4x4 Filters - Kodak or Other Brands - Wrattens

[Mal Paso]

Well, I grew up with real cowboys n Indians, and real Hillbillies, and wandered into the backcountry days on end; so have eaten all kinds of things. But I've also heard of mountaineers stranded in remote parts of the Himalayas who boiled their own leather boots to avoid starvation, so I guess that would be one advantage of gel filters over glass. If you prefer raspberry flavor, take a 25 red gel; if you prefer blueberry, take a 47 blue, etc. ... But masking tape on gels???? That's worse than gopher stew. What kind of "pro" is that ???? The last time I saw someone do that was almost 40 yrs ago in the Wind River Range when a guy carrying a 4X5 Tachi with 7 lenses and a whole stack of maybe 20 Wratten gels was trying to sort thru all that stuff to get a sunset shot; but it was already dark by the time he made up his mind. I was carrying a Sinar 4x5 and just a single lens, and two glass filters at the most, so was operating much more efficiently. Anyway, he was handling the gels with his sweaty fingers, and they were all scratched up and embedded with bits of sand etc, with masking tape reside. Barbaric !
Gels aren't cheap. I was going thru my own set of them about 2 hrs ago. I use Wratten gels strictly for lab applications where they're the only option, and pamper them. Wratten gives very precise specs. Some of those very specialized gel filters were fifty bucks apiece for 3X3 inch size thirty years ago, run around $75 now if you can even find the right ones. For general shooting you can get several good coated glass contrast filters for that kind of price. And Maso - you haven't figured out how to keep film flat in a holder yet? It might not bow too badly in 4x5 format, but for 8x10 or larger look up either vacuum or adhesive precision filmholders. I've been doing it that way for several decades now ... and gave up on gel filters in the field even longer ago, for equally good reason. Having walked well over ten thousand miles at high altitude over the years with view camera gear, I quickly how quick gels can get ruined by dirt, condensation, handling, and how tape won't even stick under such circumstances. There is zero masking tape in my darkroom.

No masking tape? Definitely not a pro. It's the photo, not how much equipment you own.

 

[Mal Paso]

Kim Weston making Platinum/Palladium prints. Developer bottle is clearly labeled with .... Masking Tape

 

[DREW WILEY]

There were plenty of pro house painters who refused to defer to masking tape. I sometimes do use a tiny bit of the removable type for temporary labels on cameras for film type, or cc settings per color paper batch on an enlarger. "It's the photo, not the gear". What kind of nonsense statement is that? Can you make a sculpture without sharp chisels? There was a previous Weston who gave my prints some awfully nice complements without resorting to asking what brand of masking tape I used. And incidentally, as a distributor I once had a direct 3M industrial account, and ordered masking tape almost by the truckload every month, all kinds of it, so do know a thing or two about it. If you can afford to constantly replace gels due to inevitable adhesive residue, your call. I prefer to save that money for film and printing paper.