Conventions for indicating which film holders have film?

[Craig]

... but then you have to remember the convention properly, and apply it properly, and remember that you did in fact apply it.

LF does demand precise methods of working and doesn't tolerate errors very well. You need a standard way of working and do the same steps, the same way, in the same order every time.

It's like the various checklists that pilots go through for takeoff and landing. No matter if they have done it a thousand times before, they still go through the checklist each time. I have one for the LF camera, it's 19 steps to taking a photo. Sometimes you can decide that a step is unnecessary at the time, but you have still acknowledged the step and thought it through before decideding if it is complete or needs to be performed.

 

[BradS]

Take only full film holders with you. Never have an empty one in your bag or box. One side of the film slide has bumps (or notches). If those are facing out, it means the film is unexposed. When you expose film, flip the slide so the bumps face in. Always lock the slide.

Yup. This is the convention I was taught and have always seen others use.

Is this so?
I guess this has to be discussed...

Yes! It is true. The white side has bumps- ostensibly because you cannot see the white part in total darkness. In the older Fidelity/Lisco holders with metal pulls on the dark slides, there are bumps (or, in some instances, little indentations) on the silver/not-painted-black side. Riteway follows this convention too (as I'm sure Toyo and Linhof must have).

 

[tom williams]

LF does demand precise methods of working and doesn't tolerate errors very well. You need a standard way of working and do the same steps, the same way, in the same order every time.

It's like the various checklists that pilots go through for takeoff and landing. No matter if they have done it a thousand times before, they still go through the checklist each time. I have one for the LF camera, it's 19 steps to taking a photo. Sometimes you can decide that a step is unnecessary at the time, but you have still acknowledged the step and thought it through before decideding if it is complete or needs to be performed.

Excellent analogy.

 

[grat]

A convention is something different than common use.

A convention is something commonly explicitely stated. Be it in textbooks, in courses or by masters telling their assistants.

Can't find that definition anywhere. I can find these, after digging a bit in the OED:

9.
a. General agreement or consent, deliberate or implicit, as constituting the origin and foundation of any custom, institution, opinion, etc., or as embodied in any accepted usage, standard of behaviour, method of artistic treatment, or the like.


10.
a. A rule or practice based upon general consent, or accepted and upheld by society at large; an arbitrary rule or practice recognised as valid in any particular art or study; a conventionalism.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Yup. This is the convention I was taught and have always seen others use.



Yes! It is true. The white side has bumps- ostensibly because you cannot see the white part in total darkness. In the older Fidelity/Lisco holders with metal pulls on the dark slides, there are bumps or little indentations on the silver/not--painted-black side. Riteway follows this convention too (as I'm sire Toyo and Linhof must have).

I agree. Every book I read on it, every website that I checkwhen I started LF all said the same thing. If you assumed the opposite or were taught the opposite, just get over it. This reminds me of the story that on the end of World War II at a parade in New York one solder was out of step and his mother shouted, "Look at all the other solders out of step in unison with my son!"

 

[grat]

As a non-LF shooter, who only worked with medium format and 35mm film when I worked in a lab, I'll ask the question - why don't film holders have specific labels on the dark sides - "Exposed" and "Unexposed", with a separate flag saying empty?

The simple answer is, because you can't read them in the dark. Knowing which side the bumps are on goes a long way towards telling me what I need to know in the dark about a film holder.

A slightly sillier answer, but to satisfy AgX, would be to ask what language they should be labeled in?

Personally, I kind of like this concept:

https://images.ehive.com/accounts/3102/objects/images/1b941c4f9076482dbd3bec7e27660848_l.jpg

 

[AgX]

Can't find that definition anywhere. I can find these, after digging a bit in the OED:

9.
a. General agreement or consent, deliberate or implicit, as constituting the origin and foundation of any custom, institution, opinion, etc., or as embodied in any accepted usage, standard of behaviour, method of artistic treatment, or the like.


10.
a. A rule or practice based upon general consent, or accepted and upheld by society at large; an arbitrary rule or practice recognised as valid in any particular art or study; a conventionalism.

9 and 10 neccessitate communication.
Just doing the same thing is no convention.

9 and 10 thus confirm my definition of convention.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

I do what it seems everyone else does. White out-unexposed. Black out-exposed. Or empty. When I empty holders I put them in a bag that is labeled empty. I only invert the slides to white right before I load them.

I never shake my holders to see if there is film in them because I like sharp pictures....

 

[Craig]

9 and 10 neccessitate communication.
Just doing the same thing is no convention.

9 and 10 thus confirm my definition of convention.

Absolutely not. Nowhere does a convention have to be explicitly stated in a book to be generally accepted.

