comments herein contained is to share photo-technical information and insights. Be advised, not all information should be taken as fact! In actuality, notes may often be an opinion of my own which I wish to share. I hope to update this page regularly and welcome topic suggestions. This is also a sort of personal bulletin-board, and who knows WHAT you'll find here!
Topics currently covered include, from the top of the page:
New Darkroom Timer!!!
Photo spotter for hire
Meter Calibration
Airport X-Rays
Selective Masking Update
Variable-Contrast articles on CD
Zone System Heresy / Calibration
To Mount or Not to Mount
New Darkroom Timer - !!!
Workshop alum and Stanford scientist, Curt Palm, has created a new darkroom timer that significantly “one-ups” the popular Zone VI Compensating Developing Timer. CompnTemp ® is software rather than hardware and is available for both Windows and Mac computers. I set up a small shelf in my darkroom for my Mac Powerbook and all I have to do to get going is plug in the accessory USB temperature probe and cover the screen with red plastic. What sets CompnTemp apart from ANY other timer is that is completely user-programmable. if you want your target temperature to be 73 degrees instead of 68 that’s fine. If you want it to count UP instead of DOWN, that’s fine, too. You can save profiles so you can toggle from one group of settings for prints to another set of preferences for film. It even lets you customize the compensation curves. It also gives you a continuous read-out of the ACTUAL temperature. Price is $85 for CompnTemp and about $40 for the probe. Contact: http://www.curtpalm.com/Software.html for more information or purchase!
Probe Clamp
The probe used for the CompnTemp timer shouldn’t be allowed to be completely immersed – so I have started making a specialized little tray clamp to hold the probe (see above). Flat fee $25 - USPS postage included. The clamp also will work for Zone VI probes, but has to be modified to accommodate its larger diameter – so let me know if you need one for Zone VI rather than for CompnTemp. To order one from me, click HERE – and don’t forget to give me your postal address!
Photo Spotter for Prints and Negatives
Print spotting is something none of us can avoid having to take to task on some level. Some of us are better at it than others, some just can't get the hang of it at all. Some are good at it but just don't have the time or patience for it. If you or anyone you know would like to have some first-class work done for you, I have just the person. Katherine Gillis in Lake Wylie, South Carolina has been doing much of my own print spotting and ALL of the spotting on the Ansel Adams Special Edition prints for the last 11 years or so. She used to be here in Santa Fe but for various reasons had to relocate. She is so good and great to work with that I've been FedExing prints to her for nearly ten years. She works on black-and white and color prints and film. She has e-mail but prefers to discuss particular needs on the phone, so if the link above doesn't get a response, give her a call at 803-631-0117.
Meter Calibration
According to Ted Orland’s poster Photographic Truths: “No two light meters agree.” Sadly, that does seem to be pretty much the truth – unless you do something about it.
For years I had a pair of supposedly “matched” Pentax digital spot meters that were never closer than 1/3 of a stop from each other - so I had to remember which meter I used for film tests and which one I had in the field. One of these meters had an accident and got sent off to its maker for a rebuild – and came back 2/3 of a stop away from where it had been, now 1/3 higher than the meter it had been lower than! So I sent the other meter off to its maker and after two months got it back about the same as when I had sent it. Which meter was right? I then got a dandy little “Pocket Spot” from Metered Light which sometimes agreed with one Pentax and other times, the other. The Pocket Spot was the only really “linear” meter of the three, yielding nearly identical densities on a roll of 35mm film exposed randomly on plain targets ranging in brightness from about 1 EV up to 18. Last spring I had had it with the three-meter dance and decided to finally standardize on the work of a highly competent, pro-savvy company in Hollywood. Quality Light Metric does the meter calibration for the film industry, and those folks don’t have the time to mess around with equipment that isn’t right. I sent both meters off to Hollywood. The calibration was done in two days at substantially less cost than the “other” place, and both meters now agreed exactly with each other, and while they were still 1/3 stop different from the Pocket Spot, they were now, at least, perfectly linear. The final answer? I sent the Pocket Spot and one of the Pentaxes off to Metered Light and had them tweak the PS to match the Pentax. I now have three meters that all read the same!
My students, naturally, have all varieties of meters in their kits. Sometimes they agree with mine and sometimes not. We can tell pretty quickly whether their gear is linear, and if it is then we know they can rely on the readings, they’ll just have a different film speed than I use. But they’ll wind up with the same exposure!
If you have multiple meters and want to put an end to calibration frustration, just have them all set to the same standard, and make that your own. Contact George Milton at Quality Light Metric, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood CA 90028. 323-467-2265. If you Google them, you’ll come up with a bunch of different addresses and phone #s. This is the current info for mail order work.
Airport X-Rays
It's something that worries all of us: Is my film going to get wrecked by airport security? I guess the answer is always "maybe", but recent experience makes me want to say "probably not." In the last year and a half I have had the opportunity to make three international trips with 4x5 camera gear and TMax 100 film. Italy via Frankfurt; Scotland; and China. In Albuquerque and in Florence, when connection times allowed the time, a hand inspection (with wipedown) was done without objection, but other times and places made it practical or obligatory to send the carry-on film through the scanner. On the China trip, my ISO 100 film got "zapped" six times (they even do this at train stations in China). The net result? No trace of fog. On the Italy trip last year I made three identical exposures on TMX 100 Readyload. I put one sheet in my checked baggage, one in my carry-on to be x-rayed, and one which I requested hand-inspect. The two carry-on films were perfect, but the film in the checked bag showed definite scan lines. The scan lines were probably Zone I or below so didn't "print," but the net reccommendation from all of this is:
Don't put ANY film in your checked baggage.
