Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Stretch Your Brain, Stretch Your Waistband, But Don't Forget To Stretch Your Negatives

Morning playmates - my apologies for not getting back to you before this, but, well, life can be an adventure at times can't it! Over a month has gone by and I've done precious little in the way of photography, but I will explain . . .  
The source of my adventure? the dreaded unsupported-ness of Windows XP . . . 
Yes I know it should have been ditched years ago, but I've had far more prioritorial things to spend my hard-earned ackers on and a new computer wasn't one of them (though hopefully that will be changing soon)!
Anyway, around Christmas it occured to me that using XP was no longer really sensible - the world was getting slower and slower, browsers were taking forever to load and to be honest the sheