david_kaufman1

Fujiflex that is past its best use date turns yellow. The package you bought was out of date. Fresh Fujiflex has a white base but is still a little less blue than regular RC colour paper.

I recently photographed a group of eighty people on a stage. There are three issues:

Amount of light: I used a 2400 Speedotron pack with two large umbrellas. On Fuji NPH (EI 400) I got an exposure of f/8. For f/16 you'll need at least 9600ws of light, i.e. two 4800 packs.

Placement of lights: If working with regular stands, you have to place the lights back far enough and to the sides to be out of the picture. It creates problems for direction and quality of light. Booms would be better and give you slightly more flexibility. Also, using a slightly wide-angle lens lets you get your camera (and lights) closer to the stage.

Quality of light: To light a large area evenly is difficult. Hard to avoid a hardening of the light and multiple background shadows. It's best to use at least four light sources, but there is a problem of how to use them without getting them in the shot. Mounting from lighting grid would be best option. Otherwise forced to light from side only.

Finally, if it is a well-equipped stage, you might have enough stage light to shoot the shot at an extended exposure on tungsten film, perhaps f/16 at 2 or 4 seconds. That could be better.

I have tested Portra 160NC versus Portra 160VC carefully, on both Fuji and Kodak colour papers. The contrast difference is very insubstantial (very slight dodging of shadows with detail would completely compensate for the higher contrast of Portra 160VC) but the colour saturation difference is significant. Therefore for more accurate colour (and saturation is part of colour acccuracy)and certainly more "punch" I would recommend Portra 160VC as the better film for landscape.

I have a Sinar F2 and both the Grandagon 90 4.5 and the Schneider 90 XL. With the Grandagon you can run out of image circle at maximum front rise, vignetting the corners. It's even worse with a filter for black and white work. With the Schneider 90 XL you do not run out of image circle--the extra 18mm or so of circle enables you to use the camera's maximum front rise. The very edge of the image with the Schneider is a tiny little bit softer, as one would expect. Both lenses have excellent performance at centre and somewhat poorer performance at the very edges, as one would expect from wide angle lenses. Alignment of the film standard is critical and mistakes show up more readily in the corners than with longer lenses. I worked for years with a Sinar F and finally switched to an F2 because the front and rear standards on the F had to be realigned all the time depending on length and weight of lens used. The Sinar F2 is much better in that regard.

Several years ago I ran a series of tests using PMK and D-76 and T-Max RS developers with T-Max 100, FP4+ and Delta 100 sheet films. I deliberately pocked subjects with a lot of highlight detail. I obtained very good stain levels with all three films, but when I made carefully matched prints, I saw none of the differences usually attributed to pyro developers. My own feeling afters years of testing various film and developer combinations is that, except for some really extreme treatments (e.g., very high dilutions, unusual agitation, extreme contractions or expansions), the basic character of the film is much more important than the developer with which it is processed. T-Max 100 has slightly finer grain than Delta 100, the T grain films have quite different curves than more traditional film formulations, etc., and these differences remain even when using different developers. So add my voice to those who, so far, has seen no benefit from the pyro developer I have tried (PMK).

There are probabl;y at least a half dozen significant photographic books on the villas of Palladio. The most famous recent one in black & white is a beautiful book by Philip Trager, the New York based architectural and dance photographer. There have been at least several books in colour including weighty tomes of many hundreds of pages shot in large format and beautifully printed. Do a search on the internet and/or on the sites of large book retailers. This is very well-trod territory, although I have to admit that it was even at the time Trager did his book, about twelve years ago or so. His innovation was to work exlcusively in black and white, although I do not know if he was the first to do so in recent times. I did some photography of the a few of Palladio's buildings in 1989. It is hard to come up with an original view of some of the more famous villas. Access to each site varies.

The Imacon 848 scans 4 x 5 negatives only at 2000 dpi (or ppi). This is sufficient for a maximum 6.6 times enlargement at 300 dpi. This will not get you to prints of the size you desire, i.e., 32 x 40 inches, unless you are willing to rez up and accept a loss of detail. I have read that some people have used lesser Imacons and scanned 4 x 5 in two passes at 3200 dpi using a 6 x 12 cm holder and then stitched the image together. I do not know if this is easy to do and reliable as I have not tried it myself. There may also be a problem with slippage of the negative in the holder as it bends during insertion in the light path. For your further information, I have tested the Imacon 848 against the Epson 4870, and the 4870 gives about 80% of the resolution of the Imacon (still less than 2000 dpi)at a pixel count of 3200 dpi (or ppi). Enough pixels but probably not enough resolution for critical enlargement to 32 x 40.

