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Thread: Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

  1. #1

    Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

    Ever heard of a magic bullet? It's a mystical potion or piece of hardware that will turn a mediocre photographer into a great one. I am a recovering magic-bul let chaser. As part of my recovery, I am posting my tortured tale out here in p ublic for all to see. I chose the LF forum because I mostly shoot 4x5, but the painful lessons contained herein could be applied to any format. It's a long ra mble, so thanks in advance for your patience.

    I'm finally out of the closet, and it feels good. For years, I looked for mirac le cures to save my crummy prints. I tried every film, lens and developer I cou ld get my hands on. I'd read stuff like this: "I just bought a 135mm f5.6 Ektak ron (with the red dial) and I can't believe the difference! I'm throwing away a ll my old negatives and starting over!", or "You must try developing TMQ in D11- MicroGoop. I have, and my prints GLOW IN THE DARK", or "If you're not using fir eflies as your enlarger light source, throw away your camera!". Of course I'd run right out and buy a red-dial Ektakron or ten gallons of glow-in-the-dark dev eloper, and guess what? One more magic bullet, same pictures, less disposable i ncome.

    Thesis: There are no magic bullets, no miracle cures. Good prints are the resu lt of many incremental improvements. Furthermore, gross errors in one area can completely mask many such improvements in other areas. To see lots of improveme nt, you have to make lots of changes.

    Let's consider film developer. Judging by the volume of traffic I see on the Web , many of us obsess about which one we use. We are convinced that good prints w ill come our way if only we can find the right potion. Pyro seems to come up a lot, so I'll use it as an example. Please, no flames. I'm sure it's fine stuff ; I'm merely illustrating a point.

    The resurgence of pyro's popularity owes itself mostly to Gordon Hutchings' book . He makes some specific claims about the properties of pyro negatives, and by the way, his prints never looked better. Recovering bullet-chasers (like myself ) read this and immediately start to drool. Frantic phone calls are made. "Fed Ex overnight is NOT GOOD ENOUGH! Send a courier via a charter flight. I need t he pyro by tomorrow morning! The future of photography is a stake!". We tremb lingly develop our precious negatives, seductively yellow-green and luminous, wh ile dreaming of "Moonrise, Hernandez". Breathlessly we make a print, and??hmmm. Kinda looks like the old prints.

    How can this be? Gordon Hutchings uses pyro, and his prints are better than min e. Didn't I follow all the rules? Wasn't I a good consumer? Why am I being pun ished? Where's the disconnect? Here's a guess. Before Mr. Hutchings ever used pyro, he was already a very good photographer and a very good printer. He unde rstands his tools and materials. In the chain of events that starts with the le ns and ends with the finished print, he's eliminated 90% of possible problems. He's 90% efficient.

    To a guy who's running at 90% effectiveness, a change in developer is probably g oing to make a difference. Maybe pyro has some special properties that give you an additional 3% potential to play with. A guy who's already got his act toget her will fully realize that potential. The incremental gain won't be masked by other problems.

    Now picture someone at the other end of the spectrum. I, um, I mean HE is runni ng at about 40%. His negative carrier is not parallel to the baseboard, so he h as to stop down to f32 for depth of field. Don't worry that you've just lost al l your sharpness to diffraction. And maybe his darkroom is about as dark as the inside of a ping-pong ball. Pesky highlights. The list goes on, and I think y ou get the point.

    Pyro cannot save this poor tortured soul. He is condemned to wail and gnash his teeth in the outer darkness. Everyone else's prints leap off the page, and his look like they came from a 1970's Soviet photocopier. Any incremental gain he m ight have realized by changing developers has been consumed by much larger losse s in other areas.

    Here's an analogy. Countless sets of golf clubs are sold with the implicit prom ise that they'll make you a better golfer. Legions of frustrated weekenders in plaid pants ante up for the new magnesium WunderWand or golf balls with a propri etary dimple pattern guaranteed to work on the surface of Pluto. Their enthusias m to improve is sincere but misdirected. What they really ought to doing is lea rning how to use the stuff they already own. They will drop an obscene amount o f money on a set of clubs that could (in theory), deliver a golf ball to the hol e with pinpoint accuracy, and yet the perverse sphere still turns a right angle and disappears into the pond. Nice try, but Tiger Woods could beat you with a h ockey stick.

