Tripod Selection: Points to Consider When Purchasing

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

Would you expect a paper clip to hold up a bowling ball? That’s about the equivalent of what some of us expect when we’re looking at tripods.

If you try to get a tripod that’s as light as a paper clip, and use it to hold up a camera that’s as heavy as a bowling ball, you’re in for some disappointment.

That’s not too far off from the truth. Weigh in a full sized medium format camera with a large lens sometime. Keep in mind that bowling balls usually begin around 8 pounds. Some camera rigs are not too far off from that.

I’d like to guide tripod selection recommendation through principle and experience. Some of this has worked for me:

Weigh the load the tripod will have to bear before you purchase a tripod. A salesman introduced me to this approach the last time I purchased a tripod, and it proved to be a great idea, and an effective method for me. There are many sturdy, reliable and long-lasting tripods out there. Generally, we will see design and construction trends in tripods that encourage the most sturdiness for the least amount of weight. However, no matter how strong and how reputable the tripod’s design is, if the tripod is overloaded, it’ll be unsteady. Likewise, some very large tripods, like surveyor’s tripods, will need a certain amount of weight bearing down on them in order to perform properly for their design.

Tripod heads, the swiveling and tilting fixture itself, are also designed to bear different loads. Like for the tripod itself, tripod head construction is a case where economy and structure coincide so that they meet the goal of bearing the camera’s weight.

So, to pick the correct tripod for the task at hand, it pays to take a few moments to weight the heaviest combination of camera, lens and attachments that the tripod will be expected to bear at one time.

Be realistic about the weight of the tripod. Lugging a tripod around on a trip or two can easily trick a photographer into thinking that lighter is better. Or, we can see working with a light, but loose, tripod, or an overloaded unit, can bring a photographer to the assumption that heavier is sturdier.

The photographer may have had so many bad experiences with carrying this thing around that it no longer seems to be worth its weight. Then, either leaving the tripod behind, or demanding a lighter one is only one decision away.

When the tripods are marketed to us, it appears as though lighter is better. Ads sometimes seem to proclaim, “Light as a feather, as sturdy and as tall as Mount Everest, with the adjustment and flexibility of a robot arm on a space vehicle.” They lure us in.

If we don’t weigh the load the tripod will bear before we choose a supporting design, the “lighter is better” line of thinking can lead a photographer into purchasing a very expensive tripod unit that was never designed to do what we ask of it. Weigh the load the tripod will bear.

Depending on what equipment we choose to use, living with, and carrying, a heavier tripod might be the better answer. Get the best quality you can afford. Yet, whether richer or poorer, no tripod design the size of a bent paper clip was ever built to support a bowling ball’s worth of camera weight.

Tripod Attachments and Features

If it looks like a screw clamp, someone has probably figured out a way to attach one to a tripod. If you can imagine some crazy way you wish you could clamp your camera or equipment to a tripod, other than the usual method, chances are someone has already patented and marketed such a device. They’re ready to sell that clamp to you. If you bring the tripod to the camera, you might not need one.

Perhaps there are two really good features I’ve seen on tripods that might be worth the few cents’ of plastic it took to build them. The attachment hook and the lateral column head are good features.

On the shoulder of some tripods, there’s a small hook or loop fitting. This is for using a cord to suspend a weight from the tripod shoulder, to give it more mass at the base. I have rarely used these, but I did own a very light aluminum tripod for many years. Given the weight of equipment I mount on tripods these days, I can see that if I was to use my lighter tripod for support, that hook could be invaluable. Some tripods are so light that the cameras and equipment we put on top of them might outweigh the tripod itself. The hook’s there to bring some more weight to the tripod rig below the camera. They’re simple and they make sense. Most tripods made today have such a fitting.

The lateral column head is one of my favorites. Sometimes tripod manufacturers don’t have such a feature for their models, in which case a clamp mount can be fitted to a tripod leg for the same purpose. The idea is to move the tripod head below and away from the normal shoulder-centered position for the camera. This is valuable for macro and close-up setups, particularly with natural subjects like flowers. In nature photography, it can help to get close to the ground. A lateral column head or leg-mount clamp can help to cover those lower setups. I use mine frequently.  

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

Developing Agents and Chemical Exposure

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

When exploring developers, we once again cannot underestimate the impact that Adams’ books have had on the subject. Clearly, when it comes to testing and authority, Adams ruled his day, and those who follow him in this area are, like me, sad imitators. That accepted, let’s do a quick review of what’s what in developers.

The Developing Agent: usually hydroquinone or a proprietary (or once proprietary) chemical compound like Elon or Metol or Amidol. What type of developing agent is in the solution is affected by the overall pH of the solution. Different compounds have different characteristics. Not only do some of them prefer some types of temperatures, but they act as though they have some preferences for the overall pH of the solution. In the case of D-76, above, used as an improvised paper developer, by raising the pH to about 10, we are providing the solution with an environment where the hydroquinone component can be more active.

Some developers contain more than one developing agent. Usually, this is a Metol and hydroquinone combination. In these cases, Metol and hydroquinone are often used together in solution because they form a relationship that is superadditive. That is, when the two compounds are in a solution together, not only do they do the work each would normally do, but they help each other out. The two components of a superadditive developer are stronger than the sum of their individual parts.  

Because chemistry is about structure and the flow of energy, chemists examining superadditive solutions have been able to tell us that as one compound begins to work, it frees up energy in the solution in a way that the other compound can work well, too. This other compound, in turn, creates a situation where energy flows well about the first compound, again. This is a simplified explanation, but what is important here is the idea that the two components of a superadditive developer solution work so well together that they work better than either of the individual parts alone would. There’s teamwork in the superadditive developer; this teamwork enables a superadditive developer combination to be very fast, effective, and just as permanent as with either hydropquinone or Metol alone.

In the case of hydroquinone and Metol developer solutions, we typically see that the proportion of Metol governs the mid-range grays, the softer tones. The hydroquinone excels at producing strong sharp blacks and clear areas on the negative. The two together, usually produce stunning results. Using the two together has been an industry standard for generations.

Adjusting Contrast by Adjusting Superadditive Component Relationships in a Developer
Beers’ Two-Solution Developer formula is an example of an adjustable contrast developer based on the concept that the proportion of hydroquinone to Metol can affect the contrast of the emulsion. The two-solution developer has one part based on a Metol solution, with some supporting chemicals in water; the other part is based on hydroquinone and some supporting chemicals dissolved in water. Based on the level of contrast desired in the paper print, the photographer can mix the two to varying proportions. The publishers of Beers’ Two-Solution Developer formula show in their tables and charts approximately how many parts of the Metol solution should be mixed with the hydroquinone solution to achieve a given level of contrast in the print.

Like variable contrast printing, the developer solutions can be used to control contrast. For some people this is an unusual concept. A lot of times when we think about photographic development, we think of the three baths, and maybe a given required time and temperature. Sometimes we can quickly stumble upon the idea that a longer time in one bath will lead to a greater effect on the paper in the bath; this is not entirely true always, but let’s accept that idea for now.

Meanwhile, the composition of the developer itself can be used to bring out certain properties in the print. Yes, even a very strong, too strong, concentration of developer solution in a tray could, under extreme circumstances, transfer so much chemical energy to the print paper as to blacken it. This rarely happens, and should never occur when the developer is mixed to the recommended working strengths, but is possible. Point is, the chemistry of the baths transfers energy to the paper just as exposing it to light would. An idea we don’t think of, often.

So, just as we would adjust the contrast of a paper print by using a filter to adjust the wavelengths of light energy reaching the photosensitive paper, so we can also adjust contrast through developer composition. This is because different chemical reactions exchange energy at different rates; it is analogous to energy arriving to the photosensitive paper at a different rate by being filtered to limit the wavelength of light.  

Adjusting Exposure By Changing the Duration of Chemical Exposure
Also, we could, if we wanted, adjust exposure through development bath duration. Idea there would be to “pull” the print; we would physically remove the print from the bath earlier than normal. Or, we could “push” the print, keeping it in the developer longer than normal. This has its limitations; just like pushing or pulling the development or exposure of negative film. The photopaper, or film, doesn’t get more or less of its potential energy as a result of the pushing or pulling. The structure of the photopaper or film only has the properties it was made with. 