I shoot of lot of exterior and some interior architecture with a Sinar F2. For 19 years I used a Grandagon 90mm f/4.5 lens with a bag bellows. The bag bellows is excellent for lenses up to 150mm and often even for 210mm. The bag bellows on this camera easily allows for full front standard rise. The lens was a limiting factor. At maximum front rise, which you need for tall building too close to you (a frequent situation) the Grandagon runs out of image circle and vignettes at the top (of image) corners. I recently purchased a mint Schnedider 90mm XL on Ebay and with its greater image circle I no longer have that problem. So in architecture bag bellows are a must and image circle is everything. It would be worthwhile to also look at the Schneider 72mm XL.

David Kaufman

You definitely should go with 2400 WS. You can never have too much light especially if you like shooting with slow films.

I've done a lot of medium format portraiture with a Speedo 2400 WS unit and TMX (100 EI). Using a chimera soft box, I need 800 to 1200 WS at eight to ten feet to expose at between f/11 and f/16. That leaves the rest of the power for fill and back lights. With 8 x 10 film and exposures at f/32 or f/45, if you use a softbox you will need all the power in one head. So 2400 WS would be the minimum you need, and it may not be enough. If you shoot straight out of the reflectors you will have plenty of light, but a rather harsh image. If you only use 2400WS and 8x10 film, you may have to step up to a 400EI film to have enough light for a two or three light set-up using soft boxes or umbrellas.

One of the best labs in Toronto is Toronto Image Works at 80 Spadina.

Check their web site at www.torontoimageworks.com. The lab is owned by the excellent Canadian photographer Ed Burtynsky.

Track lighting is the way to go. Track should be placed 22 to 30 inches from wall depending partly on height of ceiling. Use lighting units that have deep bulb holders so there is no spill to bottom or back or sides. Lights can be 50 or 75 watt indoor floods for standard height residential room (8 to 9 foot ceilings). 75 watt flood needs a bigger fixture than 50 watt flood. 75 watt flood gives off a lot of light, 50 less so, but coverage of 75 watt flood is also larger. 50 watt floods have to be on track at about 30 inches to cover adequately and only cover one of your prints each. Same with 75 watt flood-for prints of the size you mention, each unit will only light one picture. Halo is the most famous manufacturer of track lighting but also most expensive. There are other manufacturers--check with a good electrical supply store. Each manufacturer will also have full printed and on-line catalogue of fixtures with complete illumination specifications including pattern and strength of light throw at various distances. I recommend strongly against halogens of any sort as the light, while very pure in colour, is very hot and casts very strong shadows which are not attractive. True halogen floods may be acceptable but heat is a problem.

Kodalk can be mixed into a working solution of selenium toner or a working solution combination of selenium toner and washaid at the rate of 20 grams per litre of solution. The concentration of the selenium toner does not seem to affect the action of the kodalk as much as the total volume of working solution.

Here are the formulas I use to create depth of field tables which I find very accurate at non-close up distance, i.e., magnifications of 1/10 and smaller.

First compute the Hyperfocal for a given lens and circle of confusion, then the distance formulas.

Hyperfocal = F squared/(f*d) where F = focal length in mm, f = reciprocal of the f-stop (e.g. 16 in f/16) and d = circle of confusion in mm. I use .05 for my circle of confusion in 4 x 5 work to be enlarged to 16 x 20 or beyond.

Then:

Near limit = H * u (distance)/ (H + (u-F))

Far limit = H * u (distance)/ (H - (u-F))

The results are in millimetres which can be translated into feet by dividing by (25.4*12).

The tables generated by the formulas seem to work very well.