Carry-on film is probably fine with multiple security scans.
Update: November 2005. I just returned from another trip to China with TMax 100 4x5 Readyload film. After, I think, six scans through passenger security machines there was no trace of fog.
Selective Masking Update
Some of you may have discovered by now that Kodak has discontinued its SO-132 Direct Duplicating film. This film was the foundation for the "graduated burn" masking techniques described in masking article #2, and unless some other similar material is brought to market those masking techniques are no longer possible. Certain Photoshop techniques seem now to be the most practical alternative, and I am planning on writing an update article for ViewCamera magazine later this year. In the meantime, here's a hint: to make a corner-burn mask paint a WHITE gradient into the corner of a transparent layer placed on top of a 50% gray layer. Since the white prints as clear on a transparency, you can use the opacity slider on the gray to tweak how much burn the corner gets.
Variable-Contrast Articles - Reprints now on CD-ROM
In 1998 and 1999 I wrote a 4-part series of articles on Variable-Contrast printing for CameraArts magazine (the "smaller-format" sister of ViewCamera magazine). CameraArts has now republished the full series of articles on a CD-ROM, and is selling these with the articles in PDF format for $30.00 for CA/VC subscribers and $40.00 for everyone else. Their order and information number for the CD is 800-894-8439.
If you have been one of my students and would like something better than the xerox copies of the articles you got in your workshop binder, contact me. I'm offering the Variable-Contrast CD to my students for the same price CameraArts is offering them to their subscribers - $30. I'll even sign it! It's a single CD with a pdf file which has daisy-chained the four articles together. The current batch of disks has the articles formatted in much the same design as the original printed articles: the beginning two pages of Article #2 is still a "spread" with a large image of "Moon and Clouds" bridging the gutter. This doesn't read well when printed as a series of face-up pages on a home printer, and also, since the image is so black and so large it uses a HUGE amount of ink. I have made a single page replacement which I will be happy to email to you to print INSTEAD of the existing pages 6 and 7.
Lastly, the illustration photos in the pdf file seem to print a bit on the mushy side with some printers. I suggest printing a single, sample page such as p.23 or p.24 and adjust the contrast and brightness settings on your printer until the images print satisfactorily.
Zone System Heresy - A Case for Zone IX Calibration
Ever since I was back at Ansel's in the late '70's, I've been faithfully calibrating my high values at Zone VIII, targeting a density of about 1.25 above filmbase-fog. In the last year or so, however, I've been thinking more and more that it makes more sense to calibrate to Zone IX, with a target density of about 1.45. True, Zone VIII is supposed to be the high end of the "textural range", but then Zone II-1/2 to III is generally considered the low end, and we don't use THAT as a film speed point. For me, Zone IX prints on a "medium contrast" paper as not quite a paper white. THIS is the end of "normal" photographic scale and I think it's ultimately the most useful calibration point, in the same manner that we use Zone I for film speed (0.07 to 0.10 above Fb-F). The Zone IX calibration point will likely require more modest changes in development time and/or dilution to get useful Plus and Minus development. There should also be less tendency for Minus development to "block-up" values which fall higher than Zone IX. I think it should be a win-win change and I'll let you know what I find when I get around to re-testing.
If you'd like to see a larger version of these theoretical curves showing why I like this idea, or if they don't display on your browser, email me and I'll send a pdf pdq!
To Mount or Not to Mount
There's no doubt about it, a dry-mounted print is the flattest. It was Ansel's style to mount prints - in fact at the time it was THE way to "properly" present a print. Many people still prefer to mount their prints - when it's well done and overmatted it looks terrific. The downside is that if the mount becomes damaged or soiled, it kind of wrecks the print. Further, if a slipsheet, fingernail or other object happens to catch the edge of the mounted photo paper it can tear the emulsion away, again wrecking the print. Lastly, the museum world and many serious collectors prefer unmounted prints. For storage as well as archival considerations. Museum archivists feel that the print should not be attached to any foreign material - and an unmounted print is much easier to store! Another camp feels that the mount tissue itself acts as a barrier, protecting the back of the print from exposure to deteriorating gasses.
I quit drymounting prints sometime in the mid 1980's, or at least I stopped mounting them in the conventional fashion. I print with a minimum of a 1" margin between the image and the edge of the paper. Prints 11x14 and smaller I don't mount at all. I flatten the air-dried prints in a mount press and then put them in a presentation/handling mat. A properly sized bevel overmat is hinged to a backing board, and the print is then positioned in the window and then corner-mounted to the backing. 16x20 and 20x24 prints are mounted onto a sheet of 2-ply museum board to stiffen the print and make it flatter, but they are corner-mounted in a handling mat in much the same manner as the smaller prints.
Anecdotally, I'd like to note that I have been called upon to restore several Adams prints, which had become partially or entirely separated from the original mount board. I have had to carefully remount the prints to the original, sometimes damaged or foxed board because Ansel's signature was on the mount! Additionally, I had several prints come back, from a gallery that should know better, with wine stains on the mats and backing! The prints themselves were fine, so I just put them in new mats!