The Slowest Light In The World

We are told that light goes at 299,792,458 metres per second. That may be so when there is company present but I can assure you that when you are using a pinhole camera the stuff travels considerably slower. While you might get your ordinary photography with a digital camera in half a second the pinhole camera will require most of the day.

The reason for this is simple: the digital camera opens up to a maximum aperture of f:1.8 and uses an ISO of 6400 - the pinhole camera opens up to f: 248 and uses an ISO of 100. If you opt for the paper negative you have an ISO of 0.6 and if you put a yellow filter in front of the thing you have an ISO of peanut butter. As far as making pictures, choose smooth or crunchy...

Okay, this is not as bad as it seems. The Ilford Obscura camera will not take racing-car pictures at Wanneroo while the cars are circling the track, but it will take pictures of them while they are in the pits. And with a bit of management the pit pictures will be free of human interference. The camera system will also be suited for landscape shots on cloudless days, dreamy sea pictures, and interior views...as long as you can stay inside for an hour.

The calcu-later* kit that comes in the pack enables you to see what the equivalent shoot time will be for the Obscura compared to the results from a standard light meter. Those people who do not have an old hand-held meter can always use the screen readout from their digital camera to tell them what the standard exposure for a scene is - and then you can dial it onto the converter. But be aware that the converter dials are not corrected for reciprocity failure.

This is a phenomenon that occurs when you are using really long exposures - the recording medium gets less sensitive the longer the time is extended. A rough rule of thumb for the really long ones will be to double what the calcu-later says. Most pinhole shots benefit from longer exposure.

Of course the whole business happens on a tripod. In the case of the Obscura, though, as it has a flat bottom, it can be placed on any solid surface for the duration of that exposure. You set it, open the shutter, and read a book until the time comes to close it. In case of a dull day, I recommend you start on " War and Peace " and go on to reading a comic if you finish before the camera is ready.

You might laugh at this ( and you might laugh now, thank you...) but even with f:16 lenses and 400 ISO films in medium format cameras I remember leaving shutters open for 20 minutes to record projected images on a screen in a darkened studio. Literally set and forget.

A question from the readers; " What exposure times do you use  if you are using studio flash? ". I don't know, but as I have a studio flash outfit and tabletop models that will not move, I intend to find out. The trick will be to use multiple pops of the strobe system to lay more and more light onto the emulsion. I intend to use a digital setup to tell me what would be successful with a standard lens and then convert it with the calcu-later. I'll bet that will also need double the number of pops...

* Pun, John, pun...

20 Square Inches Of Trouble - Sheet Film

No apologies for the inches, children. It is what the adults use to measure photographic surfaces.

Even if we do give in to buying inkjet paper in A4, A3 and A2 sizes, we still get boxes of 6 x 4 and 5 x 7 from Ilford. And we measure print sizes in 8 x 10, 11 x 14, 10, 12, and 20 x 24 as well - it must put the wind up to the bureaucrats in the EU standards Department something chronic.

We also measure one of the standard sizes in the industry for sheet film as 4 x 5 inches. Europeans tried for years to make this into 10 x 12 centimetres but it never really took off - people still think of 5 x 4 or 4 x 5. 20 square inches of sensitive emulsion to put into the new Ilford Obscure pinhole camera - for good or ill. There is a 10-sheet box of it included with the kit - Ilford Delta 100 - a tabular grain film of excellent tonality.

Note: you can also get Ilford HP 5 and Ilford Delta 400 film in 4 x 5 packs from the regular fridges at the Camera Electronic shops. They are the larger 25-sheet boxes.

The convention of sheet film is familiar to all the old hands - but newbies to large format need to remember that the sensitive emulsion side of the film is TOWARD you when you can feel the film notches on the right hand top corner of the film. You will feel, rather than see them as you will be in total darkness for this loading and unloading procedure.

In the case of the Obscura, as soon as you are sure it really is entirely dark, open the box, locate that upper right notched corner, and lay the sheet into the large of he two boxes. Then drop the smaller box into it and press until the magnets catch. You are loaded for ( extremely slow ) bears. Unloading is the reverse of the procedure, and you can make use of the three-tray spare film box that came in the kit to hold your exposed film for processing later.

Now 4 " x 5 " is a little bit larger than the sensor on the average digital camera or mobile phone....and records a geat deal of information. The pinhole of the Obscura may be laying in a slightly soft image, but it will be laying a lot of it in there. If you were to make a contact print of the resultant negative - provided it was a good exposure - you would be amazed at the amount of detail that has been captured. If it is a bad exposure, you will be struggling to see anything.