Despite the previous respondent's scoffing, I find depth of field tables extremely useful while in the field and using wide angle lenses to cover wide angle subjects at close distances. I frequently photograph architectural subjects, e.g., store fronts, at close distances, where I have receeding vertical planes that I need to have in focus at a distance range of 4 to fifteen feet. Using a 90mm lens on 4x5 I find it is usually preferable to work with depth of field instead of swings to bring eveything into sharp focus. With wide angle lenses and these subjects one is often trying to judge sharpness in the corners and edges of the ground glass with a high powered loupe, which is not easy to do. Depth of field tables work perfectly well in these situations. For the distances and situation described above, distance from the front of the lens is adequate, but you have to use depth-of-field tables that have small enough circles of confusion for the degree of sharpness and enlargement required. Also be aware that the apparent sharpness requirement for objects close to the lens is slightly lower than for objects farther away from the lens, which gives you a clue as to how to handle situations where you are pushing the boundaries of focus. Swinging the lens board is always a good option but it depends what elements crossing the plane of sharp focus you need to keep in focus. In the situation described above using a depth of field table is often much faster than using swings and making repeated adjustments. As to which tables to use, retrieve a few formulae from different sources and work out some tables for the lens, then go out in the real world and test them out. But a smaller circle of confusion will give better results.

I would like to second the response that said there is no apparent advantage to PMK. I also did extensive side by side testing with both new and old emulsion films, specifically T-Max 100, T-Max 400, and FP4 plus. I got great stain on all the negatives but when it came to printing, in carefully controlled sessions using identical negatives developed in Hutchings two-part PMK formula and in my standard developers, T-Max RS and D-76, there was virtually no difference in the quality of silver gelatin prints obtainable and no difference in highlight-holding and differentiation ability in the PMK negatives. So at least for the two-part Hutchings formula, I see absolutely no advantage over other more mainstream developers.

The answer is that the Logan 650 mat cutter is a moderately high quality cutter, capable of professional looking results, except for the baseboard which is prone to warping. The baseboard should be bolted down to your worktable if it shows signs of warping; it is thin and flexible enough that it will straighten out if bolted to a solid tabletop. Also, the best way to use a mat cutter is to have the baseboard recessed into a tabletop so that it's surface is flush with the tabletop. That requires some careful planning and a bit of construction work.

Just an addendum: The Alto has no way to really hold down a mat securely and no right angle arm to stop movement on a second side. Professional mat cutter usually have both a clamping bar and a right angle arm to hold your board securely in place while cutting. Also, if it was not clear, Logan 650 costs around US $400 to $450 while other high end cutters like C&H or Fletcher cost about $1000 and up--but they have metal baseboards, wide range of optional accessories, etc.

With acid free mat board commanding such high prices, a good cutter is worth every penny considering the number of boards you will save from ruin because of bad cuts on a lesser cutter.

Yes. I own one which I am selling. The problem with an Alto mat cutter and any cutter which does not have a very tightly held blade on a cutting head anchored to the sliding guide bar in some way, is that it is very hard not to get hooks (slight curve) at the beginning of every cut because of movement of the blade and cutting head when you first drive the blade into the mat. No matter how tightly you hold the cutter against the guide rail there is almost always some movement and a hook which is very visible at every corner if you cut a floating mat (small white space left around image). I ended up buying a Logan 650, which is a near professional mat cutter. The head assembly and guide bar arrangements are professional standard (hooks are just about eliminated) but the Logan 650 has a particle board base which can warp easily (two of them did on me). Only solution is to bolt it down to my work table. Good mat cutters (C&H, Fletcher) are worth every penny but double the cost of the Logan 650 (around US$1000 and up for a 40 inch capacity). All this being said, the Alto makes a beautiful low angle bevel cut, but almost impossible not to get hooks and some occasional bowing (slight curve along cut) because the cutter is not anchored to the guide rail.

All published data by Wilhelm Research and others indicates that Fuji RA-4 materials have 60 years display life in moderate room light, which is twice as good as Ilfochrome, and twice that life in dark storage which is somewhat less than Ilfochrome. I have had Fuji prints on display in my living room for almost fifteen years. The room receives natural daylight and good tungsten light at night (75 watt floods to illuminate the prints) and there is no apparent fading.

To preserve my prints for posterity I keep several copies of every colour print in a frost free fridge, which should lengthen their lives by tenfold. Freezing would be even better (which is what I do with colour negatives).

You should know that Kodak has announced a new line of colour papers ("Endura") which should be coming to market now, for which they claim a display life of 100 years. The ongoing competition to produce long-lasting colour print papers is good news for colour printers and photographers.

I have done some unsharp masking with T-Max 100 for 4 x 5 colour negatives. Yes, you can register the mask and negative by eye under an 8x loupe and tape them together. You just have to be careful with extremely contrasty fine details: even with a truly unsharp mask (film exposed base side to base side or with thin diffuser between), on some large dark objects you may see a very tiny bit of haloing. You need to experiment a bit to get the right degree of unshrpness.

