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Thread: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

  1. #81
    Corran's Avatar
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    Re: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

    Quote Originally Posted by Pere Casals View Post
    Traditional films have a natural tonal compression in the highlights from shoulder, if we develop with an staining developer then the stain+VC combination adds an additional tonal compression in the highlights, so we may require to burn highlights with a higher filter grade. The film shoulder + the Pyro/VC compressions may be too much when added.

    A bit it's contradictory wanting the TMax linearity in the highlights and later having to use a Pyro+VC paper to emulate traditional films that have that shoulder in the highlights yet.
    You state here that Pyro + traditional film may add too much compression, while also stating it makes no sense to use on TMX, so in essence Pyro is a bad developer, and yet so many people use it as their only developer, and make excellent (technical) work.

    I have a simple question for you. On FP4 or something similar, let's say we exposure the shadows generously to get them out of the toe. Traditional "thick negative" exposure technique. At some point the upper values start to get compressed. I get that. At what point does the shoulder level out to being completely flat, therefore having NO possibility of burning anything down other than a flat, single tone, regardless of development technique? And, how does that compare to a scene with a full range of tonality - let's say, a gentle forest scene with angular but soft light from sun and clouds on a good day, with also a nice waterfall that when shot will have a rich variety of very high values that are very much higher than the surrounding area?
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  2. #82
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    Re: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

    Quote Originally Posted by Pere Casals View Post
    My "guess" is that linear films like TMax started making sense since VC paper became better and popular, because the additional flexibility from VC papers allowed to solve the complications in the printing from linear captures.

    VC paper allows to burn highlights or shadows or dodge/burn any area in the print with any specific grade.
    What actually happened is that after the new generation of films (T-Max, Ilford Delta) came out, both Kodak and Ilford modified their most popular FB and RC variable-contrast papers to have longer toes, precisely so that the new films with straighter highlight curves could be printed more easily *without* darkroom heroics like elaborate dodging and burning.

    That said, it's still not hard to conjure up a TMY negative that's effectively unprintable on silver paper in the darkroom, even on the papers tailored for the new films. More generally, my bias is that barring special circumstances, such as a picture with special historical or personal significance, a negative that takes hours of work to print is a negative that's not worth printing. Life is way too short. Those who enjoy the process of taming a difficult negative are welcome to that pleasure, but I'd rather be out and about making more new pictures or in the darkroom making more new prints.

  3. #83
    loujon
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    Re: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

    Quote Originally Posted by hornstenj View Post
    no matter how deep you dig, you won't find a pony at the bottom of the horse shit
    By fare my FAVORITE post in this thread and proves true every time.

    Not to mention the visual is a pretty damn funny one!
    Last edited by Louis Pacilla; 6-Sep-2019 at 12:45. Reason: add

  4. #84
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

    There is simply no substitute for real hands-on darkroom experience with the specifics.

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    Re: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

    Quote Originally Posted by Corran View Post
    ...sometimes, when printing from "traditional" films, highlights burn in to just a very light greyish tone with no separation
    Essentially it sounds like you have discovered that there's no such thing as an unprintable density, even at the point that the curve has compressed the useful contrast to the point of no separation & rolled off into Dmax. The biggest headache I've found with multicontrast papers is that sometimes the interplay between the emulsions and filtration can create a gap in the curves flattening the mids (almost like posterization) - usually going up half a grade cures it, but obviously means more dodge & burn are needed. A bit of flash/ fog (which can be dodged & burnt) at a lower grade than the printing grade on a multigrade paper can have more effect than a simple flash/ fog on a graded paper.

    Quote Originally Posted by Pere Casals View Post
    But AA throwed the Super-XX film into HC-110 and he also obtained a remarkable tonality.
    Super-XX's reason for its longevity was its remarkable ability to maintain a straight line no matter what CI you developed to (pretty critical for colour separation procedures etc to work) - look up the curves.
    Yet Adams seems to have preferred TXP by the time he was using HC-110 (and before that, Portrait Pan developed in D-23 which he described in a letter to Paul Strand in 1954 as "perhaps the best quality for the kind of work we do") - which deliver a rather different curve shape to Super-XX.

    Quote Originally Posted by Oren Grad View Post
    That said, it's still not hard to conjure up a TMY negative that's effectively unprintable on silver paper in the darkroom, even on the papers tailored for the new films.
    It would take some doing, especially compared to TX or similar that has rolled over the top of its shoulder. Yes, it can be a bit of a pain to deal with high contrast edges etc, but the linearity of TMY-II means that if you can rein in the density by burning, fogging, masking etc, the separation remains much better than the films that shoulder harder. For all those notional advantages, there are other films whose tonality I much prefer.