"Everybody knows" that when you are in the UK, you queue at a bus stop, and wait your turn to board the bus. Same with living in Canada, when you enter someones home, you take your shoes off. It's not written anywhere, it's just part of living in the culture.

Conventions are accepted norms, all something has to be to become a convention is be generally accepted and commonly practiced within an area - be that a national culture or a discipline like photography.

 

[AgX]

Your example with that queuing is quite off, as :
-) it might be taught at school or by parents
-) it is a socially loaded behaviour, non-following always would bring reaction by the others, thus communication


For the photographer loading film on his own there is no such feedback. For a photographer assistant loading film in a way different from that of his boss or that of the studio, he will get immediate feedback. But such would be in first instance a internal convention.

 

[BradS]

Absolutely not. Nowhere does a convention have to be explicitly stated in a book to be generally accepted.

"Everybody knows" that when you are in the UK, you queue at a bus stop, and wait your turn to board the bus. Same with living in Canada, when you enter someones home, you take your shoes off. It's not written anywhere, it's just part of living in the culture.

Conventions are accepted norms, all something has to be to become a convention is be generally accepted and commonly practiced within an area - be that a national culture or a discipline like photography.

Reading this reminded of a time, years ago, when my boys were still quite young, I went to the little family owned and operated (Mom and Dad are Vietnamese immigrants, two teen age daughter were born and raised in the USofA) donut shop near our home with my sons. We went fairly often and were well known by the proprietors but on this particular occasion, the mom asked me why I took my hat off every time I came into the shop. I tried to explain...but found it difficult to say...because that is what I was taught, because it is the right and proper thing for a man to do..women can leave their hat on but a gentleman removes his hat when he enters a building.... She said, It is the same where I come from but we do not often see such courtesy here.

 

[el_37]

Are you blind?

... but then you have to remember the convention properly, and apply it properly, and remember that you did in fact apply it. As I have failed routinely to remember to turn the dark side of the slide outward after an exposure, and/or failed to recall with certainty that I did or didn't turn it out, I rely on the written record that I keep for every shot. Akin to the methods Vaughn (post #66) and Doremus (post #33) use. Each of my holders is numbered on both sides, and that number is recorded in a shooting log every time a negative is exposed. Beforehand, when the holders are loaded, their number and film type are also recorded on a separate page in my shooting log. The record of exposed/unexposed holders is always in my hand or pocket, and because I've taken the time to write loading and exposure information down I am 'cued' to recall/consult it. It's a method that fits my high memory buffer dump rate.

That is exactly what most people did in the old days. You always kept a shot record- either by permanently marking the holders with painted on numbers or by giving them temporary numbers written on tape.

The labs used to give you rolls of stickers that you would paste on the box. These were pre printed with check boxes labeled E6/C41/B&W and then there was a push/pull section. You would then write in the notes section the holder/shot numbers from the log and label the top/bottom sheet and you would request they write those numbers on the sleeves after processing. You could also write next to the sheet numbers push/pull instructions- how these guys kept track of everything always intrigued me- now I wish I asked to hang out and watch them load the machines back then.

This allowed you to identify problem holders immediately (i.e light leaks, focus issues from flatness problems,etc) and/or problems with the camera/lens once you got the film back.

Faulty holders could be a real issue if proper records weren’t kept. Ask me how I know....the shot log really helps you narrow it down if one of your holders turns on you.

Linhof had a good idea with the printed in numbers- but only going up to 12 was pretty limiting in an environment such as a catalog house or guys that did stuff such as supermarket circulars. I worked on some jobs where we were using 50-100 holders a day and reloading 2-3 times.

There were some high paid fashion guys back then that used 3-4 assistants on a shoot and could easily shoot hundreds of sheets of 8x10 a day- which seems almost impossible to believe at today’s film/lab costs.

I was also taught (not everyone did this though) to write down all the pertinent info on the back of the final approved Polaroid proof shot. This way in addition to the shot log you always had a backup record. This is moot these days though....

Another technique that has probably been lost to time (and only really needed when lots of money was riding on the job) was to shoot more sheets than was needed and you would only send half the film to the lab. You would be surprised how many times pro labs would screw up.

It was really a different world back then- and the 50’s to the 80’s was even more different. Hearing the stories of the old timers still working in the 90’s who shot extensively in the pre polaroid proofing days- they used to have an assistant process 8x10 film in paper developer and fix it for 30 seconds and sandwich the wet neg between 2 sheets of glass to show the art director the layout of the shot....

I was glad to have seen the end of that era- it was amazing to see how advanced techniques got right before digital took over. Guys were doing some pretty incredible stuff the old fashion way that took hours or days with multiple exposures or manual retouching that can now be done in minutes.

