Why don't photographers include photo details in books?

markbarendt said:

Totally agree Chris.

Stone even if you were using an enlarger and the same film and camera as me; your results would be different than mine for any given scene. That's a good thing, variety is the spice of life.

Maybe you need to ask the question from a different perspective like; "how can I create this effect?" rather than "how did they?"

Pick the characteristics that strike your fancy, that you want in your work then do some experiments and figure out how to get there.

Click to expand...

I think the idea is, The photographer uses certain combo that I wouldn't have even tried, because I wouldn't expected to have a certain look or result, but see in a book and say oh this a talk up for has used X film with Y developer and they got this result that I didn't think they could get, maybe it is possible to use that film or that developer and have good results.

That's not the only reason that I want to know info about the photo, but it certainly is something to think about and can be valuable, that's my point.

It also beckons the question about time frames, in the past they were films that I don't even know existed, and sometimes I look at the photo and say wow that's a great look I wonder what film that was on, and it happens to be on something that I've never even heard of like Royal X Pan, which I've only heard of recently because it was probably discontinued before I was born...

Now does it make sense?

It's like someone who is some kind of metal worker, looking at the Liberty Bell and saying I wonder what percentage of brass or whatever it's made of is in this Liberty Bell, it's important to some people because they're just curious it's part of history, and if that information isn't documented it's lost forever.

erikg said:

For many photographers, especially for those who consider what they do art, there is already this feeling that they need to work against the idea that photography is just a technical exercise. It's a bias or perceived bias that has lessened over the years but hasn't completely gone away. Artists in other media get this too and you won't find too many books put out by painters who go into much detail about process. Unfairly or not in the art world it seems amateurish. Ever go to a lecture by an established fine art photographer? There always seems to be one person in the audience who asks about cameras or film or something and you'll hear a collective grown go through the audience. There are just bigger questions to ask and to think about. The stakes should be higher. Sunday painters talk about brushes. Serious artists keep that talk amongst peers.

Click to expand...

My perspective exactly. StoneNYC is looking at art books and searching for logic.

StoneNYC said:

It's like someone who is some kind of metal worker, looking at the Liberty Bell and saying I wonder what percentage of brass or whatever it's made of is in this Liberty Bell, it's important to some people because they're just curious it's part of history, and if that information isn't documented it's lost forever.

Click to expand...

A better comparison with a creative photographer would be a sculptor, who would probably look at the bell (if at all) in consideration of form. The 'metal worker' you describe here sounds like an engineer. There are no formulas, Stone.

I remember Kurt Cobain saying that when he was a kid he had a Sex Pistols poster on his wall - even though he had never heard them. Playing guitar on his bed, he tried to recreate what he thought they would sound like. This is in essence the mind of the artist.

batwister said:

My perspective exactly. StoneNYC is looking at art books and searching for logic.



A better comparison with a creative photographer would be a sculptor, who would probably look at the bell (if at all) in consideration of form. The 'metal worker' you describe here sounds like an engineer. There are no formulas, Stone.

Click to expand...

Haha!

Ugh just trying to say that different people are curious about different things, and being that maybe because I'm from an engineering background in terms of my family (first one in 4 generations to NOT be an engineer) i'm always thinking about how stuff works and how stuff was made and I know that sometimes that can detract from the artistic side, but I also have that thankfully and so I'm not like a Leica owner who shows you charts of how perfect the picture of his cat is... LOL

StoneNYC said:

....and so I'm not like a Leica owner who shows you charts of how perfect the picture of his cat is... LOL

Click to expand...

You are the guy who sees an image and assumes that a large percentage of what makes it great is the engineering behind it and not the vision of the photographer.

Dinesh said:

You are the guy who sees an image and assumes that a large percentage of what makes it great is the engineering behind it and not the vision of the photographer.

Click to expand...

Oh god...

You can have all the vision in the world, but if you don't have the tools to apply the vision then you aren't going to make shit... Lol

StoneNYC said:

Oh god...

You can have all the vision in the world, but if you don't have the tools to apply the vision then you aren't going to make shit... Lol

Click to expand...

You have that backwards!

StoneNYC said:

Now does it make sense?

