How "good" were old films and paper?

athanasius80 · Jan 20, 2006

A post the other day commented on the possibility of b&w photo supplies in the future potentially being homemade products comparable to commercial products of the 1920s-1940s.

I don't want to debate that, but out of curiousity, how good were commercial films and papers of the 1920s-1940s era? For instance, was Kodak Non-Curling film anything like modern ortho? What about something like PMC Bromide Paper? Hope I don't start a flame war, just thinking and thought I'd post to the group. Thanks!

David H. Bebbington · Jan 20, 2006

There are other APUGers who can answer this better than me, but by and large old films were much grainier for a given speed (before WWII, to get maximum quality out of 35 mm meant using an ultra-fine grain film with a speed of ISO 10 or so and then developing it in a speed-loss ultra-fine grain developer which took the speed down to around EI 2). They were also more heavily coated, popular roll films were often double-coated with one fast and one slow emulsion, this was to create greater exposure latitude, essential with fixed-exposure box cameras. I have never shot with Kodak Non-Curling film, but I am certain this was designed first and foremost to give exposure latitude and with the expectation that box-camera negatives would seldom if ever be enlarged. Legend has it that old-time photographers were highly skilled at estimating exposure, I have printed negs going back to the 1860s and the over-exposure was appalling, so thick emulsions were a must. Granularity was such that most photographers accepted the view that use of a format smaller than quarter-plate (3 1/4 x 4 1/4") meant a severe loss in quality. In big sizes, old-style emulsions had a very interesting quality - Ilford HP3, for example, which I used a lot in 4x5" to 8x10", had a very useful ability to hold highlight detail due, I believe, to the flattened-off shoulder of its characteristic curve. The oldest paper I have personally printed on was Kodak paper from the WWII era, paper bases I think were generally heavier, also coating weight, but the main difference was the colossal choice of weights, bases, emulsions and surfaces in which printing paper (bromide, chlorobromide and chloride) was available for both enlargement and contacting.

nick mulder · Jan 20, 2006

I cant buy D94 or D16 here in NZ which I need for some Plus-x reversal developing but have the chemical mixtures (thanks to APUG members) that they are made up of in anycase -

From all accounts they end up being exactly the same thing

Film and paper is another story tho -

But try some alt processes also like pt/pd, cyanotype etc... essentially *unchanged* in most cases for over a century and just as beautiful

avandesande · Jan 20, 2006

You can see grain in EW contact prints. Do what you want with that.

Curt · Jan 20, 2006

Oh my God you see grain. I supposed Robert Cappa should have had a Ultra Large Format Camera on D-Day.

Is there no more to an image than it's total technical performance?

David A. Goldfarb · Jan 20, 2006

David H. Bebbington said:
Legend has it that old-time photographers were highly skilled at estimating exposure, I have printed negs going back to the 1860s and the over-exposure was appalling, so thick emulsions were a must.

A high density range would have been required for good prints with 19th century print processes, so I wouldn't necessarily say that negs of that era are all overexposed or overdeveloped. If they have good shadow detail visible on the neg and highlights that print well using salted paper or later albumen or platinum or carbon, then they were probably properly exposed and developed for the processes available. A good neg for albumen, I find, is hard to print even on grade 2 Azo with a water bath, which likes a dense neg.

David H. Bebbington · Jan 20, 2006

David A. Goldfarb said:
A high density range would have been required for good prints with 19th century print processes, so I wouldn't necessarily say that negs of that era are all overexposed or overdeveloped. If they have good shadow detail visible on the neg and highlights that print well using salted paper or later albumen or platinum or carbon, then they were probably properly exposed and developed for the processes available. A good neg for albumen, I find, is hard to print even on grade 2 Azo with a water bath, which likes a dense neg.

This is true, but I'm talking about wet-plate negs (at the V&A Museum) that were so dense you couldn't see what the subject was when you held the plate up against a 2,000-watt lamp. We used to print these on Kodak contact-printing boxes giving about 10 minutes exposure on Ilfobrom (a normal neg would have taken 5 to 10 seconds). If that didn't work, we left the box on the whole of a lunchtime.

Jim Noel · Jan 20, 2006

I used the films and papers of he 30's and 40's.
Were they as good or getter? That depeds on a point of view.
FIlms were slower. During the war the only film generally available in 35mm was DuPont SUperior #2 - Weston speed =50.
LArge format film, that is film larger than 4x5 which was considered medium format, was generally slow, and yes grainy unles great care was taken to expose and develop correctly.
Film curves of the popukar films like Super XX were very nearly straight lines. Thus these films did not shoulder off and compress highlights as do most of todays films.
Papers did not contain whiteners thus the highlights were not as bright, but they did hold detail. They were generally slower and on heavier stock. How I would love to get my hands on some Charcoal Black again. I do still have a few hundred sheets of DuPont VArigam, Single weight, which I pull out occasionally, expecially for paper negatives.

avandesande · Jan 20, 2006

The original post was asking if the old films were 'better'. Okay, well if you care about grain they weren't. The poster asked a technical question and I gave a easily quantifiable answer. Maybe you should get some coffee?

