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...

One Of These Things Is Not Like Others

Oddly enough, all of these things do the same job - when inserted into the appropriate cameras they all take 250 images.

In the case of the Canon 250 shot magazine the camera you will need is a one of the F1 film cameras with a 250-shot reporter back. None for sale new, of course, and very few made when they were new in 1971, but you can always haunt ebay or Boris...You'll need a 100' roll of film to charge it, another 250 shot cartridge to receive the film, and a darkroom to get the stuff spooled up. It might be a good idea to go speak to the pro lab to see if their processing machine will cope with the length of the film you use. All up, figure about $1800 minimum for your 250 shots. Plus negative sleeves...

The 35mm cassettes will go in any 35mm camera so you might luck out there. Pick up an old compact for $ 80 and add the film...$ 90...and the processing...$ 125...well you'll be a lot better off for your  250 negatives. You'll only spend $ 295 for negatives.

Of course if you elect to get a new small compact camera and the 8 GB card you can also set 250 shots for about $ 209...but you can keep on snapping after that - the card will hold a lot more shots. They'll be in colour, but most computers will let you see them in black and white and you can even invert the image files if you are a freak for negatives.

I haven't costed out two and a half tablets of artist-quality drawing paper and a handful of pencils but I'll bet it is about the same price...if you draw in negative you'll need more pencils.

Note: the 250 shot magazine is a second hand item, but the Hoodman memory cards and the Kodak T-Max film are both new and readily available in-store or on our online shop.

Turn The Saturation Up To 11

Impelled by a sense of curiosity, I grabbed a half a dozen or so sample magazines that had been dumped on the lunch table at Camera Electronic and took them home. There were two free sample DVDs included with them so I got to play them as well.

It is a delicate matter for one writer to write about the writings of another writer. It can take on the flavour of undiscriminating fandom...or bitchy jealousy. I tried to look at the mags with an open eye.

It was an eye that watered. Not because of bad journalism or ugly photography - indeed most of the images printed in these magazines were really well done.The main problem was the overpowering intensity of the colour. The saturation, vibrancy, and detail were slid  way over to the right...and that was just in the advertisements. The actual editorial stuff was vibrating sideways off the page. It's hard to do that with a shot of a shingle beach in Yorkshire, but they managed to do it...

Okay. This is in contrast to the Australian Would-Be Professional Photographers Magazine Printed In Singapore. The AWBPPMPIS, as it is known in the trade, has an editorial policy - indeed it has an automatic program - that desaturates every image shown. This is to give an extra sense of drama, professionalism, and retro hip, and to save on the more expensive printing inks. These can be kept in reserve for the advertisements. It's a necessary economy these days. Fortunately web-based publication can still give full rein to the entire sRGB spectrum and the advertisers count on you having the screen set to laser-intensity anyway.

I did enjoy the DVDs - they were bright, simple, and gave a useful bit of information in each section. The fact that the information was aimed at the dumb end of the market is neither here nor there - that is my neighbourhood. Besides, even if you found that they were telling you something that you should have known but didn't, the fact that you could view it unbeknownst to your professional rivals means that you never need to admit to ignorance. Like voting in a federal election - as you are all alone there in the cardboard booth no-one need to know that that you endorse the local wacko party candidate.

Are they as good as the dear old publications of the analog era? Are they, as British magazines, as good as their American or Australia rivals? Yes and no. If they seem heavy on trick photography and computer manipulation, take comfort that you can emulate what they do with the images without the need for plumbing or organic solvent developers. You might fall prey to the occasional blue screen but you won't break out in eczema while doing it.

But they are a signpost to another thought about photographic knowledge - and we'll explore that in the next post.

Lady Of Spain

It's an old photographic joke - the collapsible bottles look like concertinas. No end of darkroom workers have squeezed them while dancing around in the dark whistling Lady Of Spain.  Their wives and children wince but there is nothing that can be done about it.

We discovered a mother lode of them in the back shelves of the storage area recently. Buy a set to put your darkroom chemistry in - If you've mixed up a big batch of developer and want to use it in small increments you can squeeze the bottle down to reduce the amount of trapped air and thus retard oxidation of the mix.

