Choice Library?

[Dave Wooten]

Your Choice Books for the analog Library....both in and out of print?

 

[BradS]

I'm going to assume you mean technical books as opposed to picture books...and throw in my favorite. Unfortunately, this one is long out-of-print.

Aaron Sussman, The Amateur Photographer's Handbook

I've the 7th and 8th editions. The last is IMO superior and happily, appears to still be readily available on the used market.

 

[Dave Wooten]

Yes technical books....like Ilfords Manual of Photography etc. and your good suggestion

 

[Andy K]

Ilford Monochrome Darkroom Practice: A Manual of Black and White Processing and Printing by Jack H Coote.

The 35mm Photographer's Handbook by Julian Calder and John Garrett.

Creative Black and White Photography by Les Mclean

Night Photography by Andrew Sanderson.

 

[Ian Grant]

L.P. Clerc Photography - Theory and Practice

And especially for JJ Stafford I'd suggest: Criticizing Photoraphs (An Introduction to Understanding Images) - Terry Barrett (Mayfield Publishing, California).

Ian

 

[magic823]

Ansel Adams Series, Books 1, 2, 3
Les Mclean's Creative Black & White (got a signed copy of this bad boy)
Rudman's "The Photographer's Master Printing Book" & "The Photographer's Toning Book"
Haist "Modern Photographic Processing, Vol. 1 & 2"
Stroebel's "View Camera Technique"
Farber's "Historic Prographic Processes"
Both "Darkroom Cookbooks"
Burkholder's "Making Digital Negatives for Contact Printing"
Sandy King's Carbon Printing book
Gordon Hutchings "The Book of Pyro"
Todd and Zakia "Photographic Sensitometry"

These are my favorite books in my photo library (excluding the digital stuff).

 

[Ole]

In addition to many of those mentioned already, I like:
"Photographisces Hilfsbuch für ernste Arbeit", Hans Schmidt, Berlin 1910.

 

[Dave Wooten]

Ole

I couldn't locate that one on Amazon,

 

[Claire Senft]

Modern Photographic Practice by Mathew Brady. Minature Photography in the West by Timothy Sullivan. A Photographic Aria by Wynn Bullock
Faking It by Robert Desineau

 

[Ole]

Ole

I couldn't locate that one on Amazon,

It's been out of print for some years now...

Try Willi Beutler's "Dunkelkammerpraxis" instead - that should be easier to find. Mine's the 1949 edition.

 

[BradS]

Another good one...

C.I. Jacobson, Developing

Contains some 300 chemical formulae - mostly fro B&W film developers with a smattering of everything else...including contact cemet! A complete monograph on developing B&W film, paper and even a chapter on developing color films.

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Photography, by Barbara and John Upton, (Little, Brown publ.) is a synthesis of the historical, technical, and artistical information found in the Life Library of Photography. I would put the whole Library as valuable, but this book alone is what finally cleared me from all the questions I had at the beginning that were mystifying me.

Plus there's nothing like having a book that uses for its examples Eugene Smith or HCB, or about anyone else who made photography over its history! Usgin Jean-Loup Sieff for lightning, HCB for composition, Arbus for portraiture... Sure beats the Reader's Digest.

 

[jjstafford]

I'm guessing you want tech books.

Brutal Technical: "SPSE Handbook of Photographic Science and Engineering"
Very well illustrated and susinct: "Way Beyond Monochrome"
Inspiring and still technical: "Edge of Darkness"

 

[Tach]

Barry Thornton, 'Edge of darkness'.
Bresson, 'The decisive moment' essay, for those taking photos of non static subjects.

 

[Tach]

Bresson, 'The decisive moment' essay, for those taking photos of non static subjects.

Correction. Non-static, uncontrollable subjects.