I use a Beseler VX with the universal colour head system which is a 750 watt colour head, and an 80mm Rodagon lens at a height of approximately 40 cm from the film to be exposed, so my exposure times may be a bit off for you. You also have to filter the exposing light with 80 units of cyan and magenta to compensate for the orange mask of the negative. (Playing around with this filtration may make your mask more sensitive to certain colours within the negative.) With the heavy filtration and the height and lens specified, I exposed T-max at f/11 for 2, 4 and 8 seconds and devloped it in d-76 (1:1) at 68 degrees Farenheit for 7 minutes with normal agitation. This gave me three masks for each negative of varying densities. I found the 4 sec exposure masks most useful. Please note also that I am exposing my masks through a layer of frame glass (to hold the sandwich flat) which decreases exposure slightly.

To make the exposure without a pin-register system I used an 8 x 10 commercial picture frame with a back with compressed springs that could be easily removed or inserted. I used a piece of 4 ply mat board and cut out a window in the middle of just slightly larger than 4 x 5 inches in which to put my original neg, diffuser, and film plus a piece of black paper as a backing and a piece cardboard as apressure plate. The picture frame back is then inserted to keep the sandwich in place and then the whole package is turned over to the light and exposed through the front glass of the frame. As this is a home made rig I found some problems with it which I never refined, namely you get some refraction through the glass when you make the mask and when you later expose the sandwiched mask and negative for printing which goves some slight colour shift and anamolies at the edges of the frame. But I never did enough of this to work out all the problems. You have to experiment until you find something that works well for you. But T-Max 100 has a very linear curve response and very fine grain and is perfectly suitable to make unsharp masks.

Dupont used to make some very fine papers. I used to love printing on Varigam when it was the only decent variable contrast paper--thirty years ago!!! I still have samples of it and finished prints and it cannot hold a candle to today's variable contrast paper except perhaps for the richness of its blacks. Dupont has long ceased to manufacture photographic printing papers. As for UFG, I think it may be an Edwal product and may still be available. Not sure.

Penn's look is very striking but some might criticize it as "soot and chalk" -- very high contrast, over-developed negatives, although the tonal curve seems distinctively Tri-X. A bit like Bill Brandt, the English photographer. Penn's print values and tastes woudl definitely run afoul of contemporary notions of print quality, though obviously the product of a unique vision and telent.

I guess most of you are not math wizards--7 feet is 84 inches, not 72. I am in a darkroom with a ceiling of seven feet, 4 inches. I own a Beseler 45V-XL with baseboard. On a 27" high table, with baseboard and Saunders pro easel (Itself 1" high), using a Rodagon 135 mm lens, which does cover 4x5 very nicely, I can make enlargements of up to 24" x 30" on this enlarger or larger (full frame 4 x 5). 16 x 20s are no sweat. No need for wall mounting. Just make sure you get the focus extension wands for fine focussing as you peer into your grain magnifier. It's an excellent enlarger. Have fun.

Tobacco-coloured filters are often used today by video or film camera recordists to give a very warm look to interviews or outdoor scenes. I do not know what these filters are called by various manufacturers but a cinematographers' supply house should be able to point you in the right direction.

The MacBeth Colour checker is excellent for assessing the linearity of a reflective spot meter. Placing the chart in a lighting situation typical for the material you photograph ( direct sunlight, open shade, tungsten, etc.,) you can read out the whole chart patch by patch and then analyze the linearity of those readings for your meter by graphing the readings against measurements for density of the patches on whatever material you shoot. You will quickly discover the response to colour quirks of your meter and know how to assess its readings in the field.

I have both a Sekonic spot meter and a Zone VI Pentax digital meter and while the Zone VI is more linear in its response than the Sekonic, the Sekonic is more accurate at exposure extremes. This I learned from testing with the Macbeth color chart and it corresponds to my shooting experience. The advantage of the chart is that it is a completely repeatable target and it has a good range of colours.

Get a large golf unmrella and some sort of lighting clamp. Clamp the shaft of your umbrealla to the top of a leg of your tripod. Instant shelter. The key is to get the right sort of clamping hardware to fit your umbrella shaft (easy) and the leg of your tripod (harder) at the right angle. Check out the various Manfrotto clamps and accessories.