Film and paper processing chemistry
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First of all, because little things potentially add up to a significant cumulative effect. Second, it often does make a visible difference in the print, or else affects the ease of printing. Third, a lot of us apparently find the topic interesting in its own right. Photographers have always had their secret sauces. Fourth, what party is fun without its own pie fight? The Three Stooges got watched for a reason.
I use a lot of very (think 60 years) expired film and paper, so need to tailor my processing accordingly.
And certain kinds of film benefit from certain kinds of developers - as in, make all the difference in the world.
If you stick to Tmax/FP4/HP5/Delta/TriX - all fresh - D76 is just dandy. Once you meander into the Aviphot stuff or other technical films, you may want to use something else.
Other than that, it's all just part of the available magic, like Drew said.
And certain kinds of film benefit from certain kinds of developers - as in, make all the difference in the world.
If you stick to Tmax/FP4/HP5/Delta/TriX - all fresh - D76 is just dandy. Once you meander into the Aviphot stuff or other technical films, you may want to use something else.
Other than that, it's all just part of the available magic, like Drew said.
Good question. I've asked myself thr same many times. My conclusion is that there are three games (hobbies or passions, if you will) that interact here: darkroom work, camera collecting and photography. The thirds appears to be rather elusive, and it seems difficult or perhaps not even very relevant to discuss on a forum. The former two lend themselves very well to endless elaboration, experimentation and desk research. They're concrete and tangible.
False premise. It absolutely can make a significant difference - for better or worse - in the final image.
But "significant" is in the eye of the beholder. Someone banging out snapshots is going to have a rather different view than someone trying to make wall hangings for posterity.
For example, after 50 years of using Dektol, I have become convinced that Ansco 130 offers just a bit more, particularly in the area of shadow detail separation. It's a small improvement, but at least to my eye, a very definite improvement.
Why I oughtta ...
+1
It is also easy to forget (or perhaps to have never known) that during the heyday of film photography, Kodak (as just one example) was constantly innovating with film, paper, and chemistry to provide the practitioner more choices. That is, this isn't a new behavior, it's just been scaled down and become a personal journey moreso than a commercial one.
Between violet and cyan, there are countless shades of blue. Indigo, azur, turquoise, ultramarine, cobalt blue, aquamarine, Genoa blue, Prussian blue, teal, sky blue, lapis lazuli, and a whole bunch of others, some wildly different, some whose differences are so subtle they can only be seen upon close inspection. 50 shades of blue.
Now, if all you want is to paint your bathroom wall blue, you go to the store, find a paint that looks blue to you, a standard blue that's not too light and not too dark — the Xtol blue, so to speak —, and you're fine. It'll be blue. It'll look good.
On the other hand you might be a painter — the artist type, not the "who paints walls" type. Then the situation is different. You'll be looking for a specific blue. The one that "works" with what you're doing, with what you have in mind. The one, or the ones, that translate the emotion you want to convey.
Might take you a while to find it — it may not even exist and you might have to tweek another blue, or invent a new one to get to where you want. How far you want to go is a matter of taste, of temperament, of personality, of commitment, of time, etc.
And this doesn't matter whether you're in your blue period, whether you're a neo abstract expressionist working on your next gallery show, or just a guy wanting to paint pretty pictures in his free time. There's the right blue, there are a few that come close — which may be fine for many —, and there are the blues that have nothing to do with your blues (not those you get if your baby done left you, caus' that's another story
).Same with photography chemistry, film and paper.
And needless to say that the wall painter and the artist are both right in their approach. They'll both get blue. It's all that counts for them.
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Picasso made the excuse that blue paint was cheap and readily available at that point in his life. Does that explain the popularity of Dektol as well?
I once somehow turned the wrong dials on my colorhead. The resultant Cibachrome prints got it all backwards, and I tossed it in the wastebasket next to the sink. The next day a client came over and looked through a bunch of prints, but couldn't find what he wanted. He wanted to see how I made them, so I took him into my makeshift darkroom at that time, a spare bathroom. Then he spotted the print in the wastebasket, "That's exactly what I was looking for." So he asked me to frame it for him, and wrote me out the check. I was rather puzzled until I later found out he was color blind.