Curt said:
Oh my God you see grain. I supposed Robert Cappa should have had a Ultra Large Format Camera on D-Day.

Is there no more to an image than it's total technical performance?

roteague · Jan 20, 2006

avandesande said:
You can see grain in EW contact prints. Do what you want with that.

I think you are right. One of the reasons we have a variety of film, is for different tastes. For example, I have an image at home that I took on Ilford HP5, which I shot because it had more discernable grain, although at the time, I was primarily shooting XP1 or Agfa VarioXL, for its smooth lack of grain.

nworth · Jan 20, 2006

The best way to tell is in a museum, by comparing prints made in the thirties with prints made recently. I've done that a few times. Today's materials seem to be a lot better, although some excellent work was done in the forties. My own experience, with any attention to quality, only goes back to the mid-fifties. Black and white materials have definitely improved since then, but I have negatives made on the old Plus-X and on Background-X (an ASA 25 speed, thick emulsion, motion picture film) which are quite acceptable by today's standards.

rhphoto · Jan 20, 2006

I have seen Strand's silver prints, Stieglitz, early AA, early Eddie and Brett Westons, and the one thing I can say for sure, is that modern (thinking anything after 1960 or so) materials don't have that certain "something" that those early prints had. Now if that is because all the photographers I cited are among the greatest of all time, maybe, and of course this is purely subjective.

Those prints (and I'm just talking about silver gelatin at this point) have a "richness" or depth, and a soft gradation of tones that I don't see from newer materials. So much of silver photography is about matching negatives to papers and achieving optimum contrast and tonality. And when those guys got it right, those materials gave us some of the great treasures of our medium.

If you compare a Pepper#30 from the 1930s, which was probably printed on something like Velour Black, to one done by Ed's son Cole, you'll see more "punch" in the Cole's print (printed on Ilfobrom or Gallerie) but it won't have some of the eery, beautiful depth of the older one. Again, perhaps highly subjective, but that's my take and I'm stickin' to it!

Bob Carnie · Jan 20, 2006

I always thought that Ilfords Ilfomar was a wonderful paper as well as Kodaks Ectalure.
When I started out in college both papers were fully graded from 0-5 and they also came in different surface textures.

If Ilford could make warmtone with an eggshell surface like fotospeed lith I think I would have found the perfect paper of old.

Alan Johnson · Jan 21, 2006

Old prints around 1925-1930 were often printed on a cream base with some apparently selenium toned. I have tried unsuccessfully to replicate the look by selenium toning modern chlorobromide papers but I guess the cream base and toneability(probably due to cadmium) would need to be made by a process which would not meet environmental controls these days.
They did look good though.

Photo Engineer · Jan 21, 2006

It is like asking how a model-T was. And testing a model-t today would be using todays roads. You would have to have the old film, an old camera/lens/shutter, old type processing solutions and old printing equipment and paper to test the entire chain.

There was nothing magic about old time products. They were slow, grainy, unsharp and there was no developed theory as to how or why print systems should be designed or how they should work.

A remark above about a rolled over shoulder giving better highlights for example is contrary to theory. A rolled over shoulder in film compresses highlights but a straight shoulder retains them. You see the math developed for print systems says that the slope of the final print is the product of the slopes of the two original materials (film and paper). As one or the other decreases, data is compressed or lost.

An ideal negative would be very dense with a straight line 'curve' that went on 'forever'. That would capture everything. The old time films had pretty bad curve shape sometimes and other times pretty good. Quality sometimes could be pretty bad. There were severe problems in large size papers and some films which had festoon drying marks and runback due to the types of coating machines used then.

Hardness was very bad back then, and films were very soft and subject to scratches and marks.

I think we all tend to look at the 'good old days' through rose colored glasses and forget the problems and frustrations of the times. Things were hard before the 40s or 50s for photographers. Anyone here ever use flashpowder? I doubt if there are very many here that have used flashbulbs or had to carry several meters calibrated in different systems so that they could change films and meter properly. Everyone used a different 'standard'.

PE

roteague · Jan 21, 2006

Photo Engineer said:
I think we all tend to look at the 'good old days' through rose colored glasses and forget the problems and frustrations of the times. Things were hard before the 40s or 50s for photographers. Anyone here ever use flashpowder? I doubt if there are very many here that have used flashbulbs or had to carry several meters calibrated in different systems so that they could change films and meter properly. Everyone used a different 'standard'.

PE

I think you are right, we have some of the best stuff available that we have ever had. Even the old style emulstions like Efke, are probably better then their cousins made back in the 50s.