 

[Jim Chinn]

I have a mint 1975 Kodak Darkroom Data Guide.
If nothing else it is interesting to see what Kodak made available in papers, film and chemistry at probably the high point for variety of materials at kodak.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

In addition to those mentioned--

Norm McGrath, _Photographing Buildings Inside and Out_
Hunter and Fuqua, _Light: Science and Magic_
Alan Greene, _Primitive Photography_
Ctein, _Post-Exposure_
Anchell and Troop, _The Film Developing Cookbook_
Anchell, _The Darkroom Cookbook_
Kingslake, _A History of the Photographic Lens_
_Mastering the Black and White Fine Print_ (_Photo Techniques_ special issue #11)

 

[garryl]

Darkroom - Lustrum press.
Darkroom2- " " .

What You Want To Know About Developers- Fine Grain and Otherwise-- Dr. Edmund Lowe.
Any book by Mortensen- because of his alternative approach to photography and because ST Ansel called him the "Anti-Christ".
The Manual of Modern Photography- Hans Windisch.
Brilliance-Gradation-Sharpness With the Miniature Camera - Harry Champlin.
Leica Manuals- Willard Morgan-- because they show not only the evolution of a camera system, but also the changing philosphy of 35mm photography.

Just to name a few not already named, by other posters, that in my library

 

[Dave Wooten]

Great info....many I was not aware of....

MHV-the Upton book - I agree - I chose it to use at the local community college here for photography classes.

I am going to print this thread out and begin a search etc.

Keep 'em coming! And as always Apug Thanks for sharing the collective Knowledge.

Dave in Vegas

 

[Claire Senft]

I see that Ansel Adam's first three books of his basic photo series have been listed. Equally informative, in my opinion, are volumes 4 and 5: Natural Light and Artifical Light. Al though I believe that they were not updated as were the first three books.

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

I see that Ansel Adam's first three books of his basic photo series have been listed. Equally informative, in my opinion, are volumes 4 and 5: Natural Light and Artifical Light. Al though I believe that they were not updated as were the first three books.

I was thinking that as well, but Vol.2 The Negative contains what's in both volumes 4 and 5.

 

[roteague]

Your Choice Books for the analog Library....both in and out of print?

"Large Format Nature Photography" By Jack W. Dykinga

"Light and the Landscape" By Joe Cornish (published under a different title in the UK)

"Photographing the Landscape: The Art of Seeing" By John Fielder

 

[smieglitz]

...
Any book by Mortensen- because of his alternative approach to photography and because ST Ansel called him the "Anti-Christ"...

Not to mention that Mortensen actually makes sense in a lot of what he writes.

I'd specifically recommend:

Pictorial Lighting
The Model
Mortensen On The Negative

These will teach you how to bend and light people in particular.


If you can find them (most/all ? OOP) some other unusual and good books are:

Color Design in Photography by Harald Mante (color theory ala Goethe/Itten applied to photography);

Photographic Composition also by Harald Mante;

Kodak Professional Portrait Techniques from the late 1980s (?) with the photographer statuette on the red cover - later editions not as good IMO;

Light, Science, and Magic (by Faqua and Hunter ?) - a good lighting book showing how to problem solve rather than just a bunch of after-the-fact lighting diagrams pasted next to a picture;

Photographic Facts and Formulas by Wall and Jordan - a classic formulary including many historic processes.

Joe

 

[Andy K]

Last week my father gave me his old reference from when he was a boy. He had been clearing out his attic and found it tucked away in a box.

The Complete Amateur Photographer by Dick Boer.

Covers every aspect of photography from large format plate and film through to miniature, composition, camera types (box, view, rangefinder miniature, slr miniature, 6x6, 6x9, etc) lens types, camera accessories (how many of you Contax owners have the reflex accessory shown at the bottom of the left page here) film and developer types and combinations (see here), bw and colour processing, enlarging and printing, slide mounting...

A superb old book, still as relevant today as it was when published in 1948.

 

[removed account4]

Ross Lowell's Matter of Light & Depth;
Jones, Sarah and Martin Reed's Silver Gelatin: A User's Guide to Liquid Photographic Emulsions;

and if you can find them in a junk store:

the coursebooks for the new york institute of photography (binder)
( corespondence school whose classbooks were pamphlets on everything you can imagine - color theory, negative & print retouching, lighting, portrait-still life-architecture, advertising photography, making color separtion negatives with color filters and black and white film ... ET al.);
us air corps photographic manual.