jeudi 23 décembre 2004

Developing Claims... Gains or Pains? Photo manufacturer's claims will always be positive... otherwise there would be no reason for them to produce different chemistries for us to dip our fingers and thermometers into. There again, individuals (and who are they to know you may ask) offer differing pieces of advice based on their own assessments. Recommendation comes from all quarters including manufacturer's instruction leaflets (some of which I've written), reviews in various photo magazines and books (some of which I've...) and now the internet (some of which...) But shouldn't you take it all with a pinch of sodium chloride? Probably we should take some of it with a pinch of salt because much of the quality we see in our prints depends on our own methodology. When all those personal "photographic" variables, which I mention from time to time, creep into the equation... then much of that wonderful theory goes out of the window. Practice makes perfect... but most of us are fallible. A few years ago I saw close-up (and as an editor of a photo magazine handled close-up) the works of three photographers whose names are familiar to many... Gordon Hutchings and the late Barry Thornton and Ron Spillman. All have written about, used, and made various developers that they swear by... and not unreasonably so. I've seen examples of work by them which are of higher quality than I've been able to produce much of the time using conventional developers such as Agfa Rodinal and Kodak D-76. Gordon Hutchings extols the virtues of his PMK Pyro developer and has wonderful prints to prove it. Barry Thornton refined several of his own developers from DiXactol to DeltaMax LUX from which he produced equally beautiful negatives to print from... judging by his prints. And my late chum and regular chin-wagger from some years ago, Ron Spillman, modified Stocklers 2-bath to market a fine alternative and forgiving developer... so that the second bath didn't crystallise out. What puzzles me is that I tried them all and, whilst seeing an improvement in my own film negative quality still found it difficult to equal many of theirs. I know Ron was getting on in years and had much more practical experience than I but he wasn't that fanatical about theory... just practical about it! Now it's easy to say that they were using roll-film and 5 x 4 inch or larger cameras much of the time whilst I was enjoying a photographic revival with old Leica IIIf, Leica M3 and Nikon F2 bodies with assorted standard lenses screwed or bayonetted into them... but there was more to it than that because "metal, manual, mechanical and meterless" cameras, however quirky in this day and age, are good photo-taking instruments... and I could without doubt make a reasonable print. Those practitioners pushed, pulled and tweaked their processing refinements (I'm not talking about film speed here) to the "nth" degree in a practical, sometimes scientific, way that most of us wouldn't even care to think about. They are, or two of them were, in control, always... and I thus venture to say that many of us "approximate" our way through the whole process... which is why it doesn't always reach perfection and frequently goes haywire! Even the accepted standard developer Kodak D-76 has been tweaked by various darkroom users... D-76 has been split into two to make "divided" D-76 and also cloned into C-76 with something called "Crone-C" additive. What is important is that we follow instructions to the letter to begin with. Afterwards is the time for tweaking, if and where necessary, not initially. I often used to be asked what length of processing time I would recommend for what to all intents and purposes were popular film types in equally popular developers. I wondered, for a moment, why such basic information had to be asked, before explaining that my cameras and meters were probably not giving exposures like theirs, nor were my processing techniques exactly the same... so how could my recommended times be of any real value? And besides, why should I let myself be cursed afterwards in another telephone conversation because of the caller's incorrectly processed films! But I'm as guilty as the rest. The strange thing is that I like to try new developers and films. I feel safe in the knowledge I have about how a negative looks in the enlarger... but I still hanker after the so called "quality increase" that something else promises. In truth I have had success with Gordon Hutching's PMK Pyro and also failures. The same with Stocklers' famous 2-bath, and for that matter with Agfa Rodinal and Kodak D-76. But there is reason to experiment with new brews. If you don't try them yourself you'll never find out for yourself... and my recommendations are largely meaningless anyway! But, having said that, today's main image was made on one of my favourite mechanical cameras... a Leica M4/P with a 90mm f/2 Summicron using Agfapan 100 Pro developed in Rodinal diluted 1+50... the negative being printed intentionally hard on Agfa Record Rapid (the old version) processed in Neutol WA. I don't know who the mysterious woman was... but I saw and snapped her within the Avebury Stone Circle. The 250% close-up detail of her eye shows the fine detail resolved by a Leica M, 90mm Summicron at near minimum focusing distance and Agfa film and developer... a combination of careful focusing and careful processing which works when you do it right... here I can claim gain without pain! 9:42:58 PM    comment []