    Most of us already have the tools we need to make better prints. We just need t o learn how to use them. This was brought into focus when I attended a darkroom workshop with Howard Bond a few months ago. He didn't tell me anything I hadn' t already heard; he just showed me how to apply it. I didn't see any red-dial E ktakrons or Micro-FlowD23. What I did see was an experienced craftsman, using ma terials not unlike mine. It was liberating to know that I already had everythin g I needed to make much better prints. I just had to learn to realize their max imum potential.

    So, where do you find these incremental improvements, these small, non-magic bul lets? I've listed a few suggestions. Optimize these things first, THEN go buy a new lens, or change developers. Aim the obsession where it can do some good.



    Do you know how to focus your view camera, how to use movements to optimize the plane of focus? Always using f45 is not the answer.

    What ISO is your favorite film? It's probably not what's on the box. Same for development time.

    Your enlarger's negative holder, lens board and easel all need to be very, very close to parallel. If you've never checked, they probably aren't.

    Do you use fresh, healthy chemistry?

    Your enlarger lens has a sharpest aperture. Do you know what it is?

    How dark is your darkroom? Turn on the enlarger and look up into the light, and see what your print sees. Any other light sources up there? Reflections? Lig ht leaks?

    Does your enlarger vibrate when trucks drive by?

    In any process that involves a chemical reaction, are all the variables (tempera ture, time) under tight control?

    Do you know how to burn and dodge? Do you have effective tools readily availabl e, tools that make the job easy? The good news is that, unlike everything else in photography, the tools are cheap!

    Well, there's a start?.I'm sure there's plenty more. Maybe the forum readers co uld suggest some others.

    And by the way, I told a lie earlier. The chain of events doesn't start at the lens. It starts inside your head.

    So.....anyone want to buy a red-dial Ektakron? It's in MINT condition, and guar anteed to make your negatives glow in the dark.

    Thanks for reading, and good light.

  2. #2

    Join Date
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    Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

    I'm still panting from having just run out to buy the as yet unreleased 27mm-1288mm zoom Schiendenista F1.2 zoom that covers my 8x10 with 100mm of movement. It is guaranteed to deliver the most fantastic philosophical metaphysical preraferlist interpretations of both real and imaginaty subjects on Gods geen eath. I would give you a more complete reply but I have to take more medication to ease the excitment this brings my synapses. I am considering a full lobotomy and I have already booked it for the week following delivery of my new pride and joy just in case my weak human mind cannot cope with the revealtions I get from the images it produces. In the pre release materials the manufactures assues me that I will be able to still produce the same meaninful images before and after the lobotomy due to the effectiveness of the lenses resolving power. It promises to resolve not only lines per milimeter but moral, ethical and thoelogical dilemmas at the rate of 1000 dilemas per MM at on ecandle power at the distance of 2.34 meters.

    I JUST HOPE I CAN HOLD TOGETHER UNTIL IT GETS HERE

    Yours in Photographic Phaith

    ZEKE

  3. #3
    Yes, but why? David R Munson's Avatar
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    Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

    I, too, used to chase the magic bullets. I started doing photography six years ago during my freshman year of high school. At that time I was using my dad's old Minolta 35mm slr and trying every conceivable combination of god knows what in an attempt to make things look better, except for my actual technique. I read just about every book there is on photographic technique and over time my philosophy went to the other end of the scale. By my junior year of high school I was shooting 120 and 4x5, sticking to one film, one developer, one paper, etc. I tried my best to exploit everything that one set of materials and techniques had to offer. This helped me some, but things didn't really start to get better until I found a happy medium. I now use whatever hardware and materials I feel best suit what I'm trying to do. If something I'm using isn't doing what I need it to do, I find something that will. For me the hardest thing to learn was to only make changes that were warranted by an actual need, not just by some passing feeling or desire to change things up a bit. Sure, I try new things fairly regularly, but only to supplement what I'm using or as a side project of some sort.

    Of course, I don't think anyone is immune to the occasional magic bullet. When the 35mm rangefinder scene exploded over the last couple of years, I found myself caught up in it. As I type this, there's a largely unused vintage Canon VT rangefinder sitting on top of my computer monitor. Sure, it was fun for a while, but did it improve my photography? I'll let you figure that one out.