They're only $ 7.50 so there must be a lot more things you can think to do with them. Hornpipes....

The Future Of Darkroom Work

Seven years ago when I came to work in Camera Electronic I did not think I would be able to write that header now. The front of the shop still had a few film cameras and there was a rime of old enlargers around the top of the cabinets, but I could see that little was new nor was it likely to stay. I dedicated myself to learning the new digital age.

I miscalculated. As I type this blog post ( admittedly on a digital computer...) I can see shelves with darkroom chemicals, darkroom printing paper, developing tanks and kits, negative files, and a refrigerator full of fresh film. And every day people come in the front door, take away some of these goods, and pay us for them.

Darkroom work would appear to be going on.

We have supplied some new enlargers to schools that are admittedly basic overseas things that need a fair bit of adaptation for use in Australia - but all the rest of the stuff is perfectly usable. Australian dark is as good as US or UK dark - all you do is block up the windows and door and grope around.

Do the new users of old technology get what they expect from the experience? I hope they do - though I am not sure if they think they are going to find a Holy Grail in the wash water. They may, or may not - I do know that if they do not use enough of it they will eventually lose all their images to fading - I have found out my sins of omission with old negatives.

I cannot say whether the colour darkroom will come back - I suspect not. The technology that made it work was getting better and easier in the 80's and 90's and I lucked onto the last of the easy amateur gear and chemistry. Even than it was poisonous, irritating, and messy. Of course this also describes Christmas lunch with the rellies, but we will gloss over that. Colour printing - good printing - has advanced beyond belief with the advent of the digital inkjet printer and I do not think we gain anything by going back and sticking our fingers in the blix.

So - here's to the continuation of tradition in supply and usage. You cannot poison yourself dead or spend yourself broke on black and white darkroom work and an occasionally you will produce a masterpiece. 

" Everyone Who Has A DSLR Is A Photographer Now..."

Smile when you say that, pardner...

Unfortunately the man who said it to me this week wasn't smiling - he was glum because he felt that his expertise in the photographic business was being eroded by the new technologies. He was becoming discouraged.

He really shouldn't have been. He has top-notch gear himself and a wealth of experience. He has a name. And he is still young enough to remember it without looking at a name tag pinned to his collar...

While there is life there is hope. If he finds younger photographers grasping at areas he had to himself formerly...well that will be the case forever. Those young photographers will also have to do things that he would be frantic to avoid, and that is their punishment. God knows I have ventured into some of these events and now have learned my lesson.

It is inevitable that the dumbing-down of any art form or technical skill will meet eventually with the level of the unskilled worker. We saw it with the film era - the same shop that sold the Leica M3 sold the Kodak Retina and one lot of people bought one thing and one lot of people bought another - they both went to the film cabinet and got 35mm film cassettes. But their pathways diverged from there.

The paying clients in the end knew that the man using the Leica was going to do the job - the man using the Retina could please himself but was not going to be required to please others. They hired the Leica man.

They will hire the skilled chap I saw earlier this week - if he remains confident. And smiles.

The Ultimate Cool

You can tell when people want to be cool - the clothing and mannerisms give them away. Oddly enough, where you would expect extreme conservatism in taste to be the order of the day, the opposite often prevails. Witness the rash of tight jeans, red shoes, and hair in topknots.

Of course modern coolsters can also point to the hairstyles and clothing selections of former times and laugh at the theatrical nature of it all. From the profusion of moustaches and beards on the faces of the young women to the high heels and nylon stockings of the young men, it has all been a show...

One feature of coolicity we have noticed here in the shop has been the trend-driven purchasing of cameras. We've seen fads for instant cameras, plastic film cameras, action cameras, and no end of other oddities. In some cases they have spent serious money on odd products.

Well, if anyone wants to be cool, retro, historical, and hip ( Hep? Hop? Hoop? Ah the hell with it...) here is one mechanical statement that cannot be ignored. Leica screw mount camera - full shutter speeds, no flash synchro, 50mm Elmar folding lens. Pocket history, with the potential to put you out there with the very best of the street and candid workers of the 20th century. Never mind wearing your cap backwards. Wear this on the front of your tee shirt and do the deed in style.