There’s no fairy godmother to bless us with new, previously unattainable benefits from the film just because we changed the development process. We can, however, with careful planning and timing, gently manipulate the development of film or paper to bring out or slightly accentuate those qualities that are there by changing the flow of energy around the emulsion by changing the composition of the solution, the duration the solution is exposed to the emulsion or the intensity (the ratio of chemistry to water) of the solution.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info.

Have a Beer's Law: It Could Improve Your Photography

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

Beer’s Law states that, there is a relationship between the absorbance of light and the properties of the substance through which light travels. Simply put, if you put light in, and only get a portion of light straight out the other side, the energy that was lost along the way has to do with the properties of the material that the light went through. Very simple; and, very powerful in photography.

Beer’s Law affects us in photography in many applications. It has to do with light lost as light travels through the elements of a lens. It can remind us to allow for light lost as light travels through a filter.  

The intensity of a filter may affect the filter factor, or amount we have to increase exposure in order to generate an equivalent exposure value that would be comparable to our measurements taken without the filter. This enables us to stabilize exposure values while maintaining the contrast benefits provided by the filtration of light based on either local color or spectral sensitivity characteristics of a film. For example, if we were taking pictures of trees, we could use a green filter to emphasize the appearance of its green leaves. Or, if we were using infrared film, we could shoot through an infrared filter to block out all visible white light and permit only infrared light into the frame. Either way, when we let light through the filter, we would have to allow for the fact that as light travelled through the filter, some energy would be lost. To compensate for this loss, one of the most common solutions is to leave the shutter open longer; to ADD LIGHT; to move to a higher shutter speed. Or, conversely, open up the f/stop or change the entire computation base by falsely starting with a different ASA/ISO than we have actually loaded into the camera.

Beer’s Law, used effectively by engineers, enabled lens makers to build super-multi-coated lenses. What these lenses do is to use a permanent, internal dye coating on the lens elements themselves. These dyes are layered in a way that actually improves the efficiency of the transmission of the light through the lens elements. We do not often notice it today because this innovation became so common after its initial commercial use. These coatings are there, on the lenses, and they are usually doing a great job for us.  

In negative processing and evaluation, Beer’s Law can show us that the film base itself will absorb some light; that film base will never be completely transparent, no matter how clear it looks to our eyes; and, the amount of light lost through the clearer portions (the film base plus fog) is a good reference point for measuring densities on the emulsion. In variable contrast printing, Beer’s Law can remind us to increase exposure as we send our light through a filter.

Beer’s Law can also help to explain to us why we cannot repeatedly contact print between media to transfer an image without some losses with each transfer. This can be seen most readily when making a paper negative from a paper positive.

Paper negatives are a relatively simple idea. They could be made directly from an image if common print paper was loaded into a camera, instead of film. The chemicals in a film’s emulsion and print paper’s emulsion are similar. They are so similar that oftentimes, if image quality was not important, the same chemicals that we use to develop film can be used to develop print paper.  

Usually, we end up using one kind of developer for the film and another for the print paper. This is because the two different kinds of solutions have different kinds and balances of ingredients; but, you can develop a piece of print paper in a film developer. What I find usually happens when I do this is that the print paper’s image will seem very gray; film developers are “softer.”  

Back to Beer’s Law and paper negative transfers. If we have a good print that we like, we can make a contact negative of that print using another sheet of print paper. To do this, working in a darkroom with a safelight, the procedure usually goes like this:

Place an unexposed sheet of print paper on the enlarger easel.  

Place the processed, dry, print over it, face down. Get the emulsions of the two papers to touch.
Expose this stack of prints to light. It will take much more light than it took to make the original print. This is because of Beer’s Law.

When we send the light through the thickness of the original print to the new, paper negative print, we will lose some of the power of our light because that energy will be absorbed by the print paper. Also, Beer’s Law tells us that some of the light that we chine down on to the top of the stack of print paper will be reflected.

We would need to use much more light to make the second print, the paper negative, than the first because of Beer’s Law.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

Taking Your Developer's Temperature: Boyle's Law & Photographic Solutions

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

When we review the technical data sheets and instructions for using photographic solutions and chemicals, we frequently see recommended temperatures. The most commonly recommended temperature is 68*F. The chemists who put together pre-mixed solutions at the photographic supply companies know that 68*F is a common room temperature. The closer they can get their products to yield optimum performance at that temperature, then the greater the number of people who will use the pre-mixed chemicals successfully. The more who are happy with the results of the solutions, the more customers there are to repeatedly buy the substance.

Now, 68*F is a magic temperature in photography by design. But, it is not the only temperature at which we use photochemicals. For example, if we have three chemicals to mix, the manufacturer might recommend that the water used at one temperature during the mixing process, and at another temperature when the solution is actually used. Temperatures vary according to manufacturer’s recommendations for their products, but I think it is no accident that they commonly coincide with the temperatures found in most homes for cold, warm and hot water.

How does this affect us when we use the chemicals? Whether we are mixing up the solutions or using them to develop film or paper, we are using the solutions to promote a chemical reaction.
The chemical components in the solutions need room to move. The best way to give them more room to move is to raise the solution temperature. The best way to close the gap, so that they can be closer to the molecules they need to react with, is to lower the temperature. When we adjust the temperature at which we employ photochemical solution, on the molecular level and smaller, we are adjusting the amount of room energy has to move around in. Sometimes higher operating temperatures are good; sometimes colder is better.

Photochemical solutions are so sensitive to changes in temperature that a small change, a change of 3*F, will be enough to effect exposure times. Usually when we think of exposure times, we are considering the amount of time light is in contact with a photosensitive surface. But, key durations in photography also include the amount of time that chemical solutions like developers, stop baths and fixers are in contact with emulsions. Light is not the only way to bring energy to the image. The atoms in the molecules in the photochemical solutions are another.

Three degrees of variation in temperature may require a reduction or extension of processing times by about thirty seconds, commonly. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but look at the data sheet and see what it says.  

For example, when processing, we will usually see a chart on the manufacturer’s label that will tell us, With this solution mixed at this ratio to water, bathe the emulsion for 5 minutes at a temperature of 68*. Now, sometimes there is also a range or window of acceptable temperatures, but sometimes that window might be small.  

What They Told Us to Do, And What We Did
What is your developing temperature? Remember the thermometer? I recommend that you use it, at least sporadically, to check up on the temperature of your solutions as you process. While 68*F might be a common household temperature in Pennsylvania or Great Britain, both locations where big photo companies do a lot of their work, here in the Southeastern US, I have observed “comfortable room temperature” solutions that measured as high as 80*F.  

If I apply solutions at 80*F for the durations listed for 68*F, I may get more active results. How much more active? The difference between 80*F and 68*F is 12*F. If I am using a solution that requires a 30 second change in time for every three degree increment in temperature differential, then a time that would be good for 68*F, but used at 80*F, would be as though I had added a minute and a half of exposure time.

A minute and a half may not seem like much normally; but, remember , these photographic emulsions are very sensitive. They are designed to be. We pay extra for those that are sensitive in the way we want; and, we’re getting our money’s worth.  

A minute and a half difference in solution exposure duration may lead to a difference of at least one f/stop’s worth of light. A minute and a half too much might create the equivalent of a stop’s worth of overexposure. In the quest for the “perfect print”, this would never do.

Point here is: temperature counts. Particularly variations in temperature that carry the solution much beyond the manufacturer’s recommended operating range. Temperature counts because the chemical components in the photographic solutions are sensitive to the conditions that support or hamper their reactivity.

Temperature and Pressures Within a Solution
How does this relate back to Boyle’s Law? It may not seem apparent because when we use photochemicals, we don’t really try to change the pressure much in ways that we as people readily understand. When we think of pressurizing something, we usually think of arrangements like the pressure cooker used in the sea-level/high-altitude boiling water example. When we use photochemical solutions, we are, in deed, pressurizing them. We pressurize, or de-pressurize, them by adjusting their temperature.