The best hint I can give with the end result is for people who have good scanners like the Epson V700 or 800 series. You'll have a sheet film holder in your standard Epson kit and can easily translate a negative to a digital file. I do it all the time using the " Home " setting in the software. There is plenty of detail captured from the sheet negative.

Users of sheet film who develop their films with traditional developers like Rodinal have sometimes bemoaned the grain structure that it produces. Scanned work in small sizes exhibits none of this problem and the contrast of the grain is excellent. Remember that you can also use Kodak Portra sheet film for colour work and have it developed at a professional lab.

Every Man His Own Fox Talbot - Paper Negatives

Do you have an abbey window handy? Do you have a top hat? Do you have a new Ilford Obscura pinhole camera kit? Well you too can be Henry Fox Talbot and be the envy of your friends at the camera club.

Okay, it is not quite the same as using glass lenses in one of HFT's famous 'mousetrap ' cameras and your finished product is not going to be made on salted paper but the procedure is similar and if you choose historical subjects you can give yourself a feeling for the past that digital work just does not provide. Sure, computer manipulation and plug-ins will deliver the calotype look, but actually going out there and doing a very long exposure provides the experience as well.

Just be prepared for foolish abuse if you opt to do it in Victorian clothing. Perth is not as sophisticated as it likes to think. Trust me on this...

Okay - why even think of this? Because paper negatives have a charm and an aesthetic all their own. And they are devilishly hard to achieve with conventional camera gear - even if you have 4 x 5 or larger film holders, a wooden field camera, and that top hat. Perth's bright sun can overpower most camera lenses looking in on standard photographic paper, even if the aperture is down to f:22. You need to be able to get extremely small apertures - f:248 for instance - to allow you sufficient time to open and close a shutter by manual means.

The shutter on the Ilford Obscura is a simple dropping flap. It has a closed position magnet as well as a open position one, so you need no fear inadvertently exposing the film or paper. When the camera is firmly screwed to a tripod, there should be no movement of the thing as you operate the flap. Of course, this may be very insignificant for an exposure lasting minutes, and when you opt to use the sheets of Ilford Multigrade IV paper as your recording emulsion, you will be spending minutes with the shutter open.

The exposure ISO of the paper is about .6. The calcu-later will let you translate this into a time, but realyy, give it a bit more time. If you have access to a sunny photospot nearb your darkroom you can profitably experiment to see just how long you need shoot to give a good negative.

Loading and developing paper negatives is a lot easier than doing film as you can do it under the light of a safelamp. Once you have the paper negative you can scan it in as a direct print and then press command/I on your image editing program and bring it up as a positive. From there you can calotype it to your heart's content.

The heading image is a paper neg of Perth from Heathcote taken some years ago with a conventinal lensed camera. I will try the same view with the Obscura and see what the results are like.

An Obscure Product From Ilford

 

There are times when you just have to let yourself go. You have to go out and go mad. Office Christmas parties and federal elections come to mind, though the snacks are better at the latter than the former...

In the case of photography, we all need a dose of fun now and again, and I have decided to take my enjoyments wit a new product from Ilford - the Obscura camera kit.

The box you see with the inspirational if slightly twee slogans on the outside contains a bargain - a fully functional 4 x 5 pinhole camera, 30 sheets of recording media, and exposure calculater* and a book of instructions. The whole thing is $ 50 from the new Camera Electronic Murray Street shop, and they have plenty in stock. Note: I did not get this as a free sample - I paid out my own money for it...

Well, the camera is well made. It is essentially two boxes that slide in upon each other and are kept closed by small magnets - you'll see them as the bright round dots in the illustrations. The box that forms the inner case locks the recording sheet into registration and gives the negative a border. The boxes seem to be formed MDF board.

The pinhole is laser-cut and very precise - about f: 248...an optimal size for the 4" x 5" negative. The shutter is s simple rotary flap that is held closed or shut with those shiny magnets. There is a tripod socket in the bottom of the thing.

There is a sheet of decorative stickers with one valuable inclusion - a sight-line sticker that you put on the top surface of the box to give a rough idea what they camera will see.

The media included is 10 sheets of  4 x 5 Ilford Delta 100 film and 20 sheets of Ilford Multigrade IV paper also cut to 4 x 5. There is an empty 3-tray box to help with storage of exposed films later. There is also a sheet containing printed dials that you can assemble into an exposure calculater* and Ilford have been thoughtful enough to include a plastic pop rivet for the dial.

The only other things that I need to complete the outfit are:

1. A tripod. The trusty Cullmann 622 will do fine.

2. An exposure meter. The dear old Gossen Lunasix 3 will be hauled out.

3. A change bag. Dang - I gave mine away a year ago. Hate to spend money on another. I'll make one from an IKEA cardboard box and a couple of black wool socks...

