geoffrey_james

They just rebuilt my Devere head, and know what they are doing. They also

routinely fixed my electronic prontor shutter -- that it kept breaking down was

no fault of theirs, Serious folk. Recommended.

I find that you can easily get soft corners with the 210 -- part of the problem

being that the Dagors don't have a very flat field of focus. This problem is

entirely eliminated with the 9 1/2 (240) which is a wonderful wallking-around

lens.

I'm just back from passing through London. There is currently a Walker

Evans show at the Photographers Gallery on Great Newport Street -- a lot of

unknown images. Polaroids, etc. The National Portrait gallery has a show of

the early work of Patrick, Earl of Lichfield. Entry is free and the show is not

worth the price of admission. I use Teamwork and find them to be fine. In

general, you're better off for LF in the US. I have picked upa couple of

Noblexes in London == the rebate on the tax (17 percent) is good, and I

saved myself a bundle of money by not getting them in Canada.

Someone has made the point that these are large pieces of glass. I don't

know what camera you use, but if it's not a Phillips or a Canham, you already

have a ball and chain. How far from the car do you want to go ? If you don't

want to use the Grandagon, where do you put it when you put the other lens

on ? Are you shooting BW or Colour ? I use a 165 Dagor a lot -- it's fine and

very compact and less money. Between the two lenses you proposed, I prefer

the Grandagon, but I only use it for interiors, for which it is brilliant. The

answer is that the answer depends on you refining the question !

Does anyone know what happed to the stock and parts of Condit of Sandy

Hook, ct ? I have one of their estimable 8x10 enlargers , but would like to

know if the parts ended up anywhere. There's not much to go wrong, but

maybe I should knock on wood.

David,

At the time I used HC110 and pretty close to Kodak recommendations. Like

M&P Smith, I look at the film -- with a big green safelight with a 7.5 watt bulb.

Saves a lot of heartache. I'll try and scare up my PhotoLab index for times. Is

there anything like it published nowadays, or has it been superceded by the

web ?

I do selenium and permawash in a single solution, then a good long wash. I

think A Adams recommends this.

There's a great list of what goes on what on the website of the late and much

missed Steven Grimes. I think the address is SKGrimes.com

I used SuperXX to the bitter end -- which means that it was priced almost

double TriX, and mainly bought by people doing colour separations. It was

indeed a beautiful film. Old timers would develop in Dektol ! I had an

experience when I had to leave the darkroom unexpectedly, so I turned off the

water and left some 8x10 sheets of super xx and tri-x in my Kostiner washer.

In fact I hadn't completely turned off the taps, and when I came back the

washer was filled with scalding water. The Tri X emulsion was floating around

like cobwebs. The Super XX had merely reticulated. Tough stuff.

Dizzy Gillespie said of Louis Armstrong, "No him, no me." The great people

allow others to build on their achievement. Adams codified Weston's practice.

Kertesz took the first great 35 mm photographs. "We owe him so much," said

Cartier Bresson. Evans saw Atget's work in Paris as a young man and I think

it scared him so much that he denied having seen it almost until the end of

his life. With great respect, Michael Kenna came out of Bill Brandt; the same

influence on the early Robert Frank. De gustibus nihil disputandis est: there

is no arguing about taste. I would commend the new 7-volume set of August

Sander's collective portrait of the German people . A steal at $195. Now, can

anyone help me with the new Tri-X..........

Toronto Image Works is good. If you want to develop a more personal

relationship, you might try Jerry Riley at ColourLab.com on Richmond Street.

And you might want to try the new Kodak Endura as well as the Fuji Crystal.

I have a bunch of them but there is a fatal flaw that Shin Mido knew about.

The little slot/flap that the film fits into consists of two strips of metal that were

crazy-glued together, Eventually it falls apart. (Shin realized that the piece

should have been milled, but didn't have the setup) They are also a little

tricky to load, in that the dark slide (epoxy over foil, I think) is only ten

thousands of an inch off the film. If you handle them wrong you can get marks

on the sky. Having said that, they are great if you are walking around with

gear and need to take more than a few pictures. I tried without sucess to get

stores to stock them , and Shin gave me a bunch for free. A nice man.

Walker Evans had several Rolleis -- along with the Polaroid that's what he

used in later years. I think Dorothea Lange also used them. Diane Arbus

used a wide angle Rollei along with Mamiyas. Notice how you don't think of

her pictures as being always square. She used the format with great

intelligence. Lee Friedlander has been working a with the Hasselblad SWC

(?) -- the one with thefixed 38 mm Biogon. A wonderful book of self portraits,

a book on the desert and a crazy recent one on a cemetery in Genoa. On

Evans there's an interesting book called Walker Evans at Work, which shows

his outtakes and how he moved through the world.

