[rollei_list] Re: Verichrome
- From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 15:35:15 -0700
----- Original Message -----
From: <sanders@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 8:29 AM
Subject: [rollei_list] Verichrome
Awhile back, I bought a brick of Verichrome from John
Lehman.
(I tried to snag his last cache of it last month on eBay but
got
outbid). I've finally gotten around to shooting some of it,
with
a Brownie Hawkeye, and posted the results over on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandersnyc/5778974777/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandersnyc/5792220908/
Being a Brownie, it's hard to say what the exposure value
was
-- probably close to box speed. I processed in 1:50 Rodinal
for
13 minutes. The film seems to want more light but I got
enough
shadow detail for a printable negative. I'll get it nailed,
just as I
run out of my stash of the stuff.
The pictures have something of the look of 1930s
pictorialism. Partly, its the slight softness but also
perhaps the pose and other factors. Not a criticism: some
pictorialism was just kitch but the original was not.
Box camera lenses are typically very simple and have
few corrections. The lack of correction for spherical
aberration is partly what gives them a sort of infinite
depth of field but also a sort of soft blur typical of
soft-focus leses; a soft image with a core sharp one. Mostly
they are not chromatically corrected and relied on the film
being insensitive to red light, most box camera film was
orthochromatic. The original Verichrome was ortho film,
replaced with Verichrome-Pan around 1960. I used a lot of
V-P, mostly in Rolleis, it has a nice look. Mostly I
processed it in D-76. Rodinal has good tonal qualities but,
for me, is too grainy for smaller format so I used it mostly
for sheet film.
From the published data Plus-X roll film should have
very similar tone rendition to V-P.
Box cameras with simple meniscus lenses are typically
f/11, sometimes f/16. Shutter speeds were intended to be
around 1/50th but are often slower. 1/50th is about the
slowest shutter speed for hand holding a camera without
motion blur problems. The "Sunny 16" rule would indicate a
film speed of around EI-25 to 50. Old box camera film was
probably close to this but keep in mind that the ISO speed
system carries over the criteria of the original Kodak Speed
Method of giving the _ minimum _ exposure consistent with
good shadow detail. The old Kodak research on which it is
based showed that less exposure, even by a little, degraded
the quality of the image while even several stops more
exposure made little differenct in quality. Its always safe
to increase exposure by a stop or so over that indicated by
using the ISO speed.
Rodinal also tends to reduce film speed a little
compared to D-76. The difference is only about half to 3/4
stop, usually within the latitude of the film, but here
again, increasing exposure a bit won't hurt.
Another thing is that box cameras were usually designed
to give minimal exposures under average lighting conditions
since the sightly thin negatives would compensate somewhat
for the lack of correction for spherical aberration
especially when the film was developed to a fairly high
gamma as was common practice in photo-finishing.
--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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