The pressures that affect photo solutions are more than just the air pressure above. There are other pressures involved. Most of them, like air pressure, are invisible to our sight. Touch is the sense we most naturally use to detect pressure; and, the form of touch that tells us about the kinds of pressure are the sensations of heat or cold that are related to temperature.
Because of the chemicals involved, touching the solutions is often not good enough to help us judge the pressure for exposure times. Instead, we take the temperature of the solution with a thermometer.

When we take the temperature of the photo solution with a thermometer, we are actually getting a rough idea (a very rough idea) of how much pressure the atoms and molecules in the solution are putting on each other. The pressures that they feel by bumping into one another as components of a solution count. Did we give them enough room to move quickly? Are we crushing them into inactivity by freezing them? Did we give them too much room, and now they are too active, and eating up our print paper’s emulsion’s parts too fast?  

When we take the temperature of the solution, we are learning about these incredibly small differences in pressure created by the parts of the solution bumping into each other.

Really, this is an amazing activity, if you think about it. Look at those photochemical solutions. The dissolved chemicals are commonly invisible. They look almost exactly like regular water. Sometimes there is a color change; sometimes we actually have a colloid, which is a very dense suspension of undissolved particles in a media like water; but most often, we cannot see the components of the solution as we could when they were undissolved crystals poured from the packet.

Observable or not, how are we as big, fat, clumsy human beings to measure something so small, yet so influential, as the pressures exerted on those chemicals? We take the temperature of the solution.

Thermometer Mechanisms We Ignore
How we actually take a temperature is also amazing. When we put a thermometer in a solution, if it is glass or metal encased, we are using a big, fat, bulk instrument to measure those tiny forces acting on the molecules in solution. Those molecules and atoms and subatomic parts all bang against the glass wall of the thermometer’s casing. The force of this very weak, almost indetectable banging pushes in on that hard glass enough to squeeze that quicksilver mercury up along the canal inside the thermometer. To read the thermometer, we simply wait a little while and observe how far up the channel the mercury has travelled. Crude marks on the side of the thermometer help us to understand the indicator’s progress (or regress).  

For metal thermometers, like we see with dials on them, the process is similar. Engineers who supervised the construction of those metal thermometers knew that certain metals and their alloys expand or contract at a known rate when at a known mass, volume and ambient temperature. The engineers knew about the properties of the metals they used for building that thermometer.  

When the indicator metal, the sensor itself, comes into contact with the solution, either directly or indirectly through a casing, the heat (or cold) transmitted energy through the metal; this subtle transmission of energy caused an expansion or contraction in that tiny volume of metal. This expanding or contracting metal was mechanically trapped inside the housing of the thermometer assembly in such a way as to push a needle across a dial. Often, the expansion or contraction that pushes the needle on an axle or a pivot is so subtle, that most designs magnify this pushing by adding in a spring of some kind.  

The sensor of the metal darkroom thermometer expands or contracts. The sensor pushes against a part which pushes the needle in an arc. We look down upon the dial near the needle. We read what temperature the solution is. Amazing.

The common thermometer can tell us a great deal about the very small, puny, tiny, but influential pressures at work within a solution. Managing those pressures are important to us because when we are processing emulsions in a bath, we are exposing extremely sensitive chemical compounds to energy.

That exposure, whether to light or to chemical energy, is designed, in the end, to yield an image that we want to see.

That image, was traced on our paper as an illustration made with reflected light. Very delicate, and very beautiful; illustrations made with reflected light often exceed our abilities to draw with our hands. If we look closely, if we observe much at all, we will not only see the general impact our exposure had on the illustration process; but, we will also surely see some detail or effect that we may not have known was there, even if we thought we had carefully observed our subject and its surrounding environment.

A two-dimensional illustration drawn with bent, focused, light that slammed into delicate mixtures of chemicals; repeatedly edited by us, often without our care or our true understanding; an image that we made. That is our photograph.

Watch the temperature, and check up on it every so often.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

Using pH to Manipulate Developer Performance (Basic Concept)

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

There are a lot of mysteries we can unlock in Chemistry with the mighty little scrap of pH paper. In photochemistry, when are chemicals are good and fresh, they almost always look like transparent liquids; it is very difficult to tell by sight alone which of the three trays might contain which baths. Not only can a scrap of pH paper help to unlock some confusion, it can lead us to clues as to why some solutions may not be performing up to our expectations.

Take a standard developer like D-76, for example. When compared with Dektol, a comparable paper developer, we see that D-76 working solutions test out at approximately pH9. Dektol tests out at pH 10 or higher. It’s possible to develop paper in D-76, though it is normally used as a film developer only.  

However, when developing photopapers in D-76, we will usually see the entire print some out very gray; it goes beyond just a soft print; there will be almost no blacks in the print whatsoever; the whites, too, will be grayed out in their highlights. One of the tricks we can try, as a result of knowing the formula for D-76 through references, and from testing working solutions of developers like Dektol in the lab, is to lower the pH of the D-76 solution in order to use it as an improvised paper developer.

In one test, I raised the pH of 3L of D-76 to over pH10 by adding 80g of sodium carbonate.  

The adjusted D-76 won’t work out perfectly. It will, however, yield darker grays than it would have without the adjustment. The adjusted D-76 remains a little soft. Further, once it begins to expire, there is almost no resurrecting it. I wish to experiment more with D-76 in the future, seeing if the addition of Potassium Bromide as a retarder is effective.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

John O'Keefe-Odom's Online Catalog here.

Simplifying the Zone System with "Add" and "Subtract" Light

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

We will cover a simplified explanation of the theories and decisions first. Then we will move on to cover it in detail, with working examples. The Zone System has a reputation for being confusing, but it actually represents a simple set of decisions made by image makers every day. I think you will see, after reading over what Adams wrote, and going over this summary here, that the main point of the Zone System was to add and subtract light from an image in a controlled and sensible fashion.  

Because so many decisions in photography are relative, I have fallen into the habit of answering questions in the more complicated relative chains of problems solving with the terms “ADD LIGHT” and “SUBTRACT LIGHT.” They are written here in all capitals because I have a tendency to do so in my personal notes. Summing it up and drawing attention to the basic concepts of “ADD LIGHT” and “SUBTRACT LIGHT” have helped me clarify situations. I hope they will help you, too.

We look at the scene we want to photograph. We compose it in the viewfinder to our satisfaction. Now we are getting ready to make an exposure. When we make that exposure, we are going to let light into the camera. How much light should we let in?

Look at the scene in the viewfinder. What is the subject? Look at the surrounding image in the viewfinder. What is the lightest light? What is the darkest dark? How light or dark is our subject? Is it as light or dark as we would want?

In the real world, photographing in available light, we often cannot control how much light strikes the subject. But, we can control how much light gets into the camera. When we meter the light, we are measuring how much light is reflected from the target we are metering. The meter will consider our film speed (ASA/ISO), our aperture (f/stop) and our shutter speed.

We can manipulate how much light gets into the camera in several ways. We can vary our film speed, by loading different kinds into the camera. We can open or close the aperture on the camera. If we do this, we will affect depth of field, the amount of area before and after our focal point that will come into focus. We can open and close the shutter faster or slower. If we open it faster, we may freeze action. If we open it slower, we may blur action. We can manipulate the amount of light entering the camera in these ways individually, or in combination.  

But, no matter what we do, we want to ADD LIGHT or SUBTRACT LIGHT from the image in a controlled fashion. All of our decisions for choosing film speeds, shutter speeds and apertures rest on what we think we would like the image to look like when we are done.

If we get to the scene, and we feel it is okay for the subject to be represented in middle gray, ZONE V, then we can go ahead and use the light meter’s recommendation for exposure.

If we get to the scene and decide that we want to record details in the shadow area, or make our subject appear lighter in some way, then we must ADD LIGHT.  

If we get to the scene and decide that we want to expose for the highlights, so that the lighter lights show their details, then we must SUBTRACT LIGHT.

Whether we use the average, middle grey, ADD LIGHT or SUBTRACT LIGHT from the image, we do so because we chose that for our final image.

The rate at which we add or subtract light is not a steady, bulk increase.

