stephen_longmire

I wonder if anyone knows how to reach the Long Island, NY company

that I gather still makes the Hoffman Metal Master 8x10 film holder?

I'd also be interested to hear from anyone experienced in its use. I

assume these are more rigid than ordinary wood or plastic holders.

I use the HC Combi Plan tank for 4x5, and although our film and

developer combination is not the same, I don't see why the logic

wouldn't be. When I asked a Kodak technician the same question

several years ago, he assured me the small tank processing times I

was used to from roll film processing would still apply, and my

experience bears him out. Tray developing times assume constant or

nearly constant agitation, and tank times tend to assume agitation on

the minute. As long as you retain the agitation strategy you use with

your own small tank processing, you should be fine. For me that's 5

seconds every 30 seconds. The design of the tank may affect how you

agitate, but I find 5 quick inversions works well with TMAX 100 in

D76 1:1. Retaining the same developing times regardless of format is

a real convenience in the darkroom, I find. Hope that helps.

What type of camera are you using? Ron Wisner makes a compelling

argument in an article on his website for placing the Fresnel, ridges

towards the inside of the camera, against the smooth side of the

ground glass, for optimum optical performance. But the fact remains

that many older cameras, including those using the fairly standard

Graflok back, are designed to focus properly with the Fresnel on the

inside of the camera, ridges towards the etched side of the ground

glass. You don't want to tamper with this arrangement, unless you use

some sort of shim of the right thickness to take the place of the

Fresnel, otherwise you won't be focusing on the same plane as your

film. A quick way to figure which way things work on your camera is

to measure from the inside of the camera back to the ground glass,

then put in a film holder, pull the dark slide (no film necessary!)

and take the same measurement again. Ideally, the distances should be

the same. If inverting the order of the Fresnel and ground glass

makes it work, you have your answer. In any event, the ridged side of

the Fresnel always faces the ground glass, and obviously the etched

side of the ground glass faces the inside (front) of the camera.

Provia too, bless them!

Oops, a bad sign post. That's graflex.org!

A follow-up, in case others pass this way...

 

<p>

 

Thanks to Tom for the tip on Bill Maxwell, a kind and smart man who

briefly had me ready to replace all the focusing screens on all my

cameras with his clearly brilliant designs. Fortunately I'm not that

flush. To Bill, the whole idea of Fresnels is, shall we say, quaint.

 

<p>

 

Then I made the call anyone with any Graflex related problem should

make first, to Fred Lustig, the mechanical engineer in Reno who

bought out the Graflex parts Midwest Photo bought when Graflex went

under. As I told him, he's not hard to find, if you know where to

look. Inasmuch as this forum serves as just such a roadmap for fellow

travelers, his office number (from graflex.com)is 775/746-0111. I'm

giving my back a hood from his stock of reconditioned parts, which

should make field work a pleasure, now that I can see what I'm doing!

 

<p>

 

Another happy ending :)

I quite agree this is not a subject that can be adequately covered

here, but particularly want to echo the point that, according to

today's conservation standards (which are changing all the time) no

mounting technique that permanently alters the photograph is

recommended--though I realize many photographers still dry-mount, and

excellent materials exist for this. (Michael Smith's site even argues

that properly dry-mounted photographs may last longer. Regardless,

he's found a new type of board worth investigating--see

http://www.superiorarchivalmats.com/) Unless you're using top quality

board and storing it carefully, though, you're likely to face the

spectacle I just did when curating a show of beautiful bromoil prints

from the 'teens through 'forties: the prints in this quite permanent

process (in which silver is replaced with ink) are outlasting their

mats, sometimes even their paper subsrates. The crummy posterboard to

which many were pasted down (with no help from the likes of Light

Impressions, believe me) were crumbling in more than a few cases, and

taking the prints with them. Imagine what your print will look like

when that acid-free foam core is battered and bruised, then look into

the many cheap and easy techniques of hinging onto acid-free boards.

It'll work, but Azo's slower. You may want to open up!

