Dry Plate Emulsion Updates on the Lightfarm.com

At the risk of double posting, I thought I would repost Denise Ross' announcement to her "Light Farm" website. She's made some really good and informative additions to the site and they deserve to be posted in their own thread... Denise's post follows:

I've finally got the Dry Plate Photography section posted on The Light Farm. I was so full of great ideas after our party, I went back into the darkroom and into the field instead of sitting down at my computer. I realized (all over again) a couple of weeks ago, that this stuff is never 'finished'. There are just too many great paths to follow. So, I've written down the current state of things. I have more ready to go whenever I can stand the sight of my keyboard again. And, hopefully, there will be more than just my work. Anytime someone has something they'd like to post on TLF, just let me know.

http://www.thelightfarm.com/Map/DryPlate/MapTopic.htm

d

Two comments:

1. The script font used is very very hard to read.

2. Denise does not specify an ISO rating for her plates. Mine are ISO 40 Ortho. Of course, due to #1 above, maybe I missed that information.

Notwithstanding, this is great work to nit-pick over. Congrats Denise.

Ron

Kirk Keyes said:

At the risk of double posting, I thought I would repost Denise Ross' announcement to her "Light Farm" website. She's made some really good and informative additions to the site and they deserve to be posted in their own thread... Denise's post follows:

I've finally got the Dry Plate Photography section posted on The Light Farm. I was so full of great ideas after our party, I went back into the darkroom and into the field instead of sitting down at my computer. I realized (all over again) a couple of weeks ago, that this stuff is never 'finished'. There are just too many great paths to follow. So, I've written down the current state of things. I have more ready to go whenever I can stand the sight of my keyboard again. And, hopefully, there will be more than just my work. Anytime someone has something they'd like to post on TLF, just let me know.

http://www.thelightfarm.com/Map/DryPlate/MapTopic.htm


d

Click to expand...

Thanks, Kirk, for the heads up. There is certainly some good information on the Lightfarm website

I concur with the comment about the font style. Sometimes a traditional approach is better, even when trying to make something new.

Otherwise, it is a great knowledge base and an inspiration. I may not get around to doing things like emulsions in the near future, but hats off to your dedication, Denise!

Thank you, Kirk. Starting a new thread was probably a great idea. And thanks to you all for the nice words.

Ron: I've addressed emulsion 'speed'. Hopefully, you will be able to wade through the text to find my comments.

About font: I've decided that there really isn't a perfect solution. I've had people comment positively and negatively on every font I tried out on my personal website, dwrphotos.com. The font I'm typing now in the reply box is probably the best, but I'm afraid typing black Ariel on a white screen for long would drive me around the bend of boredom! I polled friends and family and checked three browsers to make the selection I chose for TLF. There are actually four fonts used, but I'm assuming you have the most concerns with the Comic font. Comic in 'parchment' on a dark gray background is actually the easiest for me to look at for hours at a time. (I have horrible vision). I hope it isn't a stumbling block for too many people.

On my To-Do list of additions and refinements for the near future is a printable pdf of the recipes. They will be Ariel or Georgia, black on white.

Jerevan, I know you've been interested in emulsions for a long time. I hope you'll get a chance to give homebrew a try. You'll have a lot of fun!

Denise

Hi All,
Regarding "difficult to read" fonts, howcome so very many "visual artists" are half-blinde? I guess for the same reason that many "vocal artists" are tone-deaf.
Chears,
Bill

To make these pages easier to read you can disable the page styling in your browser. I don't know about IE, but in FireFox click on "view", then on "Page Style", then on "no style", and you'll get a plain page with no styling at all.

cheers

Having spent some time with Denise, I see her choice of font as representing the side of her that thinks outside of the box - the one that most of the rest of us confrom to. Regardless of anyone's thoughts on this subject, I think we need to respect her choice.

As PE says, it's great work that she has done there and that's what our comments should be on.

Kirk,
To clarify: By "half-blinde" I was reffering not to Denise, but to those who had trouble reading "The Light Farm". It is perfectly clear to me. More clear than APUG.
Bill

That was definitely interesting reading. I found the contact print to be the most appealing - by a landslide.

I love how you have worked out your own method of getting from A to B. For me - I like to have an idea of how to do it, but I would never actually pursue it in reality. Too little time. If film was to become unavailable I might reconsider. Thank you for sharing all your work with us!

(The font - well, there are type fonts made specifically for viewing on the web. Boredom? For me, with a problem with parallel lines, I actually had to import the text into Word and change the font before I could read it successfully. Try Verdana. Beautiful, simple, and extremely easy to read on the web. Sorry to keep ranting on it from this off topic standpoint. I thought I could help a bit.)

Thanks again,

- Thomas

Thomas Bertilsson said:

Try Verdana. Beautiful, simple, and extremely easy to read on the web.

Click to expand...

Thomas - did you notice that Denise does use Verdana on the page?

<td width="503" class="text-medium text-lightgrey"><i>
<font size="4" face="Verdana" color="#FFFFFF">'Pancho and Herman'</font></i><p>

Actually, she uses it quite a bit - I think all the light grey text is Verdana...

Well, that ought to shut me up right there... My apologies. I remembered wrong. Verdana is a type font suited well for printed matters.

Garamond, Century, Helvetica, Arial, and Times New Roman are what I should have written here.

Very sorry for the mistake (especially since I thought I was helping out).

- Thomas

I don't care what the steenkin font is, I can't read it!

Apologies to all. I just cannot. It is way too hard for my eyes, even with bifocals on a large monitor. And no offence meant to either Denise or Kirk.

PE

Website design is an art/craft all its own and there is no 'one-size-fits-all' - despite the plethora of information that would try to suggest otherwise. The evidence, if you will, is that each 'definitive' source is different from the other 'definitive' sources. There is more than just font style to consider. There is also font size and font color vs. background color. Some people do better with a strong contrast between text and background. Another person's eyes will start to blur and water if the contrast is too high. Some people like the text to be as small as possible so that as much information as possible is on the screen at any one time, so that they don't have to scroll as often. Others, of course, need large text in order to read the words.

The very best advise I've heard is that each individual web author choose the style he/she has the easiest time with. This is as good a guarantee as any that the author will want to actually write the damned thing and that the content will be complete and useful.

The best way to cope with a web style that you find inaccessible is to sweep through the text, copy it, and then paste it into Word, or similar. Then, you can change the font style and size. All this takes less than a minute. Of course, you have to be interested in said content!

So, what did you all think of the techniques Denise presented? I'm really impressed with you system of coating and how well I've seen it done even by first time coaters.

dwross said:

The best way to cope with a web style that you find inaccessible is to sweep through the text, copy it, and then paste it into Word, or similar. Then, you can change the font style and size. All this takes less than a minute. Of course, you have to be interested in said content!

Click to expand...

Exactly! That's why I did precisely that. And it was interesting reading! I really liked reading about your variations and treatments of the same negative. And it's impressive to view how good and even the emulsion coating is!
I'm inspired to try it some day when we run out of commercially available material, or if I magically find more time in the day (full time work, full time student, photography business - AND taking care of a family leaves very little time for experimentation, unfortunately).

Thanks,

- Thomas

Well, I'm spread too thin as it is to "correct" what I cannot read. I just don't read it! Sorry, but even if the content is good, I don't have time to fix things up.

I don't read every post here either.

PE

If you look on the web, you will find many scathing commentaries on Comic Sans. It is the opposite of everything good font design is about, and was done pretty much as a joke at Microsoft.

I'll start a web site using hiragana and katakana spelling everything out phonetically in the gojuonyo. All of my formulas and practically no one to read them.



PE