4. A darkroom. I live in a darkroom, so no problem.

5. A plastic developing tray. Got one.

6. A graduated measuring cylinder and thermometer. Got 'em.

7.  Bottles of film developer, paper developer, and rapid fixer. All my old stuff has long since been tossed so I got three fresh bottles.

8. A copy of " Pinhole Photography" by Eric Renner. My copy is sitting on the desk as I type. Younger readers may opt for looking up the subject on the internet, but Renner is the bible for the subject. His exposure tables are invaluable.

Now more on how this is all to be used in a future weblog column. I shall fast forward to slowing down completely.

* That is not bad spelling or a mis-print. Plan and calculate all you like, but all pinhole photography requires more light. Just set the shutter open and come back later...

The Paper Shuffle - Part Two - The Ilford Part Of Town

Ilford have had a colourful business history over the last deccade but they have never stopped producing the sort of inkjet paper that is a standard of the industry.

Students, amateurs, and professionals have all been brought into contact with the Galerie series of inkjet papers at some stage of their careers. Whether in cut sheet or rolls, this paper has gone through printers from all the major manufacturers with very little trouble...indeed I think it would be fair to say that the standard Ilford papers are never the cause of printing problems - any difficulties people experience can be put down to printer, ink, or computer instructions. Or operator error...

There have been a number of Ilford options with especial composition - We had the Silk Mono and the various Fine Art surfaces for a while, and there are sample packs right now in the shop with 4 variations of art surface for people to try...but the old stagers on the Inkjet rack have always been Galerie Smooth Gloss and Galerie Smooth Pearl.

Here's the Smooth Gloss under the Tokina macro lens with glancing light from an Elinchrom studio flash:

You can see dust particles but no real texture. Ink flowed onto this surface with the correct profile sets quickly and stays precisely where it is squirted. Ideal for extreme detail.

Here is the Smooth Pearl:

It is a slightly nubbly surface, if that is a permissable word, but note that the thing still has a sealed surface - ink will not spread sideways though there is a little more texture. The effect visually is the reduce the sudden glare of a light illuminating the surface and to slightly lessen the blackness of dark shadows. Subtle, but there.

Now here is a matt surface from the company - Smooth Fine Art paper. It is double sided and makes an ideal substrate for studio-made greeting cards and small handout brochures.

A great deal more breakup on the surface and a noticeable "lay" or grain direction in the paper. You see it running toward you in this view, but the way the sheet was orientated in the test rig means that you are looking across the sheet from the side rather than down from the top. The grain direction is consistent in the packet.

The surface is open, as befits a matt paper, and will absorb more ink - a factor that is taken into account in the dedicated Ilford profile. It also needs, in some printers, ink that is dedicated to the surface. My Epson R3000 uses their MK 157 ink for this and every time I need to print on this sort of matt surface I need to change ink. The Epson Ink Division accountancy department loves this...

Note that though the surface is more absorbent, the paper is extremely dense, and will not show bleed-through to the other printing surface.

Ilford supply the proper profiles for these papers on-line and you can route the information through to your printer easily. The other method - letting the printer deal with the paper on the basis of an internal profile that has been worked out for another proprietary paper - is unofficially successful too. I have let the Epson treat Ilford paper as if it were similar Epson paper and it has worked out well, but you never read that here...

Finally - as a comparison, here is the surface of standard Reflex copier paper - the sort of stuff you print letters and invoices on:

Poorer colour, more absorbent, less ability to render blacks, and floppy texture. You will not make a masterpiece for your club competition on it...

The Paper Shuffle - Part One - Lost In Space

If you are an old-school photographer like me you may occasionally be lost - lost on the back streets of  a new suburb at dusk before they put up the street signs, or lost for words at the latest horrible hipster trend...or just lost when it comes to which inkjet printing paper to use.

In the DOD ( Dear Old Days ) of fibre darkroom paper there was Kodak, Ilford, Fujifilm, and Agfa. There were 3-5 grades ranging from too soft to too hard, and there were imaginatively-named surfaces. Most of these were due to commercial imagination and you only ever printed on them once...but you could always fall back to matt, lustre, and gloss and find something for your film image. Single or double weight was a choice you made mostly on economic grounds.

 The advent of resin-coated paper was either wonderful or horrible, depending on whether you had water and time. The surface choices decreased.

Then the inkjet papers came along - and all of a sudden we had to figure out what gsm meant and what a profile was. Most of us still don't know what this is but we faithfully do what the paper makers say to do and generally things work out. I have adopted the sensible approach of letting the printer decide what it wants to do - the same approach I take to the relatives and the cat - and I am satisfied with the peace of mind.

