I am not joking, Joe. And I don't think I need my head examined.
I did not realize I was going to have to explain this, but I guess I am.
As a professional, I need to know various things about a film before I feel confident to take it on a commercial assignment.
I need to know, for example, how the film will react to filtration. No b&w film is perfectly panchromatic. No film renders subjects exactly as the human eye does. The human eye is not perfectly panchromatic either. What happens to blue sky behind green foliage? Will a K2 fix it? Are shadows (lit with blue skylight) deeper than with other films?
How does the film see ultraviolet? Some studio flash units put out a lot of it. UV penetrates facial skin a few millimeters before being reflected back. It is as if the top layer of skin were missing. A film which is very sensitive to UV will accentuate capillaries under skin when lit with some studio flash. Everyone has a nose like W. C. Fields. Tmax has a tendency in this direction for me.
What about long exposures? Is the manufacturers reciprocity table accurate?
Does the film have a long or short toe? At what point will the shoulder (and highlight detail) block up with overexposure?
Ektapan was designed especially for studio lighting with electronic flash. Some films handle flare well, others do not.
Can I get sufficient dark gray detail to render a navy blue wool suit or ranch mink coat with enough detail to still read in a newspaper picture made with a 65-line screen? Can I get it without having the model's blonde hair blow out?
How does this film react with dilute high-acutance developers? Traditional high-speed emulsions are highly affected. Ilford Delta reacts no differently to ID-11 than to FX-1.
What development is required to print on matte fiber paper vs. RC glossy. How about when toned with sepia? An 8x10 Deardorff with a 4x5 reducing back produces much more contrasty negatives than a 4x5 field or technical camera with tiny tapered bellows, due to internal flare.
There is no such thing as telling a client that it didnt come out.
This kind of intimacy with a film cannot, in my experience, be achieved with a bunch of rolls in no time. It took me many hours over several years and oodles of money. Not an investment Id do again in a film likely to disappear soon.
I did not realize I was going to have to explain this, but I guess I am.
As a professional, I need to know various things about a film before I feel confident to take it on a commercial assignment.
I need to know, for example, how the film will react to filtration. No b&w film is perfectly panchromatic. No film renders subjects exactly as the human eye does. The human eye is not perfectly panchromatic either. What happens to blue sky behind green foliage? Will a K2 fix it? Are shadows (lit with blue skylight) deeper than with other films?
How does the film see ultraviolet? Some studio flash units put out a lot of it. UV penetrates facial skin a few millimeters before being reflected back. It is as if the top layer of skin were missing. A film which is very sensitive to UV will accentuate capillaries under skin when lit with some studio flash. Everyone has a nose like W. C. Fields. Tmax has a tendency in this direction for me.
What about long exposures? Is the manufacturers reciprocity table accurate?
Does the film have a long or short toe? At what point will the shoulder (and highlight detail) block up with overexposure?
Ektapan was designed especially for studio lighting with electronic flash. Some films handle flare well, others do not.
Can I get sufficient dark gray detail to render a navy blue wool suit or ranch mink coat with enough detail to still read in a newspaper picture made with a 65-line screen? Can I get it without having the model's blonde hair blow out?
How does this film react with dilute high-acutance developers? Traditional high-speed emulsions are highly affected. Ilford Delta reacts no differently to ID-11 than to FX-1.
What development is required to print on matte fiber paper vs. RC glossy. How about when toned with sepia? An 8x10 Deardorff with a 4x5 reducing back produces much more contrasty negatives than a 4x5 field or technical camera with tiny tapered bellows, due to internal flare.
There is no such thing as telling a client that it didnt come out.
This kind of intimacy with a film cannot, in my experience, be achieved with a bunch of rolls in no time. It took me many hours over several years and oodles of money. Not an investment Id do again in a film likely to disappear soon.