    My current take on things is that in order to truly start doing better photography, one has to constantly refine technique, try and keep from stagnating, and most importantly become a perfectionist. When I started rejecting the idea of "good enough" my compositions and resulting photographs improved markedly.

    My suggestions:

    Never take anything in photography at face value. Example: I've seen quite a few references to photographers shooting HP5 at 400 and developing in PMK. I do HP5 and PMK quite regularly, but I shoot the stuff at EI 250 because that's what I found worked best for me.

    Never be completely satisfied- always strive to do that little bit better. If you get lazy, your work will suffer.

    That's really about it for me. I've only been in the photography game for 6 years and LF for the last 4 so there's only a limited amount I can offer at this point.

  4. #4

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    Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

    I, too, am a magic bullet chaser. The problem is that I'm already past the 90% level which Kevin mentions. As I have gotten old and creaky, and possibly lazy, I want to maintain that level of proficiency without the effort, dedication, and time that I spend to get my present results. Do I have to work with a back-breaking tripod; is there a new fast film which will give me the grain and sharpness of my old, slow stuff? How about if I try 4x5 and an Omega D-2 instead of 35mm in a Leica V35? Are there new equipment, materials, processes, that will free me from my old chains? There have certainly been break-throughs in the past, such as Kodak's Ektaflex process which freed me from Dye Transfer bondage. Kodachrome is nearly gone. Do I exchange my 16oz Leica D for a 3 pound Canon with autofocus, autoexposure, autoadvance, and a viewfinder I can actually see through with these damn byfocals I have to wear? As Paul Strand once complained, "Just about the time I find a product I really like, they take it off the market." Two years of trying this and that and the other have so far convinced me that unless Digital is the answer (that's my next adventure), then the cost of even teeny-tiny incremental improvement is excessive. If I want sharp negatives, give up my wonderful zooms for prime lenses. If I want really sharp pictures shoot Technical Pan on a tripod instead of anything with enough speed to hand hold. If I want exquisite shadow detail in my prints, use Amidol wich costs a fortune and lasts only a few hours. Chasing the Magic Bullet is the only way to find out.

  5. #5

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    Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

    Geez Kevin....and here I was just dying to try out the new Dammitol!

  6. #6

    Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

    I just stepped out of the darkroom and found this post, to which I can only add

    Time, Patience, Diligence.

    and Oh, the best magic bullet I ever bought was a laser aligner.

  7. #7

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    Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

    There could be a 12-step program for all our futures.

  8. #8

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    Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

    All of the equipment in the world, all of the mastery of technique you can muster, is nothing if:

    -You don't have anything to say that can only be most directly expressed with photography

    You don't have talent

    You don't have a feel for the poetry of photography and a desire to explore that poetic feel.

    If you don't have the passion and fierce desire to use that talent to share your vision.

  9. #9

    Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

    Kevin: Good thoughts. I was thinking along those lines today while I was showing my work at a local arts show. During every show, I get questions on what brand of camera I made the picture with, or what brand enlarger I used to make the prints. Too many times, I give the brand names and the person leaves perfectly satisfied. I try not to confuse the issue and give the several brand names of the lenses I use. What disturbs me is that no one ever asks about the thought processes, how I made the decision to expose and develop the negs, or why I selected that paper and contrast to make the print, or what burning and dodging was necessary to make the print look right. It is if buying the right brand of equipment, or the brand used by someone else, is all that is needed. No one ever asks why I decided to make the picture in the first place. Just use the Hasseldorf camera with a Snidergon Ektar and develop in Dammitol and you can't miss.

    Regards,

  10. #10

    Confessions of a recovering"Magic Bullet" chaser

    Ellis: good point. I didn't mean to imply that technical prowess alone was going to make anyone a great artist. I just wanted to point out that magic bullets are "easy" fixes....all you have to so is spend money. The other stuff involves thinking and experiments and maybe some hard work.

    The world is full of artists with great ability and nothing to say. For all I know, I'm one of them. Maybe I'm just generating some interesting stuff for my heirs to throw out. On the other hand, I want to know if my prints are bad because I have no vision, or because I don't know who to use my tools. I have to say, I like them better now that they don't look like mud!

    Also, much of the appeal of a print from a large format negative has to do with subtleties of tone and detail. Throw that away, and you might as well use APS.

    Thanks for all the thoughtful replies.

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