But there's always that desire for a little more science - for a little more precision in the process. It has driven more people than I mad, so I am not willing to engage in the worst of the geekiness, but I have decided to look closely and see what it is that we are being given. I've no lab facilities but I do have a studio and I've decided to see what studio light can tell me about the printing papers that are on offer.

The methodology will be to to use grazing light to skim the papers while taking a macro picture of the surface. I do not expect to see much variation in the smoothness of a glossy paper, but I am curious to see what the pearl and lustre surfaces look like. The rougher and wilder papers are next after that - right down to the hand-laid ones.

I also want to see what relative amount of reflectance the papers send back, though the measurement may prove difficult. Not interested in percentages or numbers - interested in the look of the thing.

Finally, I want to see whether the gsm rating really does translate into a practical indicator for stiffness in the final product. I have long admired the stock that printers use for business cards  and other signage and have looked in vain for it in the inkjet papers. Home-made business cards, fake drivers licences, and eviction notices just do not have the dignity of the ones made on offset presses if they do not have the same crispness.

And no-one likes counterfeit money when it is soggy. I have had limited success with my line of  $ 7 and $ 8 Australian notes despite the colourful artwork and the choice of Australian Idol contestants as figureheads.

This column will publish results in a forthcoming series.

Uncle Dick

Photokina 2016

Here it comes, folks. The biennial German trade fair, Photo Kina, for all things photographic. Clatter down off the fire-step into the dugout and hunker down...expect gas...

If you are an fan of the forums and the rumour sites you will know exactly what the new gear coming out will be - and I'll bet you have debated it at length at your camera club... championing the brand name or system that you own over all others whilst covertly calculating how much you'd get as a trade in if you swapped to something else. The answer to that is simple; not enough. But that won't stop you...

If you have wangled a leave pass and a European plane ticket and a fold-up cot in the corridor of some German hotel, you can be off this coming week to the show with the gleeful anticipation of a dose of jet lag, beer lag, and sore feet at the end of it all.

The smug superiority that you used to be able to exhibit when you came back is a little dimmed these days as most of the big exhibitors hold press conferences that go world-wide in a flash. You won't be able to bring back secret world-shattering news as it will have preceded you by days - but you can bring back brochures, pamphlets, trade samples, souvenir pins, throwaways, and as many images as you can cram onto the cards in your cameras. Also gastro and scammed credit cards, so beware.

Cameras? You're going to take three - one for just happy snaps, one for serious work, and one for insurance in case the others fail. This will involve taking three chargers and leads and an enormously complex plastic plug that almost fits into continental light sockets. You will lose two of the chargers and one of the cords, but that damned converter plug will remain with you for the next 15 years...

One thing to consider: for years you have puzzled at the instruction manuals that are packed with the cameras and at the way they use English. You have wondered whether the people who write them can actually speak English at all. Well, you're about to find out. If you have some spare time and can find a person who speaks Greek, you might take them along to the trade stand of a Chinese manufacturer who is trying to sell at a German trade show and get them to ask a technical question in their native language. It's mean fun, but it's still fun.

Note: All of the above is powered by a strong sense of jealousy on the part of this hack writer. Perhaps in two years time...

Our directors are on the ground at Photo Kina this week so see all the news on the Camera Electronic Facebook page as it rolls in!

Spotty Herbert

Shooting an impromptu product coverage in the shop one morning meant making an improvised scoop out of a roll of Ilford printing paper. It's good paper, and gives a spotless finish.

To get a neutral white balance in the mixed shop lighting I used the Custom White Balance provision on my Fujifilm X-T10 camera  to reset it in one go. Lots of cameras have this same feature - you point the lens at a plain white surface that is illuminated like your subject and the camera measures the colour temperature with one shot. If you say OK to the result you have a steady basis to shoot from, colour-wise.

Only trouble is when I shot I had a real spot - obviously my sensor had picked up a lugie the size of a Volkswagen  and when I stopped down to f:14 it showed up something terrible. Well, I opened the lens a little, put on flash, and resigned myself to cloning it out in the finished products - I didn't have time to wait for a sensor clean.

That's the three choices you have; clean, clone or claggy pictures.

After I got home I decided to see if I could clean the sensor myself with a puff of air - I wouldn't touch the filter in front of a sensor with anything else - I leave that to the staff at Camera Electronic when it gets really bad - but figured a puff from a blower would be fairly safe. As the spot was in the upper left of the picture the offending dirt must have been in the lower right area - I puffed carefully all round the place and then took another diagnostic picture of a clear blue sky and small aperture.

