What Is Most Missed From The Pratice of LF Back In The 1990's

[Bernice Loui]

It seems not too long ago when film was the only real image making means and the view camera was the main stay of serious commercial photography. Thinking back to the 1990's.. here are some of the things I miss about doing LF during that time.


*Visiting the local major camera store to purchase film in the fridge. It was all there, from roll film to sheet film. Color neg, Chrome, B&W.. even ortho or IR. Agfa, Fuji, Kodak, Ilford and others all on the shelf behind the cooler's door.

*Looking at and tinkering with the latest view camera offerings from Sinar, Toyo, Linhof and etc. Then going over to the used equipment counter and finding that bargain gem to take home, try it out and taking it back to return if it was a dud.

*Dropping off your E6 film at the local processing lab. Two or so later, the film is ready for pick up. You take the finished chrome over to the many rows of color correct light boxes to take a good long look at the results.. good or bad.

*Taking your 5x7 or 8x10 chrome to the local color print lab to make a 34x40_ish Cibachrome. chat with the print maker to convey what you would like and what is possible. You return to pick up the Cibachrome and go WOW! Even if the skin tone colors are off and the print contrast and color saturation a bit overly excessive.

*Dropping off your Kodak Kodachrome and getting back processed in the same day.

*These color labs were also hang outs for many artist, commercial photographers who used these spaces beyond getting their work done, they were places to meet and chat.. There was the for sale bulletin board too.

*Pondering if one should spring for that new lens announced by Nikkor, Fuji, Schneider or Rodenstock..

*Watching Fuji color film go from strange color rendition to one of the very best ever done.

*Watching Kodak Ektachrome go from fast fading bluish cast film to a lot less bluish cast with a greatly improved color stability.

*Using Kodak color neg film for their good skin tone rendition and good contrast for people pictures.

*Sticking with Agfa chrome for their neutral color and moderate contrast.

*How the photographic world went nuts when Fuji Velvia hit the market..

*Going to the local photo dark room supply store to purchase B&W fiber paper up to 20x24 from Oriental, Agfa, Ilford, Kodak, Zone VI, and others along with most any chemistry needed.


This list goes on and on..

It appears doing LF today has become much more difficult and limited.. Still, my hope is for those who have learned this craft to share and pass it on to those who are newly interested for as long as film and processing can be possible.



Bernice

[Mark Sawyer]

[QUOTE=Bernice Loui;985725*Pondering if one should spring for that new lens announced by Nikkor, Fuji, Schneider or Rodenstock...[/QUOTE]

Finding an old brass lens or two for peanuts...

[Vaughn]

Kodak Copy Film, even at the premium cost.

[Nathan Potter]

Bernice, things evolve at every level. Critters evolve, slowly; cultures evolve, less slowly; technology evolves quite quickly. Few of the wonders you cite were available when I first started photography. I used an old postcard size camera with, I think, 122 size roll film. I could take the film to the corner drugstore in Concord MA. to be developed. Printing was a headache - hard to find. Information about what I was using was non existent for me. On the other hand the whole image making experience was simple and my work was supreme over the pervasive box camera.

Then gradually there was a revolution in equipment and film technology. Lenses became extraordinary and SLRs' opened up some unusual opportunities. The growth of local camera stores engendered excitement for the medium and as you point out there were suddenly people to talk to about image making and gear. But somehow I missed working with the old postcard camera - maybe I missed the style of image, but the new equipment and films allowed me to take images far beyond what was previously possible.

Now recently the rise of the digital domain has eclipsed the film and analog equipment industry, again leaving me longing for the Kodachrome and Panatomic X era and the intimacy of the local camera shop.
But yet again, and gradually, I have embraced digital techniques which, once again allow me to make images far beyond what I once thought possible. The availability of information via internet is still sort of incomprehensible to me in its' depth. Sites like the LFF and similar, elsewhere, are gems of information.

But be patient the present will eventually disappear.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[E. von Hoegh]

Henry's Camera store on Saranac Ave. in Lake Placid.

The days when no one had heard of digital cameras.

Camera shows.

Kodachrome, Panatomic-X, Agfa E-6 films, mercuric oxide cells, the original (1987 or so) Efke films, Polaroid type 55 with which I learned to use my Linhof STIV.

[Brian C. Miller]

Thinking back to the 1990's..


But be patient the present will eventually disappear.

