I have a rather large collection of old photography handbooks (some of which I bought new). Many remain valuable if you still engage in wet photography and some, which cover camera technique, apply equally to digital (I prefer to call it electronic) photography. Kodak's series "How to Make Good Pictures" is a very straight forward elementary book aimed mainly at those just above the level of snap-shooters. There were many editions the changes mainly to keep them current with Kodak products of the time. Every manufacturer of photographic materials had some sort of similar book. Some published much more advanced books such as the text books written by Kenneth Meese of Kodak. I also collect photographic materials catalogs when I can find them; Kodak, AGFA, Ansco, Dupont, all published sample books of printing paper. They are quite interesting. Of the ones I have the prints have survived pretty well except for the Dupont book where are badly oxidized. Agfa and Ansco made some very interesting papers although some of the more extreme AGFA surfaces would not be acceptable today. When I began photography seriously in junior highschool, I had a couple of mentors. They advised some special formulas and techniques and it was not until I dropped them in favor of the methods in the Kodak Reference Handbook that I began to get good negatives and prints. Kodak was often denigrated but, in fact, they wanted their customers to get good results and told us how. I wish I had discovered that sooner, it would have saved me a lot of frustration.
-- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles WB6KBL dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx----- Original Message ----- From: "bobkiss @caribsurf.com" <bobkiss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 10:02 AM Subject: [pure-silver] NO ONE ELSE? was NOSTALGIA LANE...
I guess no one else likes any of these old books? On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 11:39 AM, bobkiss @caribsurf.com < bobkiss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:DEAR LIST,From time to time I can't help taking a short walk down nostalgia lane so I look at the books that were buried in the box with my father's darkroom gear when he gave me permission to revive it and set it up. He insisted that I read them all before I could actually use the chems to process film and make prints. This was around 1962. I have them righthere: 1) Modern Developing Methods from The Edwal Labs2) Developing and Printing Made Easy from GAF (General Aniline and FilmCorp) 3) Everybody's Photo Course "A US Camera Book" 4) How To Make Good Pictures by KodakThey all show copyright dates of 1945-46, reminding me that my Dad began this hobby soon after coming home from WW II, 5 years before I wasborn.From our contemporary perspective, most of the example photos are truly cheesy but there are also some lovely examples of late Pictorialism. Also there are some interesting formulae which I haven't seen in later volumes. Anyhow, they bring me memories of my "yute" as My Cousin Vinnysaid in the movie... CHEERS! BOB
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