Nicholas,

All true, but if a photograph has "good bones" then it can stand a little abuse

around the edges. I know that what I see on the sinar groundglass of my

Phillips doesn't conform to the rebate of the various holders I use -- old

Kodaks, Toyos, Fidelity and Mido etc. But I am not sure that it really matters

that much. Sometimes small errors can be interesting. Just look at Atget. If

the picture is good, it will survive.

Sandy,

I think you are setting up false dichotomies here -- modernist vs. traditional.

Unless that is you are the architectural equivalent of a moldy fig in the jazz

world -- one of those who believes there is no "real" jazz after New Orleans.

Surely the best of the LA modernist houses are a real and sensitive response

to the landscape and climate of the West Coast. Whether they have

neoclassical decorative elements is neither here nor there. And at certain

point everything becomes part of a tradition. Modernism is not the issue, I

would suggest, just debased developer commercialism and the reliance on

the internal combustion engine.

Tim,

I discovered by accident when I doubled the amount of Metol that the local

contrast picked up beautifully. I am not one for messing around with formulae,

but this is something one could play with. I like D23 because it is basically a

gentle developer. I find it a greater technical problem to reduce contrast than

to increase it.

I use this only as a last resort, and follow Adams. He calls for a dry print and

very short times -- just a few seconds. You have to rinse out the bleach quickly

and vigorously. I have had a few start going brown after a few months, so I

probably did something wrong.

Sandy,

I'm not sure what your real subject is here. (As in "contemporary Classical

houses). Does traditional mean old houses, vernacular housing or what ?

For classical modernism you can't do better than Julius Schulman and his

wonderful record of LA modernism. And how come no one has mentioned

Walker Evans ? Too obvious ? Check out George Tice's Paterson book. You

might want to look at the work of Thomas Roma who only photographs in

Brooklyn and occasionally Sicily. Look at his latest book, Sanctuary, which is

about evangelical churches in a Brooklyn that looks like the roughest

sections of Bogota. This will be good for planners to look at. Good luck,

Geoffrey James

Gregory,

Forget the Vatican. I once wanted to photograph some of the buildings in the

garden and had a call from one of their representatives, a lady named Julia

Wheat. It was a little like dealing the with Mafia -- they wanted me to shoot

two negatives, one for them, of everything. My book on Italian gardens does

not include the Vatican. You will discover that the country is a strange and

unique mixture of chaos and narrow legalisms. Auguri !

David,

The conscious idea of the beautiful landscape -- il bel paesaggio -- goes

back to the renaissance. The alternate planting of cypress and umbrella

pines -- as if playing hopscotch -- is a convention that goes back a long way -

aesthetic decisions to beautify the natural landcape, as was the planting of a

single tree on a summit. There has been quite a bit of depradation of this

landscape in the twentieth century -- small industry plunked in the middle of

suberb countryside. If you drive from Florence to Siena on the Superstrada,

check out what a brilliant piece of landscape engineering it is, in that it

disprupts the landsape only minimally. There is so much to see there, and so

little time. I have spent three to six months at a time., and feel I have just

scratched the surface. The Italian landcape is a layered, complex construct,

built up over millenia. Be aware of the presence of the Etrucans, who affected

the landscape in a very special way. This is especially true of the area

Daniele talks about. Eventually you get to know when you in are an Etruscan

landscape. It's quite magic. Festina Lente.

Fred,

Do you know the wonderful dark portrait of Peter Sellars (he was a horrible

human being) by Bill Brandt ?

Tim,

There is a book of photographs by the late and estimable Ralph Steiner, at

the end of which he gives an interview about his techniques. On the question

of developers, he says that essentially they are all the same, except one

which is toxic and carcinogenic (he was an old man at the time). He was

talking about Pyro, which does have a remarkable tonal range. But I don't

think it's good for you. I have used it and like it, but if you are shooting 8/10

you can get great negatives with the simplest of chemicals -- it's such a

generous format. Beware the search for perfection. Be content with good

work.

The lightest of all 8x10's is the Phillips Explorer, which you will have to find on

the used market because there is a waiting list. (5 lbs) Plus a Gitzo carbon

fibre. I atually have done a lot of non-windy photography with the Reporter

carbon fibre, and an Arca Swiss B1 ball head. Sounds crazy, but it works for

me, and allows you to walk for hours with the camera.

A more general answer would be that there should be no problem in a 3 times

enlargement from any kind of film.

Ric,

No one mentioned a 6 1/2 WA Dagor. They are compact and good. Try and get one with a serial number of 77xxxx and above. If you come across a 210 Angulon it will cover fine (angulon, not super, though they can be pricey). The 9 1/2 Dagors are also really great, although it is at the narrow end of your spectrum. I was touting the 180 Zeiss Dagor WA to Tim, though you don't see a lot of them.