No good. Still spotty. Puff again. Still spotty. Then I happened to glance at the rear element of the lens.

The spot. Sitting there. One puff and it was gone, and with the last photo....voila:

This is the wide angle/short focal length trap that has got me before. When you use this sort of gear and then stop down to f:11-22 you run a risk of picking up dark spots from gunk on the rear elements of your lenses or light spots from the front elements of filters in front of the lenses. It can be deadly if you are firing a flash at a subject against a dark backdrop.

The answer, as Ernest our technician says, is to take as much care with the element surfaces as you are urged to do with the sensor - and to make sure that you are not re-contaminating everything

each time you heave a lens on and off. Clean out the camera bag, make sure your clothing is not shedding itself into the camera.

And when you are next in the shop, whack out some cash for a Camera Electronic lens cloth or some packets of Hoodman Lens Cleanse wet wipes. The money is little enough and the time you take clearing the optical pathway will be repaid 100 x over in not having to clone stamp every darn file you make.

When To Use A Pro Lab - 350 Reasons

The new digital photographer can be forgiven for being confused by any number of aspects of the sport - there seem to be so many to learn.

He or she used to be confronted only by which film to use, does the orange needle match the mark on the light meter, and is the Chemist open so that I can drop my film in? Then in two weeks it was should I buy another roll of film or a bag of barley sugar and box of bandaids?

Now it is white balances, tonal curves, video frame rates, colour spaces, and all the rest. No wonder they have started putting an " Automatic " setting on new cameras and dedicating a knob or lever to it. The relief for some shooters must be palpable.

It is nearly the same for the shooter who wants paper prints of their work. What do they do now that the chemist has gone out of photofinishing and reverted to selling overpriced vitamin supplements and something for the weekend? What are the alternatives with that card full of images?

a. Print it yourself at home on a multifunction printer from Officeworks. No, please - go ahead and do it. The printer will only cost you a hundred bucks and you'll be so disappointed with the results that you won't even have to buy expensive ink cartridges later to try again. The larger multifunctions make attractive pots for cactus.

b. Get Officeworks to print it for you on their big machine. This sometimes works to some extent if your file is perfect and your need is modest. Do not expect art. They are not going to correct your flaws. GIGO.

c. Get an Epson photo-quality printer and do it at home. This works. Start off with the Epson Surecolor SC-600 and move up to the SC-800 if you want larger prints and cheaper ink. Then cast your eyes at the even larger range of large format printers from the company. They will not be cheap but their quality of print is professional and you can be sure that the prints that emerge with K-3 ink on quality Epson, Ilford, Permajet, or Hahnemuhle paper will be be permanent and accurate.

But sad to relate, you are still going to have to be doing a good job with the files. You'll be telling the computer what you want, but you'll have to make sure your monitor is showing you the truth. ( Hint: Spyder colour calibrators, EIZO screens...) And you'll have to make sure that the computer tells the printer the right thing to do ( Hint: either, you, the computer, or the printer will have to manage the colour. Decide early.) And you'll have to make sure that the printer knows what paper you're using ( Hint: paper profiles.)

You will also need to ensure that you put the paper in the right side up. Do not ask this writer how he knows that. Take it for granted that he knows...

A little unsure about all the settings and alternatives? Then you need the Automatic solution...

d. Take the files on a hard drive, CD, or memory card to a professional photofinishing lab. They have not disappeared with the advent of digital - in fact the good ones are going strong because they are the good ones. And they are resourceful, technically skilled, and helpful.

A visit to a professional photofinisher like Fitzgerald Photo Labs at 350 Fitzgerald Street, North Perth
is almost as easy as it used to be to put your films into the chemist. There are real people there who can look at your files and advise you on the optimum sizes that they can be printed. They can suggest paper surfaces for larger works. They can frame the bigger prints - and there are so many options for modern display that you can never run out of a fresh decor idea.

They are able to handle film needs as well - lots of people still shoot on film - and converting the negatives and transparencies to digital files is easy these days. You can get your work back in dual form - digital as well as paper print.

Again you can be sure that the pictures you pay for will be permanent. The big labs use Epson K-3 ink on their big machines.

The joy of a big lab like Fitzie's is that the printing people are there to talk to you and they know what they are doing from long experience. It is not just machine minding in a large furniture or discount store for them. Their job is a profession and they produce professional quality - and that's why Camera Electronic depend on them for our advertising banners and promotional prints. These need to be right and they ARE right.

For those of you  point out that I have forgotten the discount store and the furniture shop...well I remember them when I need tee shirts or kitchen chairs. But not when I need good quality photofinishing.