But it was sad to see the support industries get decimated overnight when digital started coming on. My friend’s uncle was a professional color printer- he used to work with 20 other people printing all night for decades. In 1998 they laid off everyone but him- because he was the only one who knew how to use a computer. Labs were closing left and right- there had to be at least 100 pro labs in Manhattan in 1995- now I think there is maybe 2? Standard E6 service was 3 hours in those days!

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

That is exactly what most people did in the old days. You always kept a shot record- either by permanently marking the holders with painted on numbers or by giving them temporary numbers written on tape.

The labs used to give you rolls of stickers that you would paste on the box. These were pre printed with check boxes labeled E6/C41/B&W and then there was a push/pull section. You would then write in the notes section the holder/shot numbers from the log and label the top/bottom sheet and you would request they write those numbers on the sleeves after processing. You could also write next to the sheet numbers push/pull instructions- how these guys kept track of everything always intrigued me- now I wish I asked to hang out and watch them load the machines back then.

This allowed you to identify problem holders immediately (i.e light leaks, focus issues from flatness problems,etc) and/or problems with the camera/lens once you got the film back.

Faulty holders could be a real issue if proper records weren’t kept. Ask me how I know....the shot log really helps you narrow it down if one of your holders turns on you.

Linhof had a good idea with the printed in numbers- but only going up to 12 was pretty limiting in an environment such as a catalog house or guys that did stuff such as supermarket circulars. I worked on some jobs where we were using 50-100 holders a day and reloading 2-3 times.

There were some high paid fashion guys back then that used 3-4 assistants on a shoot and could easily shoot hundreds of sheets of 8x10 a day- which seems almost impossible to believe at today’s film/lab costs.

I was also taught (not everyone did this though) to write down all the pertinent info on the back of the final approved Polaroid proof shot. This way in addition to the shot log you always had a backup record. This is moot these days though....

Another technique that has probably been lost to time (and only really needed when lots of money was riding on the job) was to shoot more sheets than was needed and you would only send half the film to the lab. You would be surprised how many times pro labs would screw up.

It was really a different world back then- and the 50’s to the 80’s was even more different. Hearing the stories of the old timers still working in the 90’s who shot extensively in the pre polaroid proofing days- they used to have an assistant process 8x10 film in paper developer and fix it for 30 seconds and sandwich the wet neg between 2 sheets of glass to show the art director the layout of the shot....

I was glad to have seen the end of that era- it was amazing to see how advanced techniques got right before digital took over. Guys were doing some pretty incredible stuff the old fashion way that took hours or days with multiple exposures or manual retouching that can now be done in minutes.

But it was sad to see the support industries get decimated overnight when digital started coming on. My friend’s uncle was a professional color printer- he used to work with 20 other people printing all night for decades. In 1998 they laid off everyone but him- because he was the only one who knew how to use a computer. Labs were closing left and right- there had to be at least 100 pro labs in Manhattan in 1995- now I think there is maybe 2? Standard E6 service was 3 hours in those days!

In place of a polaroid, I use my micro 4/3 to record the settings I'm using, any comments and shoot the scene in video. I might shoot a still as well. Then when I get back to the house, I transcribe the video to my written notes.

 

[mshchem]

That is exactly what most people did in the old days. You always kept a shot record- either by permanently marking the holders with painted on numbers or by giving them temporary numbers written on tape.

The labs used to give you rolls of stickers that you would paste on the box. These were pre printed with check boxes labeled E6/C41/B&W and then there was a push/pull section. You would then write in the notes section the holder/shot numbers from the log and label the top/bottom sheet and you would request they write those numbers on the sleeves after processing. You could also write next to the sheet numbers push/pull instructions- how these guys kept track of everything always intrigued me- now I wish I asked to hang out and watch them load the machines back then.

This allowed you to identify problem holders immediately (i.e light leaks, focus issues from flatness problems,etc) and/or problems with the camera/lens once you got the film back.

Faulty holders could be a real issue if proper records weren’t kept. Ask me how I know....the shot log really helps you narrow it down if one of your holders turns on you.

Linhof had a good idea with the printed in numbers- but only going up to 12 was pretty limiting in an environment such as a catalog house or guys that did stuff such as supermarket circulars. I worked on some jobs where we were using 50-100 holders a day and reloading 2-3 times.

There were some high paid fashion guys back then that used 3-4 assistants on a shoot and could easily shoot hundreds of sheets of 8x10 a day- which seems almost impossible to believe at today’s film/lab costs.

I was also taught (not everyone did this though) to write down all the pertinent info on the back of the final approved Polaroid proof shot. This way in addition to the shot log you always had a backup record. This is moot these days though....