  6. #86
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

    The real-world interplay between the two VC emulsions differs with respect to not only specific product, but also developer, degree of dev, and respective amounts of exposure given to the two emulsions. Some papers will not attain full DMax unless a token amount of exposure is given to the low-contrast green-sensitive layer as well as significantly more exposure to the blue-sensitive high-contrast layer. It's a complicated topic far easier to deal with in actual printing than via technical explanation. As far as Super-XX goes, AA's opinion or habits had little relevance to that particular film's straight line application to color separations. TMax films are also capable of a very long straight line at high gamma, and will do it even more consistently than Super-XX ever did. The old standby had a serious problem developing sufficient gamma in the blue separation; therefore the gamma difference had to be made up by developing the blue neg dye matrice substantially more itself. With TMX100, all three separation can be developed together for the same amount of time and arrive at overlapping curves. TMY400 does not have this characteristic, but does allow all three colors to achieve high gamma using film dev alone. TMax grain is obviously much finer too. But what I miss about Super XX and its later cousin, Bergger 200, is how the straight line down into the shadow values went deeper than even TMax films, and I could place the threshold of discernible texture way down on Zone 0. That actually made a discernible difference in prints of extreme contrast subjects. But I only did it for 8x10 shots due to the graininess of these films. Yet it is important to match the tools to the final anticipated outcome. And that's why I work with a variety of films and not strictly TMax. I do, however, get tired of people constantly referencing AA as some kind of ultimate standard of how to print. He was significant in his time and place, and deserves high credit in the history of environmental progress as well as photography. But there are a lot of tricks he never tried, and films and papers have largely changed anyway.

  7. #87

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    Re: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

    Quote Originally Posted by Drew Wiley View Post
    ...I do, however, get tired of people constantly referencing AA as some kind of ultimate standard of how to print. He was significant in his time and place, and deserves high credit in the history of environmental progress as well as photography...
    Absolutely agree. He was arguably more important as an environmental campaigner than as an artist in his own right. And the fetishism around his methods (and especially that around his assistants) seems all rather silly to me, especially given how aesthetically limited it is.

    No serious disagreements with the rest of your post either.

  8. #88
    Alan Klein's Avatar
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    Re: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Ruttenberg View Post
    Grad NDS are not for the faint of heart. They can enhance your photo or spectacularly ruin it. But I have posted and shown many photographs using an ND of various sorts and no one ever knew. When I told them I did, they were surprised. I have also done photos where they were ruined because I use d the ND incorrectly. As I stated, it is a tool to be used when and where appropriate andbit is not a panacea.

    On another note, my first box of 8x10 D100 arrived. Better to practice on 25 sheets at 123 bucks than north of 250 for 25 Tmax which apparently only comes in 400 iso for 8x10. 5 dollar a sheet is cool but 10 bucks a sheet is steep when learning a new camera.
    Steve Could you provide links to a good and bad photo of each using the grad ND?

  9. #89

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    Re: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

    Quote Originally Posted by Drew Wiley View Post
    Some papers will not attain full DMax unless a token amount of exposure is given to the low-contrast green-sensitive layer
    Quote Originally Posted by interneg View Post
    No serious disagreements with the rest of your post either.
    This is LOL.

    1) There are 3 emulsions in a VC paper, not 2.

    2) You may mix several washed emulsions and coat a single layer, crystals mostly retain the original dye sensitization.

    3) When you expose the blue only sensitive emulsion the other two always get also exposed, with blue only always you can get paper DMax



    Before machinegunning AA you may need to go back to the photo school. Ansel knew his tools, it looks you don't.

    AA made more in a single day before breakfast than Drew, interneg and me will make in our entire lifes, some respect will be nice.


    Michellangello made La Pietà with simple tool, a hammer. He knew his tool.





    Quote Originally Posted by interneg View Post
    his assistants
    Don't tell me that you ignore the Alan Ross Masking way... This is the most powerfull wet printing tool we have today.

  10. #90

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    Re: I take back every bad word I have said about Kodak...

    Quote Originally Posted by Corran View Post
    You state here that Pyro + traditional film may add too much compression, while also stating it makes no sense to use on TMX, so in essence Pyro is a bad developer, and yet so many people use it as their only developer, and make excellent (technical) work.
    Sorry if I was not clear enough: Pyro and TMax are great, TMX + Pyro combination is impressive.

    It is contradictory to praise TMax linearity and later compressing highlights with the stain+VC effect.


    Quote Originally Posted by Corran View Post
    At what point does the shoulder level out to being completely flat, therefore having NO possibility of burning anything down other than a flat, single tone, regardless of development technique?

    Negative film records detail with even insane amounts of overexposure, at least six or eight stops. Silvermax (not LF) for example can reach 4.0D, and many films reach well beyond 3.0D.

    Another thing is printing in the darkroom those insanely high densities. Most of what we do with custom film developmet is making easy to print that.

    With a custom development (POTA) we may record even 20 stops, see shots with nukes exploding.

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