Next week I get to see Sherman's Semi Stand Prints in Louisville, I hope he dosen't let me down, he has been talking a big story on this thread. Apparently there is a case of Dumante ordered , I hope Gittings dosen't show up.
Not speaking for the other 7 here but you are right Gerald I cannot offer a scientific basis for my opinion.
What I can offer is over 30,000 roll processed in pyro , contacted then prints made from over the last 15 years. Not to mention the Sheets of film.
Some people make charts and plot curves, drink wine and pontify about printing
Others make a living from it and work 7 days a week at photography.
Which group do you fall into??
Which group do you fall into??
What I believe is important is the stain produced during development since it is created in proportion to the amount of silver produced. I think of this as image stain. Placing the negative back into the developer after all silver halide has been removed by fixing contributes nothing to the image stain. This procedure produces only an overall stain something like a built in ND filter. It's not going to create any mystical qualities in the negative.
Years ago when there was a great deal of interest in the Zone System there were a handful of gurus for lack of a better term. Their every word was considered as holy writ. No one was allowed to question any of their pronoucements let alone supply any scientific criticism. Sadly, I think that the technique of stain development is at a similar point. It's a valid and useful method but people need to separate the facts from a great deal of fiction.
I Yams what I Yams , as Popeye would say.
Recently a 40 print show that hung in the Royal Ontario Museum which was viewed by hundreds of thousand viewers , got extended for one year due to the positive responses. All the negatives produced this show were done in my very unsophisticated method of dipping back into the developer.
I think the prints are pretty good using this method.
I think you are missing my point about the hardening effect of tannin developer, nowhere did I say the stain had any mystical properties and I must admit it took me years to understand the zone system, and my take on it is probably very different from the gurus here and back then.
How you make the prints zing is most important. That just takes practice and a few thousand negatives to work with.
... until you supply successful images that can back up all the wonderful theories and tech mumbo jumbo.
So, would "real" scientific information really help us in producing a great print from a Pyro negative
or the advice of people who may have no clue about it but have printed thousands of negatives from it and can actually give their "professional" opinion?
...
I think most people have problems understanding the Zone System, I know I did. Many of the books on the Zone System are not very good teaching aids. I have read others describe the difficulty. Some state that they have suddenly attained an epiphany when everything finally made sense.
And this is exactly the mechanism Bob used successfully. He's in good company. There is passage in one of the A.A. books about Weston where the supreme geek of photography comments that he was watching Weston work and wondering just what in heaven's name the guy was doing. The final comment was "but the results speak for themselves." Clearly an acceptance by Adams that Weston's methodology was legitimate, even if it wasn't scientifically rigorous.
IMO it is a mistake to think of this as a zero sum game. Neither approach is wrong.
Bob,
I am not an expert on photograpic chemistry but I am a chemist. I also have been a photographer for 60 years. I have thus tried many things. PE could probably provide some more insights on what is happening. But here goes.
The principle advantage of a staining developer is that it produces not only a silver image but also a stain image. Compared to a conventional developer less silver needs to be produced to provide the same density and contrast. The stain image is grainless. Becuase of this the overall effect is a less grainy image. Less silver equals less grain. However, if you like dense negatives then this advantage is lost.
The stain is produced from the oxidation products of certain developing agents like pyrogallol, catechol, and hydroquinone. In order for the stain to form the sulfite content of the developer must be low just as it is for color developers. The stain consists of what are known as condensed polyphenols or humic acids. These compounds are highly colored and the stain is permanent. Once formed the stain is no longer effected by either the acid or the sulfite contained in such solutions as fixing baths. Humic acids are only soluble in concentrated solutions of either sodium or potassium hydroxide.
Now both tannin acid and the stain are condensed polyphenols. Tannic acid has a lower molecular weight than the stain and so is soluble in water. I think we are all familiar with that fact that animal hides can be tanned using tannic acid to make them stronger. A staining developer does the same thing. The chemical collagen in both the gelatine of the emulsion and the animal hides can be tanned thereby hardening them. Some people say that this tanning action prevents the silver grains from migrating and clumping up thus reducing the grain of the negative. With today's prehardened emulsions this alleged benefit may not be as great as in the past when emulsions were rather soft.