Click to expand...

No.

I understand your want, been there, but you are vastly underestimating the variables involved and are looking firm rules where none exist.

The only thing knowing what film or developer was used gets you, is the knowledge that it can be done with that combo. So what?

That doesn't get you any closer to getting that effect.

StoneNYC said:

... i'm always thinking about how stuff works and how stuff was made ... LOL

Click to expand...

Sometimes you can appear a bit schizo... . For every post where you say you want to know "how stuff works", you have one where you "don't care about reading curves", etc. Those curves and graphs are just physical representations of how the stuff works.

I also think you're hampered by not doing any darkroom printing. I don't do any negative scanning, but friends that both scan and wet print tell me there's a difference as to how the negative responds to each method. They tell me a film's inherent characteristics are easier to discern by wet printing. Like I said, I have no personal experience but that makes sense to me. It's probably time for you to start wet printing...

Real world example time!
all of these photographs were made with a Leica M2, a 50mm f/2 Summicron Dual-Range lens, Ilford FP4+ exposed at box speed, developed in D76 1+0. I have made identically sized prints of all the images on Fomabrom Variant fiber based paper. While the images reside on different rolls of film, they were processed identically.

all scans were made on the same scanner, no less.

Conclusion? It really doesn't make any difference whether you know or not.

Well said Chris.

eddie said:

Sometimes you can appear a bit schizo... . For every post where you say you want to know "how stuff works", you have one where you "don't care about reading curves", etc. Those curves and graphs are just physical representations of how the stuff works.

I also think you're hampered by not doing any darkroom printing. I don't do any negative scanning, but friends that both scan and wet print tell me there's a difference as to how the negative responds to each method. They tell me a film's inherent characteristics are easier to discern by wet printing. Like I said, I have no personal experience but that makes sense to me. It's probably time for you to start wet printing...

Click to expand...

Eddie, I would love to honestly, but I'm just not able to right now, where I'm living I just can't set up a darkroom it's just not possible. So I can't learn the things you're talking about because I don't have that kind of access.

I also understand your confusion about the whole curves graph situation, I just don't think in linear terms like that, it's not that I can't understand how things work it's just that those kinds of representations don't help me mentally, I like physical three-dimensional type thought processes. I would prefer to imagine the way that a developer attaches itself to the molecule of silver etc. and then dissolves it or whatever happens within the actual structure, those kinds of mental images help me a lot more, I'm not really good at then converting that to a two-dimensional graph type information, i've never been able to really grasp that stuff.

Everyone's mind works differently, I'm certainly not schizo, however as I said before I'm slightly one of those borderline genius level people (as in IQ of 139... 1 point away dammit!) who can't always function as others do hah!

I also understand my brain and my path enough to know when there's too much overload of information. It's just like anything you need to build your knowledge base, and if there's an area of photography that I don't quite understand that I feel I need to know before I know another area, I sort of will not really be able to absorb the secondary information until I fully understood the first information and it's sort of more about picking and choosing I suppose in my brain the relevant (at the time) information that I can absorb.

Until I can fully "see" the difference between high key tones and highlights in mid tones and blacks and shadows and fully completely understand the visual of what that looks like I can't port that information into a graph and hope to be able to make it relevant to my visual understand. Does that sort of make sense?

Anyway, I totally agree that I should be printing optically, and I have all the stuff the only thing I don't have is probably some paper and some developer, but I have everything else that I could ever need to develop and print properly ... Except the darkroom space... And yes I could in theory going to my bathroom at night try to shut off all lights of block out the windows, do a contact print, and hope to expose it and developing properly, but for me going to the process of doing something like that and not really coming out with a quality product is it really useful, to me that's a waste of time because I wouldn't really be able to perfect anything, and by the time that I actually got to setting up a real dark room and printing again for real, to print something nice that was actually usable, I would have forgotten basically everything that I learned in my bathroom anyway and so I just don't want to waste the time, when I have so many other things going on in my life.

Did you appreciate all your input of course everyone, just kind of trying to get some perspective of how I function.

Dinesh said:

You are the guy who sees an image and assumes that a large percentage of what makes it great is the engineering behind it and not the vision of the photographer.

