The Picker Newsletters revisited

[Kevin Crisp]

I've found a number of his products useful over the years and all are still performing:

1. The 4x5 camera bag. Still my favorite. I like having access to everything from the top. Once it went from the smooth vinyl to the woven fabric it was better.

2. His viewing filters.

3. Compensating enlarging timer.

4. Development timer.

5. Two print washers.

6. The French printing paper he sold was excellent and I wish I still had some.

7. The improved version of the Pentax spot meter. Not sure it was really that great an improvement. I have a modified and unmodified version and both work fine. The modified one will severely underexpose if you meter through a red filter, which it isn't supposed to do.

On the down side....

1. The tacking iron. The smooth green surface broke and flaked off almost immediately. But it was very thin and could slide in under a trimmed print/tissue combination for tacking on the board.

2. The big, heavy surveyor's tripods. What was I thinking?

3. The case for the above, which requires you to take the head off when you put the tripod in the case. (He was pissed when I returned it.)

4. The last generation 4x5 that came out of the association with Wisner. Yeah, you could put a wide angle bellows on it, but using even a 90mm with the standard bellows was tough.

Since I learned that hypo is heavier than water I keep it on lower shelves.

[Sal Santamaura]

The hype for his Zone VI products and his procedures often had little or no connection to reality. His marketing schtick was to invent pseudoscience out of whole cloth, and then to get cranky, dismissive and self-righteous when anyone objected.

Meaning he'd have been even more successful in today's environment.

[Drew Wiley]

Yeah, he could be a patent medicine wagon barker at times. And some of his products were a disappointment, like his so-so surveyor tripod conversions. But he had numerous home runs too : the simple reliable compensating development timers, cold light monitoring devices, and truly superb Brilliant Bromide graded paper. I never took the bait on his modified meters, but numerous other practitioners found them useful. I never subscribed to his Newsletters either.

[Alan9940]

Like Kevin, I have a number of Fred's products that I still use to this day. The only piece of equipment I had an issue with was my Compensating Development Timer. I noticed that it seemed to be running slower than it should when I was pretty sure my bath temp was 20C. To check, I pulled out my trusty Kodak Process thermometer to ensure a 20C bath, fired up the timer and compared against a stop watch. It was definitely running slow. I figured I've been using the thing fairly regularly for 40 years so...no surprise it got "tired." Me, too! I thought that was the end of this timer, but I was able to track down Paul H who graciously agreed to repair it, for FREE! I mean...I know Fred said his stuff was guaranteed for life, but I didn't think that would apply over a decade later!

I do have his modified Pentax Digital Spot meter. No idea if any of the "voodoo magic" he advertised about this meter makes it any better than any other light meter, but the only exposure errors I've ever gotten over many years were my own fault.

[RichardRitter]

If you were a subscriber to the newsletter during the camera problem times there a newsletter that went out with an error. It was corrected.

Story was Fred was running late on writing the newsletter. He finely wrote it took it to the typesetter with no one proof reading it. Mainly everything that was printed was proof read by at less 4 people. Press run was done and out the door they went. Once they went out in the mail we got the remaining copies back for stock. That was the first anyone got to see the current copy. Patrice was reading it and found and error. She is not a photographer but has read everything Fred written. She came into my office with a copy and ask me to read it she said there was an error. There was.

The remaining stock was sent to Putney paper and turned into toilet paper.

[tundra]

I have been rereading Fred Picker's newsletters, which spanned about two decades, from 1973 to 1995. For those unfamiliar, Picker was an accomplished commercial photographer, who later created Zone VI Studios, which held workshops and began producing photo equipment as well as selling others', carefully selected and personally well-tested, revolving around the needs of the large format B&W photographer, which was Picker's passion. The newsletter can be downloaded in a single PDF file here:

https://ia801606.us.archive.org/10/i...ewsletters.pdf

While, I'm not so much a fan of Picker's photography, I bought his videos (now on YouTube) and have some of his equipment, and his workshops must have been wonderful. The newsletters are a wonderful educational source for the thoughtful photographer, full of SOLID practical advice on basics and his own and others insights into the creative process and the medium, and woven with delightful humor, especially when Picker found something to worthy of ridicule. For a while you could even win a free 100-sheet box of paper by submitting the choicest idiocy written in photographic publications.

I never met the man; I wish I had been able to afford a workshop. He had very specific ideas of what he wanted in a film, developer, and paper, but he approached neither the medium nor art in general with blinders narrowing his vision to his own primary pursuits. Though the newsletters include some material long out of date, such as discussion of papers long gone, there is so much else in them that I am finding them a delight to read once again.

I had the opportunity to chat with him on the phone some time after he retired. Although he was strongly opinionated in print, he was warm and gracious on the phone, asking me many questions about what kind of film, paper, and developer I was using.

I have a full set of those newsletters and, though some of the material is dated, there is a lot of gold still left in them.

Some of the products he sold were just great. I still use his VC CL head on my old DII. A few years ago, I realized I was so addicted to the compensating development timer that I needed a way to either build another exact same on or find a replacement. I ended up designing and building my own:

https://gitbucket.tundraware.com/tundra/devtimer

[Peter Lewin]

Might as well chime in, since I still have the full set of newsletters, a couple of his books, and fond memories of his view camera workshop, the first I ever took. The only product of his which was a dud was his way-too-heavy “lightweight” tripod. To this day I use a bunch of his products in my darkroom (VC head, compensating enlarging and developing timers, and 11x14 washer), and his modified Pentax digital in the field. Of his recommended lenses, I still use the Schneider 210 Symmar-S fairly often, and the 120 rarely. Like Alan9940, my original compensating development timer went off by more than I could adjust with the internal set screws, but the replacement I found is still running strong. So, after a bunch of words, I have positive memories of Fred, and have a high regard for most of his ZoneVI products.

[bmikiten]

I ran across Fred's stuff early on in my photo career. I read it and considered it to be an introduction to large format photography wrapped in a pseudo-expertise and quite a bit of marketing. I spoke to him a few times and was always surprised at the two different Fred Pickers I dealt with. At one point I was reviewing his products for a photo magazine and found a few issues (with Brilliant paper and some of his statements in newsletters) that needed addressing. When purchasing the products, I didn't (for obvious reasons) disclose what I was doing. After testing, I needed to address the issues in fairness to him and the company and he was a bit belligerent making it clear that Art and Sensitometric sciences really don't mix. I remember him making a statement like 'I don't see graphs, I see images'. I had great respect for Paul H and even used one of his books in my Engineering classes. In the end, the article wasn't published due to the immense amount of ad money he spent every month. That was a lesson learned as well. As a manufacturer later in life, I was again introduced to the very hard link between ad dollars spent in the quantity of positive nature of the reviews. Now we have the internet.

When we started doing workshops across the US, I was again running across lots of Zone VI devotes. It made no sense to continue the arguments. In the end, I believe whatever path brings you to photography and bettering your final product is ok. If it is a bit of snake oil, you'll learn that as well and grow past it.

To the better outcome!

[jk0592]

Once in a while, I read the newsletters, although I find the online version easier to consult than the full set that I have. And many of his products, stabilized cold head, compensating timer, modified pentax lightmeter, all of these still working after so many years. I always was very satisfied with these. I once wrote to Fred about his cold head on my 45MXT, and was very happy from his prompt written reply. All in all, ZoneVI opened more serious and systematic photography for me.