The tanning effect can be seen by the naked eye as it causes the emulsion to shrink producing a relief image. This also produces a refractive effect upon enlarging.
.
If the silver is removed from a negative produced by a staining developer the result is a grainless image similar to that produced by color films. Like so many things in photography this can be good or bad. Yes, there is no grain but the human eye may not perceive this image as being sharp. Anyone who has seen large color prints will experience this effect.
The amount of stain produced varies with the choice of developing agent. Some produce more stain than others. The color of the stain they produce may also be different. The developing agents differ in the conditions under which they produce a stain. Pyrogallol acts like a regular developing agent in the presence of moderate to high amounts of sulfite producing no stain image.
I hope this brief description answers some of your questions.
Jerry
I have said this before, there is no such thing as the perfect print> A lot of the workers on this site who take printing seriously are at a world class level> historically speaking there are very few printers that are making better prints before us that are coming out of the darkrooms today. What is different is the quality of the image, that is the hard part.
If you don't believe me go to as many shows , photo collectors collections and look for yourself, the prints are all within reach to all, its the imagery that is king.
The very best print I have seen in the last couple of years is one owned by Paul Paletti , it is an 11x14 print of a wave coming in to shore, the tonal range, and crispness jumps off the wall.
So if you accumulate enough good habits, work hard each year on your projects, and have some talent your work will stand out.
I think, at the end of the day, that it's all about knowing our materials.
Mistakenly, early in my photographer days, I was very keen on trying to improve by switching films, developers, and so on, but in the long run, it's technique that matters. It only took me five years to realize this.
Today I have established what materials I like to use, and it's mostly stay with one film/developer, and one paper/developer. I don't think I'm even close to reach their full potential, and wonder if I ever will. But I think to try to fully explore our materials is the type of progress we should explore, because that approach makes us think about the pictures rather than thinking about the materials, and a print can be absolutely glorious in print quality, but without a good picture underneath, it's still not interesting. The whole process easily becomes too much about the wrong stuff.
To find that balance between technique and subject matter is what I find to be the most challenging aspect of photography. I hope to continue learning about the materials I use, about lighting, about color (even in black and white), about framing, and about printing technique. I feel like a perpetual student. Someone else always knows something I don't. That's why the advice of someone like Bob Carnie is of invaluable help to me. The advice he gives me will be time proven in practical use.
So, to summarize, I think that all magic bullets are technique related, and none of them related to particular materials. This is my approach, and I admire others that can make beautiful or important prints using other approaches. There are many ways to get to the end result, for sure, so in my mind it becomes impossible to answer whether one developer is better than another. Just pick one and run with it and make the most of it. It isn't until you fully understand one developer that you can fully exploit and appreciate the qualities of another developer anyway, so either way you win by learning one developer first.
- Thomas
...and yet another technical thread veers into speechmaking about learning to use our tools. Yes, yes, we all know this obvious truth regarding virtually any endeavor. It does not mean it is a waste of time to talk about the differences in materials when a question is posed. I especially think it is important since much of what is said is either incorrect or misleading.
Yes it is true some of the differences between materials are immaterial, and should pobably be ignored. And yes how we refine our technique and work with our materials is extremely important. But there are sometimes characteristics which are quite different, not good or bad, but different, and there are implications when printing. Again, not good or bad, just characteristics worth understanding.
For example, everybody talks about grain masking in Pyro negatives, how the stain makes grain less apparent. True, but the context is usually wrong. The grain masking effect reduces the prominence of grain relative to non-staining high acutance developers. Even with stain and less silver in them, Pyro and Cat negatives are still noticeably grainier, sometimes a lot grainier (depending on the formula) than a negative developed in XTOL. Sandy King himself has written about how if fine grain is important to someone using small or medium format they would probably be happier using XTOL than PMK or Pyrocat. The tiny differences, if any, in highlight tonality are outweighed, and can be compensated for with skill in printing.
Just one example.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?