Click to expand...

batwister said:

You have that backwards!

Click to expand...

eddie said:

Sometimes you can appear a bit schizo... . For every post where you say you want to know "how stuff works", you have one where you "don't care about reading curves", etc. Those curves and graphs are just physical representations of how the stuff works.

I also think you're hampered by not doing any darkroom printing. I don't do any negative scanning, but friends that both scan and wet print tell me there's a difference as to how the negative responds to each method. They tell me a film's inherent characteristics are easier to discern by wet printing. Like I said, I have no personal experience but that makes sense to me. It's probably time for you to start wet printing...

Click to expand...

quoted for emphasis.

The only time you will see a token characteristic of a film in a real life situation will be if you shoot the same image on three or four different emulsions (a medium format camera with multiple backs would facilitate this nicely), process them all to the standard time for box speed in a normal developer, and then make identical prints on identically graded paper.

But I wouldn't know because I shoot HP5+, Tri-X, and Neopan 400 basically interchangeably with little variation in handling, and I seem to have no problem printing or scanning my negs.

When I was still in school a professor of mine chided a student for making a bokeh-laden photograph with no substance, saying that "This is a picture of your lens, not your subject". What you are asking for is very similar. You want to be able to identify a certain photograph as a picture of that emulsion. What's the point? There is not a secret room deep within Kodak's walls where in a hermetically sealed vault contains the -definitive- print of what Tri-X developed in D76 1+1 and printed at Grade 3 looks like. If it matters that much to you, then you have bigger problems than curiosity.

I know you're not schizo. Hence, the smiley...
There are ways to print without needing a full darkroom. Cyanotypes would be a good alternative place to start. You're producing 4x5 negatives, which would be a good size. 6x6, and 6x9, contacts can have a gem-like quality.

StoneNYC said:

Anyway, I totally agree that I should be printing optically, and I have all the stuff the only thing I don't have is probably some paper and some developer, but I have everything else that I could ever need to develop and print properly ... Except the darkroom space... And yes I could in theory going to my bathroom at night try to shut off all lights of block out the windows, do a contact print, and hope to expose it and developing properly, but for me going to the process of doing something like that and not really coming out with a quality product is it really useful, to me that's a waste of time because I wouldn't really be able to perfect anything, and by the time that I actually got to setting up a real dark room and printing again for real, to print something nice that was actually usable, I would have forgotten basically everything that I learned in my bathroom anyway and so I just don't want to waste the time, when I have so many other things going on in my life.

Click to expand...

(underlining by me, for clarity).

Stone,

This is going to be my very last response to this thread. You are wasting time right now trying to understand something that is of much less importance to your photography than just simply doing more photography.

You are doing yourself a huge disfavor to try to accomplish something by leaning too much on the qualities of the film and developer you use.

Is it NOT clear by now, reading all of the responses of fellow photographers here, PLUS the fact that most photography books don't have the information you asked about in the first place, that it isn't something that will make or break a photographer?

I just don't understand why this is so important to you. You just went through a long rigmarole trying to figure out whether TMax 400, Tri-X 320, or HP5+ is what you want to use. And then immediately after that long thread is finished, you start this one and another one about using Tech Pan?! It's like a gigantic mystery to me and you are all over the place. If you take the time to really learn just ONE of the films you have questions about and flail around trying out, then the choice of film will gradually become less and less important, because you will see with your own eyes that it is your skill that determines the outcome of your photographs, not the stupid film. Just be patient and buy nothing but one film for a long time and try to work on the other much more important aspects of photography.

Film has no ability to think or act, but YOU do. You create something that is a reflection of what it is you want to show. What is it you actually do want to show us with your photography? What do you want us to experience and feel? What do you want us to take away from watching your photographs?
I think of the photographs you have posted in the gallery over the period in time you've been on APUG, and the only thing I can really remember is the fact that you want MUCH more contrast from your photographs than I do, that you titled many of your photographs by what film you used, and that you used a very handsome lady's bottom to draw attention to one of your cameras. I'm not saying that to be mean, it's just me speaking my mind. I can't remember a single other thing.
In the same breath I will say I remember other photographs from members long gone, posted to the gallery years ago, because how beautifully crafted they were. And I don't remember a single thing about them regarding what film was used.