Light is added or subtracted according to logarithms; these exponential concepts help us to understand precise measurements of light. Understanding Beer’s Law and the Inverse Square Law of Light can help us a lot in understanding how and why different kinds of rates are used in calculating how much light we add or subtract with the camera controls.

Yet, some is very simple. Every time we open up the aperture by one f/stop, we double the amount of light that would strike the film.

Chapter Two of Adams’ book notes:

ASA exposure proportions: 64 80 100 125 160 200 250 320 400 500
Each change in shutter speed increment = 1 stop.
So, to drop two stops (open, add light) you would go from 64 to 200.

Chapter Three of Adams’ book notes that:
Stops are logarithmic. Increases of one stop equal doubling the exposure.

Stops IncreasedExposure FactorEffect

• One 2 = (2^1)Doubled Exposure
  
• Two 4 = (2^2)Quadrupled Exposure
  
• Three8 = (2^3)Octopled Exposure
  

Understanding and accepting these ideas, how are we to know where to begin? Adams suggested that we begin with our film speed. The film speed we load into the camera is a good starting point because it is the least practical element to change on site. We know that there is a relationship between film speed and apertures. We accept that:

• The square root of the film speed leads us to the key f/stop. 
  
• The film speed has a number.
  
• Take the square root of that.
  
• Pick an aperture that is as close to that number as possible.
  
• Take your meter readings from that aperture.
  
• Make your editing based on the meter readings from the key stop.
  

Using a key stop based on film speed helps us because there are hundreds, if not thousands of acceptable film speed, aperture and shutter speed combinations. So, to simplify things, we begin our meter readings from the key stop, determined by the square root of our film speed. Our meter reading from the key stop will tell us what shutter speed to use if we want our subject to be rendered in middle gray (Zone V).

If we want that subject to appear lighter, we must ADD LIGHT. If we want that subject to appear darker, we must SUBTRACT LIGHT. We can ADD LIGHT or SUBTRACT LIGHT by:

• Making the aperture wider to ADD LIGHT
  
• Making the aperture narrower to SUBTRACT LIGHT
  
• Making the shutter stay open longer to ADD LIGHT
  
• Making the shutter close faster to SUBTRACT LIGHT
  

relative to the way the equipment would have worked if we had followed the recommendations for rendering the subject in Zone V middle gray.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

Daydreams, Desires and Equipment Limitations

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

Technology is inescapable in photography. No matter what we do, we are bound to it. In nature, photosensitivity is rare; it occurs all the time, particularly in plants, but it does not occur in ways that are easily perceptible to us as people. We definitely do not see nature being photosensitive in a way that will draw images for us at our command. Nature does not operate a camera. Cameras are a human creation.

Even if we eliminate the camera from our photographic process, we will still be bound to technology. Occasionally in your explorations of Photography, you will come across camera-less photographs. Even those photographs were bound in some way by technology. The paper that was used was built with a special and specific set of chemicals. It came into contact with other chemicals in a special and specific way. The result was an image, fleeting or permanent, that you can view.

We cannot escape technology in Photography.  

We can, however, use what we have better.

I am willing to bet that over 90% of our problems as photographers lie not with the equipment, but with us as operators. Maybe you are an advanced professional, and you do have situations where you need a certain specialized set of equipment to make those images that you sell commercially. Even then, I think, there is a good chance that a majority of the problems that had to be overcome in a photographer’s career had not to do with the equipment, but with our understanding of how we should use what we have.

The math is not all that glamorous. Measuring light is hard to write about and hard to talk about because it is so situational. To make matters worse, the world is a complicated place. Inside the frame of our composing, we still see sometimes hundreds of images and shapes that are too complex for us to really understand. Consider a picture of a a tree. Do we really know all there is to know about how lights, darks and midtones will show up on the negative before we snap that picture? Are there not hundreds of shapes and details in that overall image? Do not each and every one of the leaves on that tree reflect the natural sunlight in their own way, when seen from the camera’s point of view?

Understanding those details, in advance, and receiving the light with the equipment in the right way is a lot of what photography is about. In order to do this well, we need to know ourselves, know our equipment, understand its limitations, and also know and understand the situation that is before us. Particularly, it’s important that we understand how light flows through the place where we are taking the picture. And, we must understand how the light flows into, through and around our equipment and ourselves.

If you know that you cannot frame the image you want to capture because the lens won’t focus at the distance that would get you close enough to make that picture, then you have an equipment problem. If you know that your subject is so far away that the image does not fill the frame as you need it to, you have an equipment problem. If you can’t open up the aperture far enough, if you can’t get a shutter speed that is fast or slow enough, if you are in an environment that will destroy the camera, then you have equipment problems.  

Most of the time, we actually have equipment problems with the photographer, not with the camera.

Your camera needs to be in good working order for its design. If you have light leaks that are ruining your film, if your film advance jams, if you dropped the camera and broke a part, then you have equipment problems that need repair. Go to a camera shop, get a repairman to help you size up the situation, then make the decisions within your budget that either fix it, or let you carry on despite it. Broken cameras are a source of equipment problems.

Fancy cameras owned by someone else are a source of jealousy problems.  

We all have desires. And, yes, I will tell you that having good equipment is a blessing. It’s great, sometimes. And, yes, I will tell you that photography is easier when you have the money for it. If you can make some mistakes and use some resources without breaking the bank, having some money to spend on the photographs will really help you. But, I can tell you from experience that the great equipment that you daydream about will not necessarily automatically improve your pictures the moment it arrives in your hands.

All new pieces of equipment come with their own limitations and responsibilities, just like the equipment that you probably already have. I believe I learned from woodworking that all new tools come with at least five new responsibilities for every problem that they can fix. Cameras are tools; they are like that, too.

Eventually, you can get better equipment. Sooner or later, if you persevere, you can get some. When you do, enjoy it. But know that, even though photography is always intimately connected to the technology used by the photographer, the decisions we make about how to manage the light to create our photograph are more powerful and influential on the final image than the make or model of the camera itself.

You can do it. You can make better pictures. And, you probably don’t need that great and expensive equipment to do it. What you probably need to do, in those days when you are daydreaming about better equipment, is to make better use of what you already have.

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Link to the original post on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

Equipment Lessons Taught By Squirrels, Grizzly Bear and Deer

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

Nowadays, I have great stuff. Over the years I have been able to advance to the point where I believe that I can confidently say that I own a professional camera rig. Sometimes, I am self-conscious about how I think I must appear to other people who walk by as I am making a picture. But, those treasures only make my life easier. They do not, in and of themselves, make the image possible.

I spent over 20 years intermittently operating the most basic equipment. I did not have regular access to a darkroom. I could barely afford to process film. When my frames were exposed, I had to budget carefully to come up with the money to get that roll printed and developed. My progress was slow; my failures were common and plentiful.

I had so many failures that one day I sat down and ripped up stacks of my photographs. A couple of hundred prints were ripped in half, by me, and thrown in a cardboard box. They were all thrown away. At the time I was thinking that if I were to become a professional photographer, if I were to become a great artist, it would be imperative that my mistakes were hidden from everyone forever.

Well, it’s probably not a major loss that those old photographs are gone. The ones I destroyed were all a major disappointment. Each one, one by one, was its own minor disappointment. As a group, they were a big failure. All totaled, the whole box of ripped up prints probably had cost me a couple of hundred dollars. I felt the fear of the price tag of what I was doing as I ripped up those prints. But, I was determined to put that all behind me. In practice, it wasn’t destroying those photos, but another fifteen years of failure and maturity that eventually made for better photographs.  

In those prints I destroyed, each time I had failed to show the image that I was seeking to capture. Every time, I tried and failed. Even if the exposure was right, the composition was wrong. I particularly remember that I was wrong as a young teenager about my pictures of squirrels.

As a boy, I wanted to be a nature photographer. I wanted to have the sort of traveling photojournalist adventures that I am sure many people daydream about when they think of photography. I wanted to go to exotic places, do adventurous things; I wanted to be the guy who rappelled down that difficult cliff face; I wanted to be the photographer who took the picture of the people who would summit the mountain; I wanted the action shot of the grizzly bear; I wanted the play of the sunlight on a bird’s feathers in a picture suitable for John James Audubon. I wanted that adventure and that life. The closest I came on a daily basis were pictures of squirrels in the yard.