"No man ever steps in the same river twice." -- Heraclitus of Ephesus

[Vaughn]

"No man ever steps in the same river twice." -- Heraclitus of Ephesus

True -- and as long as one can tap the source, one is never thirsty.

Or as John Prine put it:

The water tastes funny
Far from one's home.
But it is only the thirsty
That hunger to roam.

[David Lobato]

I miss having a few guys at work who had LF cameras and we could talk extensively about photography. Now I'm the only one at work who uses film, much less large format. And the labs that excelled at customer service and E-6. I'd drop my box of 4x5 E-6 film in the night drop and pick it up after work. While walking through the door the staff would have their critiques ready for the transparencies I hadn't even seen yet. And get teased that my occasional roll of 35mm slides was "micro-film". The friendly manager liked my pictorial shots but his very high workload of commercial sheet film processing brought in the money (among other things, they processed 400 sheets of 8x10 E-6 per day). And the far away from home lab that let me use their darkroom to unload my film holders before their morning E-6 run. Those labs are long closed. The good old days seem not very long ago. I sure miss the camaraderie.

[SpeedGraphicMan]

Hmm... All of that processing stuff describes my darkroom perfectly!

Hated AgfaChrome... Worst life span in the history of color film!
Dark or Light it faded with a terrible shift!

I do miss the later breed of Plus-X however...

I think that LF has improved in many ways over the years... Only the serious attempt it today and the other users are weeded out!

[Brian Ellis]

The local drugstore that carried darkroom supplies and sold used enlarger lenses

The Calumet and Zone VI Studios catalogs

[thomasfallon]

Kodak High Speed Infrared.

[thomasfallon]

Polaroid.

[MIke Sherck]

I don't miss it because I couldn't participate: cameras and lenses were too expensive for me.

From my perspective the growth of digital was the beginning of a golden age. They've made large format affordable for me.

Mike

[Leigh]

I started shooting LF in 1960. I really miss the variety of films that were available back then.

I shot basketball games in available light using Royal-X Pan developed in Acufine.
The effective ASA was somewhere over 10,000, although I never bothered to really calculate it.
Nobody could figure out how I did it.

- Leigh

[jnantz]

single weight paper + olde forte paper

[Bill Burk]

Rows of photography books at the local library that are worth reading... not the kind that look like the latest computer software manuals.

[Leszek Vogt]

Wow Bernice, some memories. Had to send huge order of Cibachromes done back in early 80's...still have few of those...and they still look as vibrant as they came from the lab in Newport Beach. Loved the Fuji 50 and if I look closely (among my Kodak mot pic film) I might find a lonely roll of Panatomic X + Kodachrome 64.

Les

[Jim Jones]

I miss Tech Pan, Kodak High Speed Infrared, Kodachrome, and the multitude of Kodak publications. However, we now have the internet where we can together bemoan the passing of the good old days and learn how to make the most of the future.

[Tobias Key]

What I miss most is human contact. Knowing the guys at your lab, printing in communal darkrooms and chatting to other photographers, seeing others work in the flesh. These days unless you're shooting you hardly come in to contact with anyone in person.

[Ari]

These days unless you're shooting you hardly come in to contact with anyone in person.

Not just shooting, but other facets of daily life, too.

[Drew Wiley]

Gear and the supply chain kept changing then too. No difference in that respect. What I honestly do
miss is the ability to carry my gear twenty miles a day and throw in six thousand foot grade, and glissade down ice on the back! I'm still a human pack mule - just as dumb and just as stubborn, but
quite a bit slower!

[DrTang]

8x10 Polaroid

stuff was like crack

start shooting that and pretty soon you'd sell the car, house, dog just to afford shooting more

[Kodachrome25]

What I miss most is human contact. Knowing the guys at your lab, printing in communal darkrooms and chatting to other photographers, seeing others work in the flesh. These days unless you're shooting you hardly come in to contact with anyone in person.

Actually, the town I live in has quite a few pros my self included and we spend more time hanging out, catching up and what not than we do on the internet. Besides being a tight tactile community, one of the things that helps this is we have a private Facebook page and connect quickly that way and then meet up in person. It's a small ski town of 5,500 people but we are close, good to one another even if competitors. Honestly, many of us have lives that keep us outdoors that prevent much internet time. I think I am one of only a couple of photographers who actually take the time to read or post on forums for that matter...