If you want to perfect anything, as you mentioned yourself above about darkroom printing, spend much less time with learning about materials, and much more time learning about the art. Make good art! Wise words by Neil Gaiman that everybody should embrace.

Peace.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

(underlining by me, for clarity).

Stone,

This is going to be my very last response to this thread. You are wasting time right now trying to understand something that is of much less importance to your photography than just simply doing more photography.

You are doing yourself a huge disfavor to try to accomplish something by leaning too much on the qualities of the film and developer you use.

Is it NOT clear by now, reading all of the responses of fellow photographers here, PLUS the fact that most photography books don't have the information you asked about in the first place, that it isn't something that will make or break a photographer?

I just don't understand why this is so important to you. You just went through a long rigmarole trying to figure out whether TMax 400, Tri-X 320, or HP5+ is what you want to use. And then immediately after that long thread is finished, you start this one and another one about using Tech Pan?! It's like a gigantic mystery to me and you are all over the place. If you take the time to really learn just ONE of the films you have questions about and flail around trying out, then the choice of film will gradually become less and less important, because you will see with your own eyes that it is your skill that determines the outcome of your photographs, not the stupid film. Just be patient and buy nothing but one film for a long time and try to work on the other much more important aspects of photography.

Film has no ability to think or act, but YOU do. You create something that is a reflection of what it is you want to show. What is it you actually do want to show us with your photography? What do you want us to experience and feel? What do you want us to take away from watching your photographs?
I think of the photographs you have posted in the gallery over the period in time you've been on APUG, and the only thing I can really remember is the fact that you want MUCH more contrast from your photographs than I do, that you titled many of your photographs by what film you used, and that you used a very handsome lady's bottom to draw attention to one of your cameras. I'm not saying that to be mean, it's just me speaking my mind. I can't remember a single other thing.
In the same breath I will say I remember other photographs from members long gone, posted to the gallery years ago, because how beautifully crafted they were. And I don't remember a single thing about them regarding what film was used.

If you want to perfect anything, as you mentioned yourself above about darkroom printing, spend much less time with learning about materials, and much more time learning about the art. Make good art! Wise words by Neil Gaiman that everybody should embrace.

Peace.

Click to expand...

Fair enough, I still do focus on other things, I just happened to be curious because I was in a bookstore and none of the books had any information on the film. It's not like I run around staring at photo books in stores all day long for weeks at a time struggling to figure out what was shot on what, but it's still good to know, certainly in these galleries most people list the information on what they shot what camera what developer what paper what paper developer etc. there's a reason that those categories are listed as options to fill in, it's because they are relevant. To a degree...

As far as being all over the place, once I came back to film in 2010/2011 I wanted to experience all of the different films that everyone talked about that were so amazing, but of course wanted to be sure that I was getting results that were similar to what they were getting, some of these were either films that were not stored properly or were developers that were not readily available, and so I kept the films frozen and safe, as best I could, and then finally acquired some of the proper an official original developers etc. to try with them, then I spent A lot of time understanding and learning my own process and perfecting my development techniques etc. so that I wasn't just fumbling in the dark. Now I have all this text and that is in good shape, not fog in anyway shape or form, and tech pan developer specifically just so I can see "what all the fuss is about" just like with other things that other people say like how plus X is so amazing, of all the films I've tested that people talked about were amazing or not amazing etc. etc. the only films I've really found to be of any interest to me was Verichrome Pan and Panatomic-X...

Even the tech pan doesn't seem to really be all it's cracked up to be when developed on low contrast, however I do like it as a high contrast film which is it's other purpose/option.

So now I've learned something. A look that I like that wasn't readily available, know that I know that this look is achievable with some films, I can look for those characteristics in other films that exist currently. Now I have a basis for understanding and finding something that I truly like in what is available now but I wouldn't even have any concept of it if I hadn't experimented with those films.

Does that kind of makes sense?