Squirrels are a not grizzly bears, but they can also require stalking. There I was, a young teenager, reading up on nature photography and stalking techniques. How did the professionals operate from their hide? How did they select the right path so that they made sure their scent blew downwind when the animal they stalked was upwind from them? I never really got to do any of this, but time after time, I would pick up my 35mm camera, use the one telephoto lens I had from my dad, and set out to take a picture of a squirrel in the yard.

The photos were terrible. I never got close enough. Even with the telephoto lens (200mm), I would still screw up. How and why would this happen?

It was usually because of the decisions I made as a photographer.

Later on, years later, decades later, I crouched in the forest to take a picture of a flower growing in the wild. A deer walked by. It was not the first deer I had ever seen, maybe it was the hundredth. My camera was not ready. My rig was set up for close-ups of the flower I was going to photograph. If I was to change my equipment, surely the rustling and zipping and clicking would be enough to startle that young deer.

It was a juvenile. Growing into an adult, that young deer still had traces of its spots. It was picking its way through the forest floor. Judging by its path and the weather, I think it was thirsty. There was a creek nearby. This creek fed a beautiful waterfall here in the forests of Tennessee. I stayed there, crouched near my camera on a tripod, and did not try to take a picture of the deer. I knew I would not be able to get ready. I knew I did not have time to measure the light or frame a good composition or change the configuration of my equipment. I could see that deer slowly walking by. Even for an animal that requires stealth to survive, it made noise as it walked along the dried leaves of the hardwood forest’s floor. The deer was about 15 meters away. I watched it walk on past me, and I enjoyed it. That was a great chance to be a nature photographer. I am glad that I had learned not to be too ambitious; my rustling through the camera bag would have been useless; I would have only spoiled the moment; and, I would not have gotten the picture in time. Instead though, I crouched there in my street clothes, enjoying an afternoon in the woods, and I watched a deer walk by as I set out to photograph a flower in the woods.

Not bad for a kid born in the city of New Orleans. As a child, I thought I would be lucky to be in a place where there are mountains and trees and animals. I was right about that.

The camera I was using was rigged up for photographs of flowers. There’s no need to rush down to the store and buy equipment for the deer-stalking photo. Even if you can afford it, there’s no guarantee that the opportunity will present itself in the right way at the right time for you to take that great picture. Instead, you have to make the decisions that you make, and take the pictures you take, with what you have at the time.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

Bring the Tripod to the Camera

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

Anyone who’s used one for a few moments should be familiar with their basic setup and use. Meanwhile, it becomes obvious after a few years that the real, proficient use of tripods in the field and in the studio is more than just adjusting the working height or tightening the pan/tilt knob.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways people mess up with using the tripod is to begin by placing it incorrectly. What can happen is that the photographer gets on the scene, looks around, begins to visualize some photos; then, just being in the general area, he sets up the tripod. Then, he puts the camera on the tripod, wherever it was setup, without thinking much about where the camera now is.

Tripod use goes much more smoothly when we think about using the tripod to put the camera where it needs to be. The tripod exists to steadily support the camera in a specific location in three dimensional space, on the scene of the camera’s view of the picture’s composition. One way to take this approach is to begin visualizing some shots, with the camera or viewing card, and then noting where in space the camera needs to be. Usually, I find myself saying to myself, Right here, while pointing to the ground. This is a note to me where the central position of the camera will be. Then, I look forward and level from where I am, not thinking much about viewing angle. Instead, in that moment, I try to visualize what the world will look like from behind the camera, at the height where I want the camera to be placed, as I look toward the subject. Using those two mental notes, location on the ground, and appearance of the world before the camera, I can easily take a break for a moment from composing. Then, it’s time to break out the tripod and place it on the scene so that the camera will be suspended in space right where I need it to be.

This method may sound and seem obvious, but let’s compare it to the trap that many of us can fall into. We get on the scene. We look around. We get excited about what we see that we can photograph. We set up “Here”, in the general area of the subject, instead of exactly where we want the camera to be supported in three dimensional space. Then, on composing and taking the picture, we wonder why our handheld shots seem so much better.

With a little practice at evaluation, with some forethought about where we are going to place the tripod relative to the subject, we can refine our tripod positioning and placement so that it should not be obvious to final viewers, or to ourselves later, which shots were handheld and which shots were tripod-based.

Effective tripod use, like lens choice, goes back to visualization. On rocky ground, like when photographing within rocky streambeds, and other places where tripod leg setup might be a hassle, I often find myself going back to the viewing card for visualization support. Another method I use is to select the lens I think would be approximately appropriate. Then, after “casing” the area with the lens, pick where in space I want the camera to be. Then, regardless of the terrain underfoot, I try to use the tripod to place the camera exactly where I want it.

It’s a different outlook than approaching the matter as “Set up the tripod.” It’s more like, “Bring the tripod to the camera.” Setup the tripod legs, the column, the attachment plate so that the camera sits in space where you want the camera to be. If instead, you bring the camera to the tripod setup point, you will be confined to whatever compositional decisions the tripod setup made for you. As simple as it sounds, I believe that the difference in these two approaches is one of the differences between ineffective and effective tripod use.

Decide where you want the camera to be. Bring the tripod to the camera. Suspend the camera in space, exactly where you want the camera to be, using a stable tripod setup.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

What Lens Should I Get?

What the Lens Does, How That's Described, and Applying Those Descriptions to a Beginner's Lens Purchase

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

What lens should I get,” is one of the most frequently asked beginner questions. Usually, when asking, the photographer is either so new they don’t own a lens yet, or only has one or two. No matter, we were all beginners once.

The realities of lens choice are closely tied to frequently featured subjects and compositions. Usually lens choice, in terms of broad categories, seems to be only critical at the outset of the photographer’s career. After a while, once that wide angle, normal and telephoto have been purchased, this question usually begins to go away. The reason why is because the photographer will begin to see, in terms of viewing angle, what lens he will prefer to select.

When experienced photographers think about lens choice, viewing angle is an important factor. How much of the world will be included in the frame? This is what drives the lens choice. This is why, for beginners, the kit lens, something with a little wide angle reach (slightly below normal) to short telephoto (slightly narrower than normal) is a good first lens choice. In using the kit lens, the photographer will begin to see in which direction his compositions naturally incline. With the kit zoom, and a little experience, the photographer will naturally notice, “I am using 30mm wide angle all the time, yet it’s not wide enough for me,” etc. Short wide to short telephoto zoom kit lenses are therefore a good first choice.

In the event that a kit zoom is not available, the 50mm lens for 35mm SLR users is an obvious first choice. The angle of view on the 50mm lens in 35mm format is very close to natural vision. Again, with a little experience, the photographer will notice if the framing of the composition will appear wide or narrow enough relative to the first lens used. In this way, many of us have learned to intuit what lens we wish to use based on viewing angle.

“Macro”, “bokeh”, “magnification”, are all lens-related terms that beginners seem to struggle with. Macro lenses are built internally, with glass lens elements organized so that a very good arrangement of close-ups can be achieved. To do this, the lens designs usually emphasize magnification, with a shallow depth of field. “Bokeh”, a Japanese term for “blur,” is little more than the presence of a blurry area before and after the depth of field.

Any lens can give a “good bokeh.” Placing the blur in a field of view is more of a matter of depth-of-field management in camera operation. If a macro lens is selected, expect the depth of field to be narrow. Meanwhile, any lens can provide “bokeh,” based on choices of focusing distance and aperture; it’s basic depth-of-field management more than it is about lens construction.

“Magnification,” “telephoto” and “zoom” seem to be frequently confused. Many times, I think beginners say that they want telephoto or zoom when what they actually desire is an increase in magnification. While the narrower field of view in telephoto lenses does coincide with some magnification, it pays to know that macro lenses, not telephoto lenses, are designed to optimize magnification. Zoom and telephotos will have some; yet “true” macro has often been regarded as a magnification ratio of 1:1. What that means is one unit before the camera is transposed to the negative as that one unit. A magnification ratio of 1:4, for example, would mean that on the negative, the image is one fourth the size it would appear in reality.

