[rollei_list] Re: Print Exchange
- From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 00:03:42 -0400
At 12:19 PM 5/18/2008, slobodan dimitrov wrote:
>The issue is not whether one is better than the other. What I brought
>up was the need to maintain proficiency through practice in one area
>of photography, i.e. darkroom practice.
>Using exchanges, such as postcards, prints, etc., is a way of
>providing purpose to using the darkroom.
Slobodan
I have thought a lot about what you wrote in this
message. Allow me to protest mildly on two
points and to agree with you otherwise.
First, none of us should need to use the
existence of a print exchange as an excuse to
shoot film, and you sort-of suggested this,
though I suspect that this was not what you meant to say.
Second, many of us just cannot support a darkroom
at present. I have moved houses twice in six
years, and neither of my later two houses were
set up for a convenient dark-room. My wife and I
plan on my resurrecting my dark-room here but it
is a matter of probably three years away as other
matters intrude, ranging from annoying health
issues to the need to take care of other
things. Bear in mind that I am not a regular
professional photographer and that I have a zero
budget for building another shed in the back yard
(which would both piss off the larger of my
Sulcata Tortoises, who rather regards our
spacious back yard, aka, "the Gobi Desert", as
his personal preserve, and would also lead those
of you old enough to remember Monty Python's
Flying Circus to start referring to our
Listmeister as "Arthur 'Two-Sheds' Jackson"). I
have never done a show in my life. On very rare
occasions, I will shoot a wedding or a jazz show
or a CD cover and now have the work done
commercially, but I am hardly a real
professional, so building a dark-room is a matter
of dodging zoning laws while dealing with
contractors and running various water liens und
so weiter. It is not nearly as easy as you might
suppose: I have the equipment but not an adequate space at present.
Yes, I could use the guest bath-room. It would
be exceedingly cramped and I would have to be
constantly shifting my two enlargers back into
the hall or into the bath-room and, even then,
the enlarger could only be placed on a toilet,
hardly the steadiest of perches. And my wife is
to have her knee replaced in a few weeks, and her
daughters are coming to visit, so this has to be
deferred into July, at the earliest, after the
traffic ceases, and, then, I have my own
appointment with the neurologist for this
thoughts on why my vision is getting fuzzy, as
the opthomalogists have abandoned all hope as it
seems that I am lacking an obvious problem such
as a fatal brain tumor or the like.
In the interim, I have an Epson Perfection 1200S
scanner kindly donated to me by a List member,
and I have an Epson R200 printer, on which I find
it barely possible to pay the price of the Epson
cartridges, even if others were available. Those
are tools at hand, and that is it. It will not
get much better for several years but I do expect
to get my Beseler 23CX-II enlarger with its
Rodenstock APO lenses and my Leitz V-35 back up
and running at some point. Hell, I have been
thinking about setting up a lab for art and
low-production work. I have the gear and if I
find an abandoned gas station somewhere, I might
do it. There certainly is a market for such
work, and it would not take a massive amount of funds to establish.
I do fully agree with you on several points:
-- Digital is great but only if you concentrate
on doing digital. And it is grotesquely
expensive both in terms of the cameras and the
need to buy a new one every year or three and in
terms of the computer -- I am happily working
with a 2002 Pentium-Four computer working on XP
Professional and I don't even own a DVD drive and
still have a floppy drive -- and in terms of the
software -- I believe that a basic Photoshop
package now runs around $700 or so, and this is
replaced completely every year or two. I do own
a copy of Photoshop 5 (years ago, back when Bob
Shell was still on the List, he gave me a royal
tearing for having such obsolete software) but I
cannot understand this well, so I use it to scan
and then process the scans with
Irfanview. Again, to use digital properly, you
really have to understand the entire system, and
I am limited on all points. My computer may be
old, but, then, I have a set of AR wireless
speakers, so I can crank on, say Bruce
Williams, in the evening, then grab a speaker,
and go downstairs to fry up some Jersey Pork Roll
with fixin''s (THEC, for the cognescenti: Jerry
Lehrer might get this, and so should Mark
Rabiner) (There is a diner in Roanoke, Virginia,
called the Texas Tavern for reasons never
comprehended: it is open all night and those who
eat there know how to order "a bowl of chili
with" or the like. Damn, I miss that
place.) And I can hear Bruce through it
all. He's only carried on XM locally, and these
AR speakers are a hell of a lot cheaper than an XM subscription!)
Seriously, Digital costs money and continues to
cost money which analog does not do: once we
have the gear, we have the gear, and the only
costs are for what the military calls
"consumables" -- film, chemistry, and printing
paper. The processes originate from a common
point, but have grown so desperately apart that
it is hard for those from one world to speak to a chap from the other.
And money does rule: it will cost me no less
than $10,000 to re=establish my dark-room. It
would cost my an initial like cost or more to
invest in a digital rig (camera, quality scanner,
quality printer, plus a course in how to use
Photoshop). And the consumables are much
heftier, from these rag papers that Mark Rabiner
praises to the special toners Daniel Ridings
misses. Basic fiber paper (you guys keep griping
about RC paper but who ever used that for real
prints? We all used FB paper, so let us compare
like to like). I have a Rolleiflex 2.8GX and an
F and a load of other cameras. I have he
enlargers. I have the printing trays, and so
forth. So a large investment into digital for me
is silly, especially as I am 58 and my use-by
date is only thirty years or so hence, and what I
have will outlive me, and, yes, in 2040, I will
still be able to find miniature and medium format
films and chemistry and printing papers, though
at a cost but, then, not a cost as charged by digital.
Slobodan is correct to point out, though not
directly, that you best understand photography if
you do your own darkroom work. Let's leave that one to a different day.
I joined the LUG Print Exchange and all Hell
broke loose when I singed up late. And then I
learned of Slobodan's reasonable views and so I
punted, to the great annoyance of many, though I
will be happy to send them a scan of the shot I
was going to send them digitally.
Uncle Dick Stein over on the Ha$$elblad List used
to do a print exchange. I participated one year
and I sent him the pumpkin picture as is now on
Flickr; I sent him an actual Ilfochrome from the
chrome, but I never heard back from
that. Hmm. I still suspect editorial comment,
but, then, Uncle Dick and I go back to the old
Hassie List. Its nice to have friends.
Marc
msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
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