Twenty Experiments For The Artist

Experimental art is something that breaks the boundaries. So does a Swiss post-bus going out of control down a mountain. Your appreciation of it is related to whether you are above watching it leave or below watching it arrive...

Not all of us are experimenters - some of us are timid, preferring the safe haven of established procedures to the wild seas of new experience. And that is about as much colourful imagery from me as you can stand.

We're selling paper. Ilford paper for inkjet printers. Heaven knows we sell a lot of it, because the stuff we sell is standard paper that works pretty much every time.

Oh, you can still fail - you can have horrible uncontrolled images in your computer and send them to your printer in a horrible uncontrolled way and get hideous results. But that is a matter of morality and screen calibration - we sell calibrators and there are people who can teach you morality. Ilford just provides good paper.

The types we sell most of are their Galerie Smooth Pearl and Smooth Gloss. Get within a coo-ee of the right colour management and use fresh ink and you'll never be disappointed in the results. That's a given.

But if you wish to try your eye, luck, and ink on a bit more artistic result, you may want to try different surfaces and consistencies in the paper - specifically you may want to print on matt paper with dedicated black ink. Some images become perfect in this way, but you might need to try it out in several ways before settling on the best choice for you. Here's where Ilford help - they sell a test-pack for fine-art printing and you can see in A4 size what your printing chain is capable of.

The pack has 20 sheets - 5 each of the following:

Galerie Cotton Artist Textured
Galerie Gold Fibre Gloss
Galerie Textured Cotton Rag
Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag

They are all 310 gsm and vary in resolution. Obviously the Gold Fibre Gloss has the finest resolution as it is intended to run with gloss ink  - the others are matt. You can download printing profiles for these easily from the instruction sheet packed with the paper.

5 sheets is enough to dabble a couple of times with tones and brightness and still leave enough paper to produce a series of prints that can be compared one with the other. Every printer eventually has a mental image of what they wish to achieve and this is a good way to show yourself the possibilities on your actual machine. It might not be fine art, but it can be helpful art.

Fine Art Paper - Pulp Friction Brought To Life

I realise that using the phrase fine art photography is a dangerous thing - it seems to be two adjectives chasing a noun. And in many cases unsuccessfully...But at least we can try.

If you hope to present digital images that will be hung you must make sure they deserve to be*. This means a great deal of careful work before the printer whirrs - photographing, editing, critiquing. The printer that you choose and the inks that it will use are prime factors as well...but the chief thing that has to be right is the paper.

It has to last. People who pay money for pictures want those pictures to stay flat, stay clean, and stay the way they were when the money changed hands. Thus you need to search out archival-quality paper. "Archival Quality" is also a fraught phrase but at least there are some scientific standards for it - laboratories have established criteria for the longevity of paper and ink and published them. Various manufacturers tell us that their products meet these standards.

Of course, performance over a passage of time is only tested by the passage of that time. There might be a sales warranty issue on the Great Pyramid of Cheops over the stone facing that has fallen away...but the builders are nowhere to be found.

But back to your prints. Your surface needs to be appropriate to the image presented. Some people want canvas - some paper. Some want aluminium - they can all be accommodated these days. The papers can be smooth matt, smooth gloss, smooth semi-gloss, or can have texture imparted in the manufacture. Some are extremely rough, but if the image can be of blocky form this may be just perfect.

On a technical point - the heavy papers can be very heavy and you'll need to see if your printer can deal with the increased thickness. They may also have considerable warp and droop and you'll need to make provision to eliminate or cope with this as well. Crude as it sounds, you might find yourself doing a bit of judicious paper bending with your fingers before you press the start button.

You'll be confronted with some real choices in the base colour of the paper. Various words are bantered about; wheat, buff, cream, ivory, etc. but the end result is off-white. See if your image is one that will be complemented by this sort of thing or whether you'll need a clear white. these are available too.

Come in an browse amongst the Ilford, Hahnemuhle, and Permajet products. Some can be got in sheet form and some in roll. Sample packs are here so that you can experiment before lashing out for a full box.

* Either they hang or you do...

Film 101 - Or How To Read The Fridge Before You Raid The Fridge

Some of our new clients are students and come to us with sheets of instructions from their schools - list of things to buy for their course. This is undoubtedly helpful to them as long as the writers of the lists are up-to-date in the trade and not given to impish humour. I would be quite the wrong person to write these as I would be sending the poor little students out looking for wooden plate cameras and Polachrome 35mm film...

When they come to see us the film requirements are pretty basic - 35mm rolls of either 125 ISO or 400 ISO black and white film seems to start off. Later they progress to colour via various means, but initially it is simple stuff.