When we want good magnification for close-ups, like detailed photos of plants and insects and very small objects, the photographer will usually strive towards lens choices that lean more toward an increase in magnification than a narrowing of the field of view.

To understand the converse of this, and to place magnification and narrowing into an easier to grasp, think of a sports photographer taking a picture of a football player. The head, shoulders and upper body of a football player on the field are all much larger than the recording surface of the negative. If we were to imagine that we could photograph that football player at a 1:1 magnification from the sidelines, our little 35mm negative or 28mm DSLR sensor would probably get a nice view of the beads of sweat on his face, or maybe his eye will fill the entire frame. We wouldn’t want a 1:1 magnification ratio when photographing an athlete from the sidelines. What we would want, instead, is a narrow field of view, with some modest magnification, to fill the frame with the image.

In understanding the difference between macro and telephoto, it helps to understand which of the two features, magnification and narrow field of view, leads the way. In macro lenses, magnification leads, and a narrowing of the field of view follows as a matter of course. In telephoto lenses, narrowing the field of view leads, and some magnification is designed into the lens as part of making that lens design successful.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

View Camera Bellows and Macro Bellows

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

Bellows: they’re not just for accordions anymore. Over the years, some people seem to have bemoaned the bellows as devices which suck up light, decreasing the maximum usable f/stop, and burdening the photographer with a bulky and unwieldy camera kit that will never be useful. Those of us who love bellows probably couldn’t disregard those nay-sayer detractions more. We’re too busy enjoying our macro bellows.

For those who haven’t used them before, let me dispel one assumption I made about bellows that was incorrect. The macro bellows on the medium or small format camera kits are not the same as view camera bellows. Even for those macro bellows kits where a tilt or shift function is available, an important part of the magic of view cameras and their bellows is, in fact, built into the lens design view cameras use. It is possible to purchase a medium format bellows kit that will turn a small or medium format camera into a miniaturized view camera. However, in order to get such a rig to work, the type of lens that will have to be used would be a view camera lens.

The structure and optical groupings of view camera lenses is simply, fundamentally different from the average bayonetted SLR lens. For example. when seen from the side, view camera lenses typically have an hourglass shape; perpendicular to their central viewing axis, the lenses are symmetrical; they bend light coming out of the rear of the lens in a way that mimics how it was bent coming in; as a trend. Bayonetted SLR lenses are asymmetrical configurations of lens elements, grouped, designed and constructed in a way that will bring the desired field of view, magnification and intensity to the recording surface in a way that’s efficient, economical, and frequently, adjustable.

One can find a way to mount a view camera lens to a medium format camera through attachments; but, cost fact remains; the view camera lens will frequently out-price the SLR lens by ten times the SLR’s price. Expect to pay between $1500 and $2500 for a view camera lens that offers a viewing angle comparable to a bayonetted SLR’s lens of a tenth of the price. If it weren’t for the additional cost of manufacturing and using view camera lenses, we would probably all find a way to bolt them onto our cameras.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

Growing the Equipment Collection Based on a Chosen Process

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

During all these years of failure, I spent a great deal of time working with nothing. Knowing what I know now, if you have only a simple camera and a lens, and very little money to spend, here’s what I would consider advising for growing your equipment collection on the cheap:
Plan those big advances in equipment. The tools are going to cost you. Pick carefully. There’s enough of a selection out there on the market today to let you take anything from an action shot of a paramecium through a microscope to the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn while perched on a mountaintop on another continent.  

Search for hidden costs in those big equipment purchases. One of the reasons I do not own a view camera, although I would very much like to own and use one, is that I cannot afford the space and supporting materials to own and operate an enlarger of that size. 

My rig is set up for medium format. I keep a simple set of tight equipment that works well in my collection. I can store it easily. I can set it up and operate it at will for a reasonable cost. I cannot afford a 4X5 enlarger the size of a refrigerator in my transient bachelor lifestyle.
Think ahead, if you had this equipment that you desire to use, what would it take to get it up and running and use it to death on a daily basis?

If you are not willing to use it to death on a daily basis, you may not need it.

If you look at your photos, and you see that yours are not cutting it because the photographers you admire have those strong blacks and strong whites and delicate grays in just the right places in their photos, and yours do not, maybe it is because your exposure is habitually wrong. It could be the printing process you are using; it could be your exposure decisions during the camera operation; it could be the way you are developing the negatives.

Get a good book written by the masters about calculating exposure. If you cannot afford to buy one, go to the public library. Even if you can afford to buy one, go to the public library anyway. There will be a treasure trove of books on photography there. You can peruse them at your leisure without having to spend anything. A typical shelf of photography books in a library usually represents a cost of hundreds of dollars invested by the community. The intensity and organization of the content in library books are usually superior to the cosmetic overviews and commercial ads found on the internet.  

Before you go out to get that next lens or camera body, consider growing your equipment collection along the path of the process of photography, if you have not done so already. Can you develop your own negatives with what you have? Can you make a print? If not, put a stop to that. The other stages of processing, beyond the camera, each, have almost as much influence and control over the appearance of the print as the camera operation does.

If you only have a camera and a lens, consider this outline of how to expand your equipment collection:

For developing the negatives, at a minimum you would need: a developing tank that fits one or two reels; a graduated cylinder (I prefer two) for measuring liquid to the right proportions; a changing bag for conveniently loading the film into the reels, some way to light proof a room (I find that dark blankets do well); some chemicals for three-bath development (developer and fixer are required, you can add a stop bath or use plain water); some way to hang your negatives to air dry.

I also like to use a thermometer and some opaque bottles to store the chemicals in. I use one set of buckets for mixing bulk chemicals. I use small bottles that hold one liter for storing smaller, easy to use amounts; the small bottles make it easy to pour the right amount into the developing tank. For pouring back out, I catch the outgoing liquids in one of two graduated cylinders. The other cylinder is already loaded with the chemicals for the next stage going into the developing tank.  

For printing, the minimum amount of equipment would go into supporting a contact printing process. This may not be attractive to the beginner, but I have found that in my own darkroom, it is the contact print that is the most informative to me. A bare minimum equipment list would be: a common picture frame (for holding print paper and the negative together in a flat, organized way); some method of turning on a light on and off quickly and decisively (a wristwatch and a light switch might work, it depends on the speed of the paper); four containers (trays) for holding the developing chemicals; a source of water; some way to hang up the prints to air dry.  

For convenience, I would recommend a paper safe or some other method for storing the print paper in a light-tight box. The print paper will come packaged in an opaque plastic bag inside the manufacturer’s box, but a separate light tight storage is a good idea; that way, if you do have an accident and expose the bulk paper to light, you may have had the chance to compartmentalize your collection of print paper. With some paper in the box, and a small amount of paper in the paper safe, you would only risk a portion of your supplies to your own bumbling.

Let me caution you: the minimum, for the printing stage, will be frustrating to use. For darkroom work, you will really need an enlarger, a safelight and a timer. Add that, and you will really get rolling! But, as you can see, even if you have “nothing to work with,” it’s not the expensive items, but, rather, frequently used common or inexpensive items that can get the process rolling all the way through for you.

Research the process before you start building your improvised darkroom. The process and equipment I have outlined above, for printing, is thin; but, it will work to make very small prints you can learn from.

As you acquire equipment, save the technical data sheets and manuals that come with them. Yes, after a few moments of review, you will probably figure out how to use that camera. Yet, sooner or later, you can benefit from a review. Somewhere in those data sheets, somewhere within that operator’s manual is that one sentence, that one word, that you will need to improve your procedures. They can help you uncover mistakes and improve your photographs long after you learn the basic functions of your camera and its supporting equipment.
For some unknown reason, people have a tendency to throw away the data sheet that comes with photographic print paper. Maybe it is because when they open the box, they are in the dark. We are usually focused on protecting the print paper from light at that point; maybe sometimes thinking about an upcoming print instead. Save that print paper data sheet, too. It can help you later.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page for February on AgXphoto.info is here.