It's heavier than your mobile phone but lighter than your conscience. It takes B/W negative film and you really do have to know what you are doing to use it. It will not think for you or about you, but it will obey your commands. Command wisely. You are in powerful company.

Costly? No. Less than the newest compact darling. Lasting? It's lasted 'til now and bids fair to outlast everything on the market today.

Cool? Frosty.

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.

Well, I Was Wrong. And It Cost Me Money.

But that was a long time ago.

I was using a well-known name of SLR camera with well-known film. And a simple set of lenses - f:1.8, f:2.8, f:4. My slides were taken out in the open air and at medium f stops and about 1/250 of a second. And they were sharp and well-coloured.

As photography enthusiasts go, I went, and like many others was not satisfied with success. I lusted after the LX version of the camera and when I got it decided that the 55mm f:1.8 lens was not going to be as good as the 50mm f:1.2. So I traded it in and got a couple of boxes of colour negative film, and went out to take pictures in the twilight.

Not surprisingly, when I got back the results there was more grain in the image, the focus was not as sharp, and the postcard prints had none of the sparkle of the transparencies. I just knew it was the fault of the camera and the mens and sold it all off in a snit to buy the next hare-brained idea - a medium format press camera.

Older readers will detect where I went wrong - f:1.2 is not as sharp as f:8. Low light levels and shadows mean muddy shadows. Negative film has more grain than transparency film. Minilab prints can sometimes be minimal quality. But I convinced myself it was the fault of the camera.

Now I work in the trade and have taken more photos and looked at them. I realise my mistake. I spent out big and spent out wrong because I did not talk to someone in...the photo trade.

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.

July 12 - Kodak Brownie Day - Get Ready For a Blast From The Past

July 12th is the birthdate of George Eastman - long ago in 1854. Waterville, New York, actually. George was interested in photography...

To celebrate this birthday I am inviting or readers to set their digital cameras as follows:

ISO as low as possible - 50-100 is fine.

Aperture at f:11 in manual mode.

Shutter speed at 1/25 of a second in manual mode.

jpeg. sRGB. Basic quality.

Monochrome setting, if possible. You can make it sepia if you wish.

Aspect ratio - 1:1 if possible.

Manual focus set at 10 feet.

Now go out and take 12 pictures. 12 only, ' film ' is expensive...

Do NOT review the pictures on the LCD screen - just go on from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on. Bring them back to your computer and display them out at 56mm x 56mm. No cheating - no photoshopping - no HDR - no plug-ins. Your first 12 pictures just as they come.

Show us the results. You have just used your own Kodak No.1 Brownie  (Digital Division) and if you have used it correctly you should have pictures of your family and the school fete and possibly Mundaring Weir. With luck they will be squinting into the sun. And very slightly blurred. Sun hats will be a bonus.

I'll try to feature the best on this blog.

Uncle Dick

I Want A New Lens - Which One Do I Think I Want?

Well, that's quite a question - but you can bet every photographer who ever snapped a shutter has asked it of themselves. Sometimes it was a good question and sometimes it wasn't...

We all had a first camera - in many cases the lens on it could not be changed. Our choice of which lens to use was that one or nothing. So we learned to use that one -when we wanted a wider view we stepped back - when we wanted to see a close up we stepped forward. In many cases we kept the sun to our backs and the squinting eyes of or subjects in front of us. At night we used a flash, or held the shutter open for a long time. There was Elvis, dinosaurs, and 50¢ hot dogs - it was a good time...

Then we ran into the limitations of the gear - the closeup went blurry when we moved under 3 feet. The landscape picture was nowhere near as wide as our own vision. Sports pictures had tiny little figures in the middle of a vast playing space - we could see them better with the naked eye.

We bought supplementary lenses to clip onto the lens - we could go a little closer with one, or get a little wider view or a little more enlarged view with another...and had all the perils of Pythagoras trying to figure out how to aim the cameras effectively once the new lenses were on. There was a lot of trial and error and language.

Now we have interchangeable lenses - we can start our career with a moderate zoom lens that sees a multitude of angle of view. It can focus far closer than the older film lens. It can see under vastly poorer light conditions. And we needn't make two trips to he chemist and a week's time to discover whether we got the shot. We can see it in a second - repeat the trial if necessary. But we still want a new lens...