But even here they can stumble on the variety of B&W films. Herewith some small clarifications:

a. 35mm film is sometimes marked as "135 film". It's a traditional thing and really the film is quite the same.

b. You can get B&W film from Ilford, Kodak, Fujifilm, and Rollei. The two first are most common. If someone sends you out for Ansco or Perutz or Gevaert they are practicing on you. Treat them with withering scorn.

c. Ilford Delta and standard Ilford are both B&W films but they are made differently. The Delta will give a finer grain but sometimes needs a different developer or developing time than the standard FP4 or HP5.

d. Ditto for Kodak T-Max and the older Kodak Tri-X. T-Max has finer grain than Tri-X. Careful with the boxes as Kodak has made these look somewhat alike.

e. We keep 'em cold because we keep 'em for months. You'll be using them up fast so you needn't refrigerate them.

Now for the colour section remember that your instructors will send you out for either colour negative film or colour transparency film.

a. Any Kodak or Fujifilm colour film name that ends with "chrome" is transparency film.
This can include Velvia, Ektachrome, Provia, or others.

b. Any film box that lists E-6, or AP44, or CR-56 processing contains colour transparency film.

c. American film is color film and Australian film is colour film. Semantics and national pride - the film is the same.

d. Ektar, Fujicolor NPH or NPC, Portra 160 or Porta 400 are colour negative films.

e. Any box that lists C-41 contains colour negative film.

The good news is that they all work and if you get your exposure right they work well. We used them for decades before the advent of digital and some of us still use them for specific jobs.

Your quota of good shots is three per 36-exposure cassette and one of these will be worth keeping. By the end of your course you may be able to recognise it.

Two Sides Of Two Papers - New Ilford A4 In Stock

Sometimes the humblest of products can be exciting.

Witness the two new boxes of paper from Ilford - we received supplies of double-sided matte paper this last week:

1. Ilford Galerie Prestige Fine Art Smooth.

A4 size and 220 gsm. Smooth bright white on both sides. boxes of 25 with the gold label. Appropriate profile in the Ilford website.

2. Ilford Galerie Prestige Fine Art Textured.

Again A4 size and 220gsm. This one has textured bright white on both sides. and again there is an appropriate profile for it.

Ilford media is the standard of he industry for many applications - this matte paper and Epson, Canon, or HP inks and printers wold make very good art book and presentation material.

Of course there is always the extra concentration one needs when making anything double-sided - you need to be careful with borders and spacing and remember to get your orientation right before you push the 'print' button. I have made a number of errors in all these things over the time and it does teach you eventually - at a price.

In any case, these are not punishingly expensive papers - you can experiment and delight yourself.

Fillum Up With Fillum

I'm not just writing this blog post to use that pun, but you do have to admit it is quite attractive...

So - let yourselves be attracted to the back of the shop - the fillum fridge - and note that we have quite a variety in a present. I see 35mm and 120 black and white and colour  - both negative and transparency. Good stuff too. Kodak, Ilford, Agfa, Fujifilm.

All you need is a fillum camera and we know you have any number of these out there in your cupboards. And fillum cameras are pretty long -lived as cameras go. All the way from the Agfa Isolets and Clacks to the Contarexes and Leica M's and all the way from the Ensigns to the Hasselblad 500's....they all were sturdily made and a lot of them work just as well now as ever they did. You can bet on the Leica M's.

Sick of worrying about charging lithium-ion batteries? Sick of worrying about backup from a card while on the go? Good enough photographer to get the picture in three shots instead of three hundred? Well, get out the fillum camera and off you go.

Processing can be done by you - and we have B/W gear to help with this - or by Fitzgerald Photo labs or other fine photofinishers. You can scan negs and transparencies and then computer at them until you fall unconscious. The world is your lobster, as Arfur Daley would say, and with fillum you can store the resultant neg, slide, or print with far greater certainty that it will survive the next thunderstorm or hard drive crash. And it's damn hard to steal your images if they are hard-copy to start with.

The fillum fridge keeps the stuff cold and fresh, and now is the time to take it out into the landscape - while it is cold and fresh. Or into the studio where there is a coffee pot and biscuits.

Lustre, Semigloss, and Smooth Pearl - The Paper Cuts

Okay, I can tell the difference between these if I look hard...but if the various manufacturers come out with new surfaces like Semi-Lustre, Semi-Semi-gloss, and To A Certain Extent  Smoothish Sort Of Pearl I am going to just take the box nearest the front and whack that into the printer. If I am feeling fussy I'll put it in the right way up and if not I'll just stand at the door and throw the box at the machine...

You can still get sample books for paper surfaces and colours from various makers and sometimes they are a help - however paper development can leapfrog past their own publicity and sometimes the books fall out of date. And sometimes the images in the books seduce us into believing that our own pictures will look as good, but then leave us standing.