Someone mentioned a while back the use of Heliars by Kodak for

enlargement. I have an 18cm (f4.5) uncoated Voigtlander Heliar screw

mounted (no flange) into a small (2 1/2") metal board that I'm

reasonably convinced was made as a 5x7 enlarging lens. For b&w

printing, the lack of coating and relatively narrow angle of coverage

should be incidental, and those halo effects might be quite

marvelous. I'd be curious to hear if others know more of this usage;

also of the use of "flat field" process lenses for enlargement.

Thanks.

I've been hunting for a replacement Fresnel lens for the 4x5 Graflock back on my Deardorff, but can't seem to turn one up. Furthermore, I'm told that only one from another Graflock back will fit. I assume this is just a question of size--it's 3 15/16" x 4 13/16" x 1/16" thick. Sorry to bother you all with a shopping question, but it occurs to me someone may have a spare or a lead... I'm tired of seeing scratches whenver I look through the ground glass! Thanks very much -- Stephen

I find these lines at the end of Jack Gilbert's poem, "Poetry is a

Kind of Lying":

 

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Degas said he didn't paint

what he saw, but what

would enable them to see

the thing he had.

Seems to me much of the preceding, with which I naturally agree,

really takes up the question of the relative worth of images by

photographers as disparate as Adams and Kertesz--who happened to work

in different formats--not the value of their negatives, which is

another story. These tend to be priceless, which often means they're

worth nothing at all, in economic terms. They can't be reprinted

without accusations of fraud cropping up (think of the scuffle the

reprinting of E.S. Curtis' gravure plates has generated in recent

years), so from a curator's stand-point, they're a perpetually

degrading resource, useful only for study purposes (for which, again,

they're invaluable). I once asked the curator of a prominent museum

photo collection what he did about negatives. "Avoid them like the

plague," was his reply. It might even be argued that the value of

prints of certain collected images increases in the absence of the

negative, as it does in the absence of the photographer. To my

knowledge, the Center for Creative Photography is the only museum

collection of fine art photography that actively acquires negatives

as well as prints--though there certainly are exceptions (MoMA's

Atget negatives come to mind). Adams is exceptional here too: I

believe he left his negs. to the Center with the stiplation they

remain available to students to print from, modestly suggesting, they

may as well learn from the best. At first I was stunned by this

generous invitation to allow other photographers to forge potentially

valuable prints from his negatives. Then I realized it was a dare--he

knew full well no one could make his prints, not even from his

negatives! The negatives alone are a score without a sound.

An upside is less bellows flare. Apart from weight, I don't see any.

Haven't used it myself, but I understood a few years ago (from

Patrick Alt, who made a lovely camera at this size) that Ilford was

coating at least one of their b&w films in 4x10, though I haven't

seen it distributed in this country. Robert White, the British

dealear, ought to know. When cutting down film, remember to measure

the actual size of the film, which is generally 1/8" shy of its

reported dimension in each direction (so it fits in the film holder).

Naturally, you want to replicate this scenario with the two halves.

I suspect the collectors and dealers who benefit most from this

system would hate the idea of numbering prints from each session.

Without detailed knowledge of a photographer's work, who's to say how

many prints are out there? That, after all, is the issue, from their

point of view. Clearly it's quite different from the photographer's.

 

<p>

 

A "vintage" print, in practice, often means a print made before

editioning was expected. So, early prints by many name photographers

are uneditioned. Perversely, this often makes them more valuable,

since no one knows how many prints are out there... This example

should prove photographers have more leeway than they often realize.

 

<p>

 

Many photographers operatng in today's art world have chosen

processes with built-in uniqueness--Polaroid, and even its grand-

daddy,the Daugguereotype. Or "alternative" processes where no two

prints are likely to be just the same. Which raises the point that an

edition doesn't need to imply that all prints in the sequence be

identical in every way. In many alternative processes, there would be

inevitable shifts of tonality, etc. Seems to me a lot of this is

about the tug-of-war between the hand and the machine made.