Gear and the supply chain kept changing then too. No difference in that respect. What I honestly do
miss is the ability to carry my gear twenty miles a day and throw in six thousand foot grade, and glissade down ice on the back! I'm still a human pack mule - just as dumb and just as stubborn, but
quite a bit slower!

I am the only guy I know in my area that will do 45+MPH on my snowboard with a 4x5 on his back, do it while I still can I figure.

What do I miss?

I was just a 20-something newspaper and magazine shooter in the 90's making about 30-40K a year so I could never begin to afford the brilliant LF gear I have now...
I guess it would have to be film being the only game in town and the work of some of my favorite Nat Geo photogs before they went digital and their style died...

[drew.saunders]

If you want to remind yourself of what was available new in the late '90's, B&H lets you download their huge "Professional Photo Sourcebook" from 1998 in pdf form:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/FreeCatalog.jsp

Ignore the 2007 date, I think that's when they made a pdf out of it. I still have my original print version of this, and it's fun to look through every now and then, especially if I want to know about a used item from that era. I also have the "35mm SLR" sourcebook, which was a few years later.

[mandoman7]

I miss the perception of photography as a craft, where you had to learn something about exposure and lighting before you got consistent results.

[Drew Wiley]

What is really different is that you used to see incredible amounts of really horrible darkroom and lab
work back then, whereas today you see incredible amounts of really horrible inkjet work. Nothing has
changed. But is refreshing that many of the rats have at least bailed off the film&darkroom ship.

[Frank Bagbey]

Kodachrome 25 mentioned, above, how photographers went digitial and their style died. Every digitial photographer I know has the same "style" as everyone else it seems. That is the saddest result of digitial. What museum would pay anything valuable for a digitial work? Fuji Velvi and Cibachrome had the biggest impacts on my large format shooting, as it did on most. My big Cibachromes look like the day they were made despite years of wall hanging. Despite what anyone claims, I bet Cibachrome will outlast them all.

[E. von Hoegh]

Kodachrome 25 mentioned, above, how photographers went digitial and their style died. Every digitial photographer I know has the same "style" as everyone else it seems. That is the saddest result of digitial. What museum would pay anything valuable for a digitial work? Fuji Velvi and Cibachrome had the biggest impacts on my large format shooting, as it did on most. My big Cibachromes look like the day they were made despite years of wall hanging. Despite what anyone claims, I bet Cibachrome will outlast them all.

That's because the digitographers all use fauxtoshoppe instead of style.

[Drew Wiley]

Well if you're talking permanence, Cibas do have superb dark storage characteristics. They don't like
strong UV per direct sunlight or halogens. I know how to make on fade in three days. On the other hand, I've hung em in indirect sunlight in the mtns and watched em for thirty years, and they still look
brand new. The three different dyes fade pretty much at the same rate, so fading isn't very apparent until the print it right at the edge of crashing. Some digital printing in on regular RA4 paper like Crystal
Archive, which probably has better display permanence than Ciba, but with eventually yellow due to
residual couplers, regardless. Inkjet is much more of a wild west subject because there are so many
variables and little genuine track record. I wouldn't bet on the taste of museums either - they're all over the map too, and certainly not immune from fads.

[jayabbas]

I miss unloading 3 part box fulls of Vericolor III in the dark onto hangars on The Sitte Tischer Mini Mat dip and dunk. The smell of the enclosed completely dark room where the dip and dunk machine lived , breathed and delivered negatives to anxious lab workers(me) and photographers has a visceral quality unknown to PS technicians these days. Frenetic is a word that comes to mind with the analog world( at least as it pertains to the professional large format crowd back then_ don't get me started with E6 and all the snip tests and pushes and occasional pulls that "popaphotography" types wanted on a daily "Rush" basis.

[John Kasaian]

Lets see now....for LF stuff it would have to be Freestyle Arista Pro film(rebadged FP-4+) and APHS Ortho. Photo Warehouse offered rebadged FP-4+ as well (great stuff!) Kodak film which I could actually afford--TXP, TMY, Plus X and of course their B&W papers---Ektalure and AZO, and everything Agfa. I miss Clayton Classic Camera (I bought a lot of used 8x10 film holders from them) Then there were those advertisements for Nagaoka cameras in the back of Popular Science magazines and all those great articles by Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz in Shutterbug. Frozen rolls of surplus aerial film from Mr. Foto and the cheap prices for G Clarons from Mr Cad(UK) when Schneider announced they were going to stop making them. For MF it would have to be Verichrome Pan and Agfapan 25. In 35mm the Pentax K-1000 and of course Kodachome in all it's glorious incarnations. And Durst enlargers.