This isn't a new phenomenon- the old darkroom paper books from Ilford, Agfa, Kodak, Ansco, Seagull, Gevaert, etc. were mostly black and white but could exhibit such a variety of effect for surface and colour as to fill any professional need. Some papers were bizarre - witness the silk pattern surfaces and some of the heavily swirled ones. There were artistic reasons for it, as there are for heavily textured inkjet papers, but these were few and far between. Mind you, we all tried them and as fate would have it, some of the best portraits of people we love are seen on these odd papers - if we have lost the negatives we are left with just the oddities.

Commercial considerations often dictate the surface for giant inkjet prints - in some cases canvas is the material of choice. Artists sometimes favour matte surfaces to suggest watercolour paper. Technical prints may benefit from a high gloss.

The default paper, though, probably is some sort of a slightly broken clear white. Ilford, Hahnemuhle, Harman, and Permajet all make something of this nature, and if you wish to print A2, A3+, A3, A4, 5 x 7, and 6 x 4 there are ready supplies in bulk.

Indeed - sometimes there are great bargains - once a year Ilford used to give from 5 to 10 free sheets of their standard papers in special packs at the regular price. Right now we have Harman A4 in 100 sheet boxes for under $ 50. If you've a printer and are a Printer, come visit.

Hello, Old Friends - Ilford Paper

Well, this is nice. Ilford Multigrade darkroom paper in the economy pack.

Haven't seen the big 250 sheet box for some time - it is good to find that it is still with us. Like the Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl and Smooth Gloss inkjet papers, this darkroom paper is sort of the standard of the industry - everybody can use it and everybody gets consistent results.

These boxes are  the 5" x 7" size - perfect for portraits and albums - and at 38¢ per sheet should make all our analog darkroom workers happy. Note we also have new boxes of Ilford Multigrade filters if your old set has faded.

AP Kits Back In Stock

The dear old AP Darkroom kit is back in stock.

Everything the budding photographer needs for 35mm or 120 film development - and with a bit of imagination the 4 x 5 newbie can also develop sheet film.

The kit includes an AP tank with reels, graduated cylinder, thermometer, stirring rod, developing trays, tongs, and film-drying clips.

$ 130 is all it costs - you'll need to get a Paterson or Glanz dark bag for film loading if you're going to use the tank and if you want to do tray developing you'll need to go to Bunnings and get a room full of dark. You can get rooms full of dark from IKEA too, but you have to assemble them with little Allen keys and your fingers get tired half-way through.

Note we also have lots of Ilford chemistry now to develop black and white film and paper.

Bulk Is Back - Bounce In And Buy Big! Ilford!

Yay!

 After interminable questioning from the retro film enthusiasts, we how have good stocks of Ilford HP5 ( 400 ISO) and Ilford FP4 (125 ISO) bulk film.

These are fresh 100ft. ( 30,5mtr) rolls of 35mm filmso that you can load your own cartidges cheaply. No excuse not to fire off that motor drive now!

In the fridge down the back.

What's Big And Green And Cheap?.....Ask Ilford

The stack of pancakes you see here is composed of Ilford Galerie Smooth Gloss inkjet paper - these are the A2 size.

A2 is perfect for the larger Epson printers - the 3800, 3880, 4900, 7900, 9900, etc, and I suspect that Canon and other printers that are big enough would be perfect. All it needs to do is print to 22" wide and away you go.

We wish that this paper stack would go - it is making it hard to see all the other Ilford papers in stock. Time to take action.

Right. Normally we sell this size and surface at $ 115 for a 25-sheet box. Let's slash that price to $ 69 and clear the floor! Saul's orders. Come on down and take it away - 290 gsm professional-quality gloss for unbeatable detail in inkjet images. No surface disruption to confuse the resolution of the finest lenses.

First come, first served - when the stack runs out that's it.

Carton Special Of Ilford paper

"Tis a far, far better paper I buy - and a far, far better print I will be making - than I have ever known..."

Okay, Sydney, we'll take your word for it. Off you go up the stairs. Don't forget to take your carton of Ilford Galerie Prestige Smooth Pearl A4 paper with you.

It will contain 4 boxes of 100 sheets each - that's 400 perfect sheets of paper for your inkjet printer and you'll get it for $ $ 290. Revolutionary!

As this paper is normally sold at $ 85 per 100-sheet box, that will be a saving of $ 50.
You'll be making a Dickens of a saving there...there will be enough paper to print everywhere - even in two cities, if you want to...

Mind you, be sensible. No need to lose your head. We've got plenty of paper.