Notebooks: The Best Equipment Investment

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

Write down every camera setting, every time and temperature and mixture of negative processing, every enlarger setting and basic chemistry information about your printing. Soon, you will discover which of the settings are most influential for you; probably times and apertures.  

Write down anything you can think of that might have influenced you to take a picture in that frame. This also goes for those who like the newer, digital processes. In fact, recording decisions made with the lengthy and detailed lists of computer functions digital photographers use might even be more important. User menus and software dialog boxes make switching electricity on and off, make deciding to do something so easy, that a computer-based photographer may not even realize how many, or what kind, of decisions he is making. All decisions about a given frame affect the outcome of an image one way or another. Our digital photographer brothers, too, could probably benefit from making some exposure notes in a notebook.

The notebook is the most important because when we get to the end of the process, when we are looking at those disappointing images, we often don’t accurately remember what we did to make them. I can usually remember about what I did; yet, I cannot accurately remember each and all of those influential camera settings used on just one roll of film. The notebook helps me. Recording what you did, immediately after you did it, will help to refresh your memory when it is time to edit those photographs.

I find that recording what I did in the darkroom to be the most helpful. Times and apertures and filter settings, all recorded, can help me to reproduce an image later with less testing and materials consumed. Camera setting information helps me to relate field decisions to the negative image. On the whole, the notebook is one of the most important items you can have.
An ability to measure the light is another. If your camera does not have a light meter, get one. If it does, understand everything you can about it. A spot meter works well; fortunately spot meter functions are built into many cameras produced after 1990. I now use a hand-held spot meter. I have cameras that have no light meter in them; I have been able to use one effectively because I had this spot meter on the scene. Using a hand-held spot meter also helped me to understand how my camera’s on-board TtL worked. They are a good investment.

I believe in spot meters so much that I would say that a good 1 degree-spot light meter is probably worth more than a second camera, no matter what model your first camera is. Something to think about. Regardless of which metering system you use, your exposure calculations can really benefit from understanding how the light is being reflected at the scene of composition. Not understanding exposure decisions, not really understanding exposure decisions, is bad news for someone who wants to make an image through a process that is going to involve so many subsequent decisions and steps.  

You can trip the shutter while not knowing if you want; but there will be many decisions made about that image later, if you choose to use it. Just to carry it through to positive printing will involve many decisions. Consider knowing and understanding how that light flows into your camera. It can benefit you.

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Link to the original article on AgXphoto.info is here.

Link to the Bibliography page on AgXphoto.info is here.

Plain Jane Alpha Hydroquinone Developer Recipe

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

Plain Jane Alpha Hydroquinone Developer

Water (Hot, 110F to 125F) 750 mL
Sodium Sulfite 60g
Hydroquinone 24g
Sodium Carbonate 80g
Cold water to make 1L
Dilute 1:4 at stock solution to water. Develop print paper normally.
This Plain Jane recipe above is little more than a modification of an Agfa 120 developer recipe. The difference being that Sodium Carbonate has been substituted for Potassium Carbonate. I based the substitution on available materials and a note in an Ansel Adams book that said he had used such a substitution with success in another developer formula.
I enjoyed mixing it up and using it. I hope you do, too. I was pleasantly surprised.
The developer yielded a full range of grays complimented by those full, rich, cold blacks that puts the black back in black and white photography.

Plain Jane Stop Bath

13cc glacial acetic acid
35cc water
water to make 1L to reduce the 28% acetic acid to a usable percentage per liter.
The proportions determined to scale this recipe up into 3L worth of solution were:
39cc glacial acetic acid (the amount of acid it would take to reduce to 28%, for dilution to a working solution, as above, but tripled to yield three liters of working solution).
2961cc water (water to make 3L)

Plain Jane Hypo
800mL hot water
240g Sodium Thiosulfate
200m water to make 1L

Link to the original article is here.
Link to the Bibliography page for February is here.

Cyanotyping: Lessons Learned from a Few Print Runs

By John O’Keefe-Odom
AgXphoto.info

When brushing on the cyanotype solution, one of the things that ended up working after a few tries was to change the approach to how the wash was applied. In watercolor painting, the wash will have to be applied this a bead that’s laid down slowly and smoothly. In that type of painting, one wants to ride the bead of paint as far as you can, smoothly; without allowing there to be any breaks or gaps or changes in the way the paint is applied.

When applying cyanotype solution, the goal is to get a good amount of the solution worked into the paper fibers, near the surface of the page. The type of brushing motion that works well with this is more of a scrubbing action. If you think about it as though you are scrubbing the solution into the paper quickly and smoothly, that works well. It’s faster, easier than pulling a bead of wash; if you are used to watercoloring, it may seem sloppy, but it is what I found works best.

One drop of cyanotype soltuion will change color as it dries. Try to be sure to check on your cleanup about 15 to 30 minutes after you think you are done. That clear drop of water might very well oxidize out to Prussian Blue. On many surfaces, it may just wipe clean with a damp cloth; particularly non-porous tiles. If the residue is riding on the top of the surface, it is easier to clean; in wood or other porous surfaces, the residue may settle in easily in a way that is hard to clean.

To print the cyanotype, I used a simple picture frame. Contact printing frames are recommended; the chief advantage of using those is that spring-pressure is used to hold the paper mostly in place. Using that, one can lift up a corner and check on the progress of the printing. Pressure and tension keep the paper in place; it helps to maintain registration, alignment, with the negative.

My sheet film ortho negative was smaller than my print frame and my sheet of cyanotype paper. To economize, I chose 4X5 ortho sheet film. This was a great choice for me, because it is much cheaper than an 8X10 sheet; there were quite a few failures at first. Idea was, to use the 4X5s until I got my technique down, and then see about progressing from there.

Since the 4X5 sheet film was smaller, I fixed it on the inside face of the glass by using clear mylar corner mounts. These are the same types of mounts that I use to mount prints to matboard. They do leave a diagonal line in the corners which is visible in the final print; but, it’s also a solution which will get you there. With the picture frame that I used, there wasn’t any spring-tension like in a contact printing frame; the corner mounts were an easy way to put the negative in, hold it in place, and keep things aligned. I had to plan out the place to put the negative on the glass in advance; but, really, that is just a few moments of measuring.

The corner mounts worked out really well. In some of the trials, all sorts of things happened before I was able to get things right. I recommend this method because it is removable and easily reusable. The corner mounts can be peeled right off of the glass, if you choose to use the glass for somethign else later. Also, they do not permanently lock the sheet film negatives into position. One time, during one of my failures, I actually began to get some blue stain on the sheet film negative. This was caused by putting it into contact with paper that was still damp; the sensitized paper was still wet because I had coated it thickly with the watery cyanotype solution; also, I was pushing the minimum amount of time in letting things dry.

I found that it was not really necessary to be too uptight with exposure to light after the cyanotype paper was dry. It was easy to go ahead and load the paper, pre-cut to fit the frame, into the frame, behind the negative and simply carry it outside to print. Regular black and white print paper would be very sensitive, and immediately responsive to light; cyanotype paper takes its time. Anything less than 30 seconds, in the exposure conditions I used, didn’t have much impact. The exposure times are measured in minutes; mine required direct exposure to the sun in the frame.

When I read the descriptions other people wrote about cyanotyping, I imagined that when the cyanotype will print-out, that one will see a blue print emerging. This wasn’t the case for me. The cyano solution, even when dry, looked a yellow-greenish color; occasionally, as it was printing, it was possible to notice some darker spots along the way. Sometimes, the color changes seemed almost like a blossoming of the paper in a darker color. The faded look, described so often, is noticeable. I noticed it only in areas where the image was printing to maximum density. I would consider seeing it as a sign that the cyano solution had reached its peak.

What does the cyanotype look like as it is printing? When you peel back the paper from the negative to check on it during printing, the marginal, total clue areas will have a yellowish-green look to them. Maybe there will seem to be a grayish outline of the figure in there. Underneath the negative itself, parts of the image blocked by the negative will be yellowish.