I once somehow turned the wrong dials on my colorhead. The resultant Cibachrome prints got it all backwards, and I tossed it in the wastebasket next to the sink. The next day a client came over and looked through a bunch of prints, but couldn't find what he wanted. He wanted to see how I made them, so I took him into my makeshift darkroom at that time, a spare bathroom. Then he spotted the print in the wastebasket, "That's exactly what I was looking for." So he asked me to frame it for him, and wrote me out the check. I was rather puzzled until I later found out he was color blind.
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It actually really, really does.
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It's a good analogy. One thing I learned selling industrial paint is that there is no such thing as either black or white paint. Concentrate one enough, or dilute the other enough, and you'll see that there is always some kind of distinct hue bias.
Likewise, to a sensitive eye, there is almost no such thing as a true black and white print. Different developers, and even lengths of development factor in; the nature of the paper it's coated on also does; so does the manner in which you tone it, whether very subtly or obviously; the exact board color you mount it on affects your perception of its color, and so does the lighting it is displayed under, even the degree of eye fatigue at that point in time (which is exactly why I never evaluate my dry prints after a computer session). Color vision comes into play just as much when printing "black and white" media as when printing color film onto its own kinds of media.
Picasso's exact management of multiple flavors of blue and blue-green works so well because there is a counterpoint of specific tans or off-warm hues as the secondary set of colorants. The effect of 130 glycin on certain paper highlights, like MGWT, where even the background paper is warmish, juxtaposed against deep blacks which are split toned blueish, has a similar effect if one understands how to juggle the proportions and well.
Some like to play with such things in a nostalgic sense, mimicking antique photography, which is fine and fun. But I prefer subtlety. Even Dektol deserves a place in my color palette options, that is, when I deliberately want a slight greenish tinge in the print, which certainly isn't very often with current papers. I have a lovely Seagull G print on the wall behind me which was developed in Dektol years ago. I also like the redo of the same negative from just a couple years ago done with MG Cooltone and 130, which holds a little more detail in the highlights. Can't say which is better; they're just different.
Likewise, to a sensitive eye, there is almost no such thing as a true black and white print. Different developers, and even lengths of development factor in; the nature of the paper it's coated on also does; so does the manner in which you tone it, whether very subtly or obviously; the exact board color you mount it on affects your perception of its color, and so does the lighting it is displayed under, even the degree of eye fatigue at that point in time (which is exactly why I never evaluate my dry prints after a computer session). Color vision comes into play just as much when printing "black and white" media as when printing color film onto its own kinds of media.
Picasso's exact management of multiple flavors of blue and blue-green works so well because there is a counterpoint of specific tans or off-warm hues as the secondary set of colorants. The effect of 130 glycin on certain paper highlights, like MGWT, where even the background paper is warmish, juxtaposed against deep blacks which are split toned blueish, has a similar effect if one understands how to juggle the proportions and well.
Some like to play with such things in a nostalgic sense, mimicking antique photography, which is fine and fun. But I prefer subtlety. Even Dektol deserves a place in my color palette options, that is, when I deliberately want a slight greenish tinge in the print, which certainly isn't very often with current papers. I have a lovely Seagull G print on the wall behind me which was developed in Dektol years ago. I also like the redo of the same negative from just a couple years ago done with MG Cooltone and 130, which holds a little more detail in the highlights. Can't say which is better; they're just different.
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When I look back on more than fifty years of making medium size black and white prints of outdoor subjects in natural light I think about where the effort has gone.
Nine tenths of the striving, the expense, and the passion has and gone into the pursuit of evocative and expressive subject matter in good light. This includes travel, sustenance,
accommodation, and staying safe in sometimes challenging environments.
Of the remaining commitment about half of it is wrangling cameras and lenses from 8x10 format on down and being conscientious about framing, focus, and exposure. The rest is routine film and paper handling.