Editioning as it's usually practiced means assembly line printing. If

all the prints in an edition had slight differences, showing the

touch of the printer's hand, I suspect dealers would find a way to

ask more for them. But remember, although editioning may allow

contemporary photographers to command higher prices for their work

(even though many of those "editions" are never printed out), it's

not the photographer who sees the most inflated prices this system

allows. It's whoever resells those prints whose scarcity has been

assured--the auctioneers, collectors and dealers of "vintage" prints.

 

<p>

 

It's easy to see why photographers not operating in this rarefied

arena might prefer not to bother with it. It would be heartening to

see more photographers bucking the editioning trend, since most of

them are not likely to experience its benefits first hand.

Unfortunately, it seems too many feel they must edition if their work

is to be taken seriously. Their prints would remain more affordable

to more potential buyers if they did thing things the old fashioned

way and printed on demand, or as the spirit moves them. Epistle over.

Now, if you're really serious about the business of editioning, it

seems to me you have to be willing to "cancel" the negative at the

end of the run (unless, of course, you're holding out for another

version, perhaps in another size or process...). Who's ready to take

a hole punch to that precious negative? Seems to me that willingness

to destroy one's own work in order to make it is emblematic of the

degree to which photographers have had to put themselves in the hands

of the art world to make a living, when they do. (Sounds a bit like

Abraham and Isaac, put that way, and maybe it is.)

 

<p>

 

Walter Benjamin thought photography's revolutionary cachet lay in its

extreme reproducibility. The old habit of open editions paid lip

service to this ideal, though the point is well taken many "master"

photographers had next to no market for their work. I love fine

prints as well as the next bloke, but it's sobering to see the

predicament we're in, in this art world photographers fought to enter.

A while back someone asked for directions to Ken Hough's Deardorff

website. Here it is: http://deardorffcameras.0catch.com/

He's prominently quoted on Ron Wisner's website praising his Wisner.

He's still at it, by the way, unless I've missed some bad news.

Thanks for the tip, Bjorn. If anyone knows where I can find one of

these, it would really make my month.

I hate to get in the way of a good idea, especially one that has me

wondering whether your low volume is the film or the short wave (or

was it that slow-motion phonograph)! But for developing 4x5 film

without a darkroom, I've found the HP Combi-plan tank (available from

Calumet) a heck of a lot easier than an engineering test. (They're

also light years ahead of the old Yankee tanks, which are just fine

if you only need to develop some of your film some of the time.) Even

with a darkroom, this beats tray development for small amounts of

film since you never scratch a negative, and you can use tank

development times. I checked this thread because I'm always hoping

someone will come up with a comparable system for 5x7--please tell me

if you know of one. Even called HP's distributor recently to be sure

they didn't make such a thing. They told me, if I wanted 5000. Which

leads me to ask, are there 4999 of you out there who'd buy one? 4998?

 

<p>

 

SL

Sounds like a resounding chorus of praise for the Durst, but just in

case you hadn't noticed, Calumet has a slightly used Zone VI 5x7

enlarger head on their website currently. Sorry, I can't recall which

type, and frankly I wasn't able to figure how much of the outfit they

were selling (I think it's more than just the head, but perhaps not

the whole rig) when I looked into this a bit myself yesterday. It

might even out the prices, even if it complicates your decision.

 

<p>

 

SL

Probably not an issue on top-notch contemporary lenses like the ones

you've mentioned, I agree, but those of us using some of the many

fine older lenses out there wouldn't want to go too long without some

sort of shutter test--whether of the do-it-yourself variety, or the

sort performed by experts who can actually repair slow shutters, or

tell us how far off they may be. It's an argument for barrel lenses,

I suppose, but if you're calibrating equipment for zone system work,

this seems an essential step. Even new shutters do vary somewhat.

 

<p>

 

SL

Devoted as I am to my Deardorff, I've admired the Ikeda 5 x 7 I

periodically see on eBay. Of the contemporary Japanese wood fields,

it's the only one I'm aware of in this size, and often not terribly

expensive, though that seems to depend -- as with the Deardorff.

 

<p>

 

SL

Patrick Alt in L.A. works on Deardorffs, as Ken Hough does in the

Midwest. Either could do better than a cobbler, is my hunch. Best,

 

<p>

 

SL