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Easel and Wallpaper Tray Techniques for Enlarging to Photomurals

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

Enlarging photographs to mural size can be rewarding. With a little preparation and planning, poster size black and white photos can be made with an average set of darkroom equipment, plus a few wallpaper trays.

In order to get my small enlarger to print horizontally, I had to unbolt it from the baseboard and clamp it in a vise-horse (sawhorse with a wide vise for a top surface). This held the enlarger so that the lens pointed horizontally towards a big foamcore target-board that I had set up across the room. Any flat vertical surface big enough to attach the paper to will do.

The general pattern of the procedure is the same for other forms of black and white printing. The primary differences include: the enlarger is aimed horizontally, to have clearance to make the projection; the large sheet of print paper is developed in solutions held in wallpaper trays instead of ordinary developing trays; some advance preparation and rehearsal helps make this unusual task go smoothly because an unusual amount of darkroom time will involve total darkness instead of safelight.

Enlarger focus and exposure and test stripping will all have to be done before you start wrangling the big sheet of paper.

To hold the enlargements to the easel, I used blue tape.  My procedure was to tape off an area on the target-board easel (I had to print horizontally in an improvised fashion), to minimize the amount of time or hand motions required to interact with the print paper.  

I had some strips of tape stuck to my pants.  I say tape on my pants because in the total darkness, holding the roll of paper, I could not hold the roll correctly against the target board and still move my hands around enough to use the roll of masking tape in the dark.  So, I got into the habit of tearing strips off and sticking them to things where they would be easy to remove.  One of those surfaces was my pants.  Stage some tape strips.  

I rehearsed with a roll of ordinary paper cut to size before I tried the print paper.  With my improvised rig, I almost had to.  It helped me figure out the tape strip staging, and what the masking tape on the target board would feel like.  

I used masking tape to mark off an area on the easel/target board; I could feel the paper tape; that touch contrasted with the smoothness of my target board.  Later, I also used tape to hold the print in place onto that board.  So, there was a lot of tape involved; but, I had to do this completely in the dark, so I had to do it all by feel.  

I cut the photo paper to a larger size than I needed for the final print. This gave me room to move.  I had about two inch margins at either end.  This was a lot, but it helped for the first few.  

I would begin the printing itself with the print paper cut to size and in some opaque bags.  I would carry it over to the easel.  

I would take the roll out of the bags.  I would hold the roll (emulsion inside the curl, as natural for the paper) up to the easel.  I would back off my grip on the roll about an inch or two.  This meant the print paper was in a roll, and there was a flap.  The back of the paper to the easel; I would tape it down.  First, I would only tape the corners, in case I was misaligned.  

Then, I would unroll the paper down the target board.  I would tape down the bottom corners.  Unroll slowly and smoothly.  It will be at the ends of the unrolling that the curl will try to interfere most with your picture.  

With the corners taped down, I would feel along the edges of the print paper with my fingertips.  My target area had been taped off into a rectangle.  Also, I had taped off marks where I thought the corners of the paper would fall.  In total darkness, I would use touch to inspect the paper.  

If it was off, adjust the position by the worst corner.  It's this aligning and adjusting in the dark with improvised equipment that meant I had to allow for some overlap at the ends.  Gives you margin of error, literally.  

Well, corners down in place, I would use tape strips off of the legs of my pants to hold down the print paper.  

With the paper secured, you can then back off an make your exposure.  Then, get the paper; I found it would help to remove the tape edge, then corners, then roll to the other end, then far edge, then corners.  Idea there is to keep one end secure as you get the exposed, but undeveloped print rolled back up to move to a light-tight container or to development tray.  

Developing in wallpaper trays was easy and fun. It was interesting to see the solutions run down the exposed paper and begin to reveal the image inside. The only difference about the wallpaper trays as trays themselves was their size and shape. The largest trays I could get had a 32” inner clearance. I thought this would be enough for a 30” print, but discovered during processing that it helped to have about two inches of clearance on both sides (prints were 30” on the long side).

With a few liters of photosolutions in there, the wallpaper trays worked great. You just roll them in and roll them out and roll them back in. I even learned to change it up so that both ends would get their turn at the center of the roll. It was fun and easy. Just keep the print slathered in solution, and it'll do its stuff.

I know my method doesn't sound fancy, but it worked well.  I even showed my little sister how to make a print while I was using this technique.  

Proceed with confidence!  J.

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What Lens Should I Get?

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info   View this article at AgXphoto.info

“What lens should I get,” is one of the most frequently asked beginner questions. Usually, when asking, the photographer is either so new they don’t own a lens yet, or only has one or two. No matter, we were all beginners once.

The realities of lens choice are closely tied to frequently featured subjects and compositions. Usually lens choice, in terms of broad categories, seems to be only critical at the outset of the photographer’s career. After a while, once that wide angle, normal and telephoto have been purchased, this question usually begins to go away. The reason why is because the photographer will begin to see, in terms of viewing angle, what lens he will prefer to select.

When experienced photographers think about lens choice, viewing angle is an important factor. How much of the world will be included in the frame? This is what drives the lens choice. This is why, for beginners, the kit lens, something with a little wide angle reach (slightly below normal) to short telephoto (slightly narrower than normal) is a good first lens choice. In using the kit lens, the photographer will begin to see in which direction his compositions naturally incline. With the kit zoom, and a little experience, the photographer will naturally notice, “I am using 30mm wide angle all the time, yet it’s not wide enough for me,” etc. Short wide to short telephoto zoom kit lenses are therefore a good first choice.

In the event that a kit zoom is not available, the 50mm lens for 35mm SLR users is an obvious first choice. The angle of view on the 50mm lens in 35mm format is very close to natural vision. Again, with a little experience, the photographer will notice if the framing of the composition will appear wide or narrow enough relative to the first lens used. In this way, many of us have learned to intuit what lens we wish to use based on viewing angle.

“Macro”, “bokeh”, “magnification”, are all lens-related terms that beginners seem to struggle with. Macro lenses are built internally, with glass lens elements organized so that a very good arrangement of close-ups can be achieved. To do this, the lens designs usually emphasize magnification, with a shallow depth of field. “Bokeh”, a Japanese term for “blur,” is little more than the presence of a blurry area before and after the depth of field.

Any lens can give a “good bokeh.” Placing the blur in a field of view is more of a matter of depth-of-field management in camera operation. If a macro lens is selected, expect the depth of field to be narrow. Meanwhile, any lens can provide “bokeh,” based on choices of focusing distance and aperture; it’s basic depth-of-field management more than it is about lens construction.

“Magnification,” “telephoto” and “zoom” seem to be frequently confused. Many times, I think beginners say that they want telephoto or zoom when what they actually desire is an increase in magnification. While the narrower field of view in telephoto lenses does coincide with some magnification, it pays to know that macro lenses, not telephoto lenses, are designed to optimize magnification. Zoom and telephotos will have some; yet “true” macro has often been regarded as a magnification ratio of 1:1. What that means is one unit before the camera is transposed to the negative as that one unit. A magnification ratio of 1:4, for example, would mean that on the negative, the image is one fourth the size it would appear in reality.

When we want good magnification for close-ups, like detailed photos of plants and insects and very small objects, the photographer will usually strive towards lens choices that lean more toward an increase in magnification than a narrowing of the field of view.

To understand the converse of this, and to place magnification and narrowing into an easier to grasp, think of a sports photographer taking a picture of a football player. The head, shoulders and upper body of a football player on the field are all much larger than the recording surface of the negative. If we were to imagine that we could photograph that football player at a 1:1 magnification from the sidelines, our little 35mm negative or 28mm DSLR sensor would probably get a nice view of the beads of sweat on his face, or maybe his eye will fill the entire frame. We wouldn’t want a 1:1 magnification ratio when photographing an athlete from the sidelines. What we would want, instead, is a narrow field of view, with some modest magnification, to fill the frame with the image.

In understanding the difference between macro and telephoto, it helps to understand which of the two features, magnification and narrow field of view, leads the way. In macro lenses, magnification leads, and a narrowing of the field of view follows as a matter of course. In telephoto lenses, narrowing the field of view leads, and some magnification is designed into the lens as part of making that lens design successful.