After wasting about 10 years embroiled in the Zone System I finally figured that film exposure is largely irrelevant provided it is enough or maybe a bit more.
Any extra density in a "full information" negative is perfectly manageable after I forced myself to LEARN TO PRINT.
Film development also is largely irrelevant provided it is enough or maybe a bit more. Any minor shift in the contrast of a "full information" negative is perfectly accommodated and exploited by modern multigrade paper.
Again the point is my determination to ditch the Zone System and instead LEARN TO PRINT.
None of the above suggests sloppiness about film exposure and development. Calibrate them once. Make them routine. There's no deep creativity there. The real adventure is elsewhere.
Nine tenths of the striving, the expense, and the passion has and gone into the pursuit of evocative and expressive subject matter in good light. This includes travel, sustenance,
accommodation, and staying safe in sometimes challenging environments.
Of the remaining commitment about half of it is wrangling cameras and lenses from 8x10 format on down and being conscientious about framing, focus, and exposure. The rest is routine film and paper handling.
After wasting about 10 years embroiled in the Zone System I finally figured that film exposure is largely irrelevant provided it is enough or maybe a bit more.
Any extra density in a "full information" negative is perfectly manageable after I forced myself to LEARN TO PRINT.
Film development also is largely irrelevant provided it is enough or maybe a bit more. Any minor shift in the contrast of a "full information" negative is perfectly accommodated and exploited by modern multigrade paper.
Again the point is my determination to ditch the Zone System and instead LEARN TO PRINT.
None of the above suggests sloppiness about film exposure and development. Calibrate them once. Make them routine. There's no deep creativity there. The real adventure is elsewhere.
Sure as shot there are various black and white paints, and lots and lots of colors too. None of that has anything to do with the minutiae OP was referring to. For example, there are many trivially different print developers that give identical results. There are also many trivially different B&W film developers that will give the same results.
Some people are just bent on trying desperately to convince themselves or others that processing negatives or paper is much more of an art than it is. The art of darkroom printing is predominantly under the enlarger.
Some people are just bent on trying desperately to convince themselves or others that processing negatives or paper is much more of an art than it is. The art of darkroom printing is predominantly under the enlarger.
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I prefer to see things as people making choices from their knowledge, their experience, their taste and their personality. Not by who took the blue pill and who took the red one. That some people may be delusional doesn't mean that everything is delusion.
Predominantly, yes. Solely, no. And there's enough out of what isn't the "predominantly" that, for some people for whom it justifiably matters, it can make a difference.
Agreed.
I make very definite choices based on my taste and preferences, most likely not for everyone. And those choices include the film, ISO rating choice of developer and type of enlarger head and printing process. To be more succinct, I shoot HP5+ rated at 160, developed in Rodinal and split-grade printed with a condenser head.
Since colorblind people see colors, but see them differently, it would be interesting of some artist tried to make paintings (or a photographer tried to make prints) specifically intended to look good, only if you are colorblind.
Very cool. I've taken another path, or just see the same path differently.
Your nine tenths is 100% life for me -- though my subject matter is the light, not what it is shining (or not shining) on...somewhere in there I fit a camera, lens and some film. The creativity flows though all of it, because that is where the adventure is.
For me, the darkroom (or dimroom) is only one part of the creative process...there is no 'most important' part. (YMMD)
You may as well ask why people bother at all when they could simply shoot and print digital.
At the end of the day, experimenting is fun and sometimes you unexpectedly find a combination that just looks unique and blows your socks off.
And if that works with a particular image, well WOW.
And pie fights are fun.
Which in itself is a perfectly sensible question as well, and of course, the vast majority of photographers have opted for the latter.
Depends on whether people hide nails or excrement in the pies they throw. That's why we generally limit them here.
As the "cockneys " would say in "Mary Poppins", Drew, "You've got a lucky face, guv.
pentaxuser
Yeah - it's way less fun than printing.
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