I know this is your last post and that's okay, as I said earlier I do value everyone's information and feedback so thank you.

what is it that you need in your set-up that will allow you to contact print ?

light bulb?
2 cheap tupperware trays?
4$ lowes/home despot bucket?
piece of glass?

thats pretty much all it takes ...
you dont' really even need a dark-room

Chris Lange said:

quoted for emphasis.

The only time you will see a token characteristic of a film in a real life situation will be if you shoot the same image on three or four different emulsions (a medium format camera with multiple backs would facilitate this nicely), process them all to the standard time for box speed in a normal developer, and then make identical prints on identically graded paper.

But I wouldn't know because I shoot HP5+, Tri-X, and Neopan 400 basically interchangeably with little variation in handling, and I seem to have no problem printing or scanning my negs.

When I was still in school a professor of mine chided a student for making a bokeh-laden photograph with no substance, saying that "This is a picture of your lens, not your subject". What you are asking for is very similar. You want to be able to identify a certain photograph as a picture of that emulsion. What's the point? There is not a secret room deep within Kodak's walls where in a hermetically sealed vault contains the -definitive- print of what Tri-X developed in D76 1+1 and printed at Grade 3 looks like. If it matters that much to you, then you have bigger problems than curiosity.

Click to expand...

If you are honestly serious that you can't tell the difference between Neopan 400 vs Tri-X or Neopan400 vs HP5+... Then I feel sorry for you, because I sure can... VERY different looks.

That said, I totally get your comments that your professor made about shooting the lens, that totally makes sense and so I will take that under advisement to be wary of what I'm really doing

StoneNYC said:

As far as being all over the place, once I came back to film in 2010/2011 I wanted to experience all of the different films that everyone talked about that were so amazing...

Click to expand...

I think the point Thomas was making is that a film is not "amazing". A photo may be, a photographer may be, but the film itself isn't.

eddie said:

I think the point Thomas was making is that a film is not "amazing". A photo may be, a photographer may be, but the film itself isn't.

Click to expand...

If film weren't amazing then why do people and things like Kodachrome and verichrome pan or Plus-X ... "oh I wish I could get that back it was such an amazing film"... etc. etc. I hear this time and time and time again...

I understand the concept of what you're saying, but in reality people learn characteristics of a certain kind of film and love shooting with that particular kind of film I'm not saying everyone's like that, but many photographers are, and many photographers value the knowledge they learn from each kind of film, if they didn't no one would care if E100G disappeared because Velvia is still available... Ya know? (Using an extreme example since you guys keep saying that the black-and-white examples I'm using are ... Getting through...) lol

StoneNYC said:

If film weren't amazing then why do people and things like Kodachrome and verichrome pan or Plus-X ... "oh I wish I could get that back it was such an amazing film"... etc. etc. I hear this time and time and time again...

Click to expand...

people love chasing magic bullets ..

jnanian said:

people love chasing magic bullets ..

Click to expand...

Haha that's true

StoneNYC said:

If film weren't amazing then why do people and things like Kodachrome and verichrome pan or Plus-X ... "oh I wish I could get that back it was such an amazing film"... etc. etc. I hear this time and time and time again...

Click to expand...

I think it's partially nostalgia, a bit like looking back on an old girlfriend. With time, people are prone to remember the good over the bad. It may also be because some photographers spent years, or decades, working with a particular emulsion, and had their technique completely dialed in. Losing those emulsions was frustrating, and they had to start from scratch with a new film.

jnanian said:

people love chasing magic bullets ..

Click to expand...

True, but the sooner they find out there aren't any, the sooner they can get good at this.

eddie said:

I think it's partially nostalgia, a bit like looking back on an old girlfriend. With time, people are prone to remember the good over the bad. It may also be because some photographers spent years, or decades, working with a particular emulsion, and had their technique completely dialed in. Losing those emulsions was frustrating, and they had to start from scratch with a new film.

Click to expand...

Fair enough

That's the third time you have said you are a genius.
I wonder how this expresses itself; or what are you a genius at.
My class was tested in grade 6. I couldn't figure where the answers went, so I wrote them beside the question. At the end I saw the teacher tear of the perforated side, which I then realized was where the answers were supposed to be.
I got a 0