Two recommendations: if you want the landscape buy a prime lens for your camera that is the widest one they make. If you want sports results get a medium telephoto lens for your camera. Take off your first lens, put on the new one, and go shoot for a solid month.

You'll see the world anew - you can go back to the old lens afterwards and see the world anew again.

Do this as many times as you feel the need - you'll gradually add to your own visual acumen and the armamentarium of glass. We'll be happy too - we're a camera shop!

Yo Heave Ho - Calling All Holga Boatmen

Is still selling Lomo at cheap of the price!

Now you can flee wrath of Digital by taking shelter in warm comfort of film. No more pixel bites! This is art.

See remaining range of Lomo here while you can. Come by fast and buy fast.

No Mo LOMO Sale - Come In Comrades!

Is Camera Electronic calling. Hello.

Is having special sale of Lomo camera and accessory. To be got rid of for making new space.

All new goods. Not sold yet. Now is time to becoming glorious film artist and achieve new heights also new depths.

Lomo can do this to you. I mean for you. Disregard former phrase - all is good.

Now Lomo in special radiation-proof bin at front of store for 50% off. Do not gulag behind - rush in and take advantage of us.

Special recommendation from Central Committee: buy Holga. Holga is good. Holga come in many colours including Red Army Green and Spetznaz Black. Also Glorious Red.

Is Socialist Realism at its best.

PS: we sell film to make for operations with Lomo.

Killing Yourself Softly With Digital Photography

We try to provide helpful advice on a number of photographic subjects here in this column - a service to the profession and the trade...and all the rest. One of areas that may have been neglected up to now is how to injure yourself with digital photography.

Now we're not talking about harming your reputation with bad technique, dodgy subject matter, or dubious business practices - feel free to make your own way to perdition just as you wish. Be assured, you will have company on the road...

No. it's more physical than moral harm that we are concerned with here. And the news is not good - digital photography work is nowhere near as easy a path to destruction as the one with the older chemical processes.

In the dear old days you could poison yourself real good, real quick - if you were using mercury fumes or cyanide washes or ether vapour in the same space as a candle flame you could expect a prompt cessation to further care. Later on the black and white chemistry got safer but the advent of colour work with the organic solvents and dire bleaches and carcinogens brought the statistics back up.

You could also do wonderful things in a very short period of time with some of the early  electrical connections, safelights, pools of water, and metal workbenches.

When all else failed, you could fall over in the dark and pull the enlarger down on yourself.

Now in the digital realm it gets harder...no more chemistry. The computers are all sealed and earthed and you rarely use them in the sink with an inch of water round the bottom. You could swallow a lithium ion battery and harm yourself but it takes some doing. Hitting yourself on the side of the head with a 120-400mm zoom lens is difficult to do more than once.

Sitting in front of a monitor for 15 hours straight might be bad for you, but then so many people are trained to do this by their years of television that they won't notice.

Possibly the best result will be if you set the digital camera on a tripod and put it onto interval shooting and then link it straight to your Facebook account. Eventually your friends will get so sick of seeing you on their feed that they will band together to come round your house and beat you up.

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.

Eee - It's All Brass, Innit? Film Prices And Sandisk Cards

"Ow mooch for one of those membory cards? $ 54.70? Eeeee that's dear . Eeeee Bah Goom..."

Okay, E. Here's the facts of life in 2015:

1. Fujifilm Velvia 100 transparency film - 135/36 fresh pro film......$ 32 a roll

2. Pro-lab processing and scanning  - 36 exposures........................$ 25 a roll

3. End result - 36 shots on your computer screen for $ 57.00.


Now for the SanDisk Ultra card:

Disregard the idea of re-using the card, if you wish. Regard it as the end storage device.

1. SanDisk Ultra card 32 GB.............................................................$ 54.70

2. Capacity of card; 2400 jpegs

3. End result - 2400 shots on your computer screen for $ 54.70.

That's equivalent to paying 66.66 times as much for each picture if you do it with the older technology.

"Eee - Bah Goom..."

* "Boot you can't get the nice crispy bacon like you did before t'war"....well fry it longer...