Another technique that has probably been lost to time (and only really needed when lots of money was riding on the job) was to shoot more sheets than was needed and you would only send half the film to the lab. You would be surprised how many times pro labs would screw up.

It was really a different world back then- and the 50’s to the 80’s was even more different. Hearing the stories of the old timers still working in the 90’s who shot extensively in the pre polaroid proofing days- they used to have an assistant process 8x10 film in paper developer and fix it for 30 seconds and sandwich the wet neg between 2 sheets of glass to show the art director the layout of the shot....

I was glad to have seen the end of that era- it was amazing to see how advanced techniques got right before digital took over. Guys were doing some pretty incredible stuff the old fashion way that took hours or days with multiple exposures or manual retouching that can now be done in minutes.

But it was sad to see the support industries get decimated overnight when digital started coming on. My friend’s uncle was a professional color printer- he used to work with 20 other people printing all night for decades. In 1998 they laid off everyone but him- because he was the only one who knew how to use a computer. Labs were closing left and right- there had to be at least 100 pro labs in Manhattan in 1995- now I think there is maybe 2? Standard E6 service was 3 hours in those days!

You speak with the wisdom of experience.

I have never heard of anything other than silver is unexposed (White on the new fangled plastic slides)

I have always shaken film holders, 4x5 up to 11x14 and can easily hear the film sliding back and forth (long ways)

Back in the day people would take a triangular file and cut tiny v-notches in the holder, this was visible on the outside and would cast a shadow on the edge of the film when the film was exposed, perfect record.

Be careful with stickers, will ruin the darkslides. Pencil in the little memo areas.

 

[mshchem]

If you want to experience some 1970's US humor here's a little clip from SNL. The end talks about the Convention of eating corn on the cob. Hopefully this is taken lighthearted

 

[choiliefan]

The only German film holders I've used have a one-piece metal (stainless steel) dark slide with a folded or rolled top edge functioning as a finger pull. For unexposed, I place this pull facing outward. After exposure, the pull goes inward. Probably no help but at this point, oh well.

 

[AgX]

There were some high paid fashion guys back then that used 3-4 assistants on a shoot and could easily shoot hundreds of sheets of 8x10 a day- which seems almost impossible to believe at today’s film/lab costs.

That long post was an interesting reading indeed. But I am surprised about this very statement. Are you speaking about the 80's and Europe?

 

[ragazzo]

That long post was an interesting reading indeed. But I am surprised about this very statement. Are you speaking about the 80's and Europe?

I want to know who!!

 

[el_37]

I want to know who!!

Meisel was the main one. Michael Thompson was another.

That long post was an interesting reading indeed. But I am surprised about this very statement. Are you speaking about the 80's and Europe?

1990's to early 2000's in NYC. Although Meisel shot often in Europe- I doubt his working methods changed much regardless of where he was. A Meisel shoot in that era was a sight to be seen.

 

[trondsi]

Holders with film go in a black plastic bag. I wrote “unexposed” and “exposed” on each side of my the dark slides. For empty film holders, I keep them in a green bag.

 

[Tim Stapp]

Sorry, I didn't read all 5 pages. My personal rule is to leave empty holders on the shelf, stored in the cupboard inside ziplock bags to protect from dust.

Loaded holders are all numbered sequentially, with sides A and B. I have fifty of various makes and ages (in preparation for a project that never came to fruition, due to COVID).

Darkslides are inserted with white="Ready for Light" and dark="Ready for the Darkroom."

 

[Sirius Glass]

Sorry, I didn't read all 5 pages. My personal rule is to leave empty holders on the shelf, stored in the cupboard inside ziplock bags to protect from dust.

Loaded holders are all numbered sequentially, with sides A and B. I have fifty of various makes and ages (in preparation for a project that never came to fruition, due to COVID).

Darkslides are inserted with white="Ready for Light" and dark="Ready for the Darkroom."

Skipped five pages and still follows the convention that most people follow and other swear on their mother's grave is not the convention. Somehow this thread did not devolve into a film versus digital tirade.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I've always kept holders in a zip lock plastic bag. Inside the bag there is a slip of paper indicating which film is loaded. White side showing, unexposed film. Black side showing, exposed film. I also keep a notebook with holder number, scene, film, and which N dev I'll give. Easy peasy Japanesey (as my Japanese wife always says).

 

[Vaughn]

If you want to experience some 1970's US humor here's a little clip from SNL. The end talks about the Convention of eating corn on the cob. Hopefully this is taken lighthearted

The only way to eat corn on the cob is to stick little handles in the ends of the cob that look like little corn on the cobs.

 

[mshchem]

The only way to eat corn on the cob is to stick little handles in the ends of the cob that look like little corn on the cobs.

We had those when I was a kid. Nothing better than sweet corn at it's peak.