[cjbecker]

I don't remember any of it as I was just born in 1990.

[Scratched Glass]

I started a career in photo labs in 1997, and I enjoyed some of it. The labs I worked in handled everything from the worst possible consumer printing to 8x10 E-6. The LF professional work that came through was much easier to appreciate after developing a whole roll of film taken of kittens with a disposable camera while the "photographer" had a lit cigarette in his mouth. I really enjoyed printing B+W, and color, but I never became that proficient with it. I don't miss internegatives no matter what the format. I got out of the business in 2002 and returned to my first love, biology. I'm glad I got out photolabs, high stress, and they were already in the tank at that time.

[arca andy]

The London photography scene was great in the 1990s. You spent a lot more time with your clients..who in my case were graphic designers.
The designer was often on the shoot with you to view polaroids, no emailing of set ups in those days. Having him there was great, he could see how hard you worked to create those images and would often get involved in the shoot as well.
Once the shoot had finished you'd get the film biked over to one of the many 24hr Labs, then take the designer out for a drink/meal..but mainly a drink. 2 hours later you would pitch up at your lab to view your trannies...Which the designer, now lubricated with chardonnay and 2 hours of creative type chit chat, would think were the bees knees. You would then pour him into a cab and send him home.
The next day you would phone to make sure all was well then invoice him for your days work, the film and costs (lab, bike and chardonnay)plus 75%. You could easily invoice out £1000 for a days work but that was ok because those photography costs were passed on to the designers clients with their mark up added on to that!
In fact the 75% I added onto my costs paid the rent for my little studio. However the writing was on the wall, one day a new digital photo library opened next to my little studio....and the designers soon realised that it was cheaper to buy a lot of their photos from there!
Nowadays I do my shoot, email my client a quick jpeg and then sit in front of my computer for a couple of hours....boring.
Oh well my liver is a lot happer and my turn over is a lot lower but my profits are higher... but I do miss those 1990s

[geoawelch]

REAL camera stores - in all big cities, in most small towns, staffed by people with experience.

[Ari]

The London photography scene was great in the 1990s. You spent a lot more time with your clients..who in my case were graphic designers.
The designer was often on the shoot with you to view polaroids, no emailing of set ups in those days. Having him there was great, he could see how hard you worked to create those images and would often get involved in the shoot as well.
Once the shoot had finished you'd get the film biked over to one of the many 24hr Labs, then take the designer out for a drink/meal..but mainly a drink. 2 hours later you would pitch up at your lab to view your trannies...Which the designer, now lubricated with chardonnay and 2 hours of creative type chit chat, would think were the bees knees. You would then pour him into a cab and send him home.
The next day you would phone to make sure all was well then invoice him for your days work, the film and costs (lab, bike and chardonnay)plus 75%. You could easily invoice out £1000 for a days work but that was ok because those photography costs were passed on to the designers clients with their mark up added on to that!
In fact the 75% I added onto my costs paid the rent for my little studio. However the writing was on the wall, one day a new digital photo library opened next to my little studio....and the designers soon realised that it was cheaper to buy a lot of their photos from there!
Nowadays I do my shoot, email my client a quick jpeg and then sit in front of my computer for a couple of hours....boring.
Oh well my liver is a lot happer and my turn over is a lot lower but my profits are higher... but I do miss those 1990s

Yeah, them 90s was fun; just the way you describe.
I didn't see the writing on the wall until 2004, so the 90s lasted a little longer for me :)

[Andrew O'Neill]

$65 for 8x10 film.

[paulr]

Fortezo.

[AFSmithphoto]

I don't miss it because I couldn't participate: cameras and lenses were too expensive for me.

From my perspective the growth of digital was the beginning of a golden age. They've made large format affordable for me.

Mike

I couldn't agree more.

[irwinhh]

Real 8x10 B&W and also Color Poloroid.

[Michael Graves]

"No man ever steps in the same river twice." -- Heraclitus of Ephesus

Maybe not, but I've fallen into the Lamoille several times now.

[emmett]

Fishkin Bros. in Perth Amboy, NJ