Daniel Lawton · Jan 21, 2006

I think if photographers from the 20's and 30's had access to our current high quality films and papers they would drop the old stuff in a hearbeat. Right now image quality is truly dependent on the skills and technique of the photographer. I would imagine that back then materials were a much more limiting factor but of course I wasn't around at the time. Personally I wouldn't want to take steps backwards.

chiller · Jan 21, 2006

Daniel Lawton said:
I think if photographers from the 20's and 30's had access to our current high quality films and papers they would drop the old stuff in a hearbeat. Right now image quality is truly dependent on the skills and technique of the photographer. I would imagine that back then materials were a much more limiting factor but of course I wasn't around at the time. Personally I wouldn't want to take steps backwards.

I had the pleasure of standing infront of a very large print from 1927 done by Ansel Adam on a recent trip to his Yosemite Gallery. With all his "inferior" products there is no way I could ever approach the print I stood in front of with "modern superior" products.

It is my desire to attain that level of inferiority in all my work

Donald Miller · Jan 21, 2006

I think that often times we romanticize the old materials because we have not found the ability to express ourselves using the materials that we have today to their potential.

So the easy way out is to say, we can't do that because the old materials were better. Furthermore since they are no longer available, I won't try to reach the epitome of my present materials.

I believe that a lot more is possible with todays materials then many of us realize.

Daniel Lawton · Jan 21, 2006

chiller said:
I had the pleasure of standing infront of a very large print from 1927 done by Ansel Adam on a recent trip to his Yosemite Gallery. With all his "inferior" products there is no way I could ever approach the print I stood in front of with "modern superior" products.

It is my desire to attain that level of inferiority in all my work

I didn't mean to say the products of the time made it impossible to get great results but AA was a huge proponent of image quality and took advantage of newer and better developed materials as they arrived on the scene. I remember reading in his biography that his early printing papers in the 20's (one was Dassonville Charcoal black I believe) limited his photographic vision and were rather limited in their ability to render tones like modern papers. Consequently he made the switch to Agfa and Kodak papers (among others) as he felt the quality was much better. I think I can say with reasonable confidence that if AA were alive today he wouldn't have a desire to use whatever paper it was he made that 1927 print on given the current offerings.

fhovie · Jan 21, 2006

I must admit that though I have preferences of materials, I could likely get very close the the results I want with any of the the films or papers I work with. I would draw the line at RC paper though - It really is a different product than any fiber paper. So - with modern coated lenses and shutters, digital spot meters that are optimised for monochrome, consistant chemicals and digital scales and temp meters, digital timers and buffered light sources. It really is my own skill and imagination that limits what I can do.

nworth · Jan 22, 2006

chiller said:
I had the pleasure of standing infront of a very large print from 1927 done by Ansel Adam on a recent trip to his Yosemite Gallery. With all his "inferior" products there is no way I could ever approach the print I stood in front of with "modern superior" products.

It is my desire to attain that level of inferiority in all my work

It's important, and difficult, to separate the artistic quality of a work from the quality of the materials used. If you are trying to judge the quality of the materials, it is easier to compare works of similar (and not terribly high) artistic merit.

aldevo · Jan 22, 2006

Donald Miller said:
I think that often times we romanticize the old materials because we have not found the ability to express ourselves using the materials that we have today to their potential.

So the easy way out is to say, we can't do that because the old materials were better. Furthermore since they are no longer available, I won't try to reach the epitome of my present materials.

I believe that a lot more is possible with todays materials then many of us realize.

Very well said, Donald.

Curt · Jan 23, 2006

You can see grain in EW contact prints. Do what you want with that.

Dear Mr. Avandesande you said it.

Jim Chinn · Jan 23, 2006

Film is better today than at any time. With the exception of Kodak Super XX that has a cult following for ULF (still used by some who hoarded it when it was discontinued) I think yesterdays films would be a huge dissapointment.

There may be some validity to paper being better because materials used in papers like the old Dupont brand favored by so many of the greats is no longer included due to environmental concerns. The loss of AZO comes to mind in this discussion, but I have no doubt that even if a replacement never comes to market some smart experimenters and tinkerers will find a way to get equal results with other papers for contact printing.

However, I think technique and tools today make up for any loss of perceived quality. I have seen many prints that far exceed the sharpness and tonality of say an Ansel Adams print that were printed on modern graded papers. New developers (dixactol, Pyrocat HD, PC TEA) allow more information to be printed with more ease from a negative, and tehcniques such as unsharp masking and post printing treatments further provide tools for excelent prints.

Besides, the whole argument is really moot. The old materials as well as AZO, SX-70 polaroid, Polymax Fine Art, and the next thing that gets discontinued are never coming back. Better to learn to maximize what is available today and not waste time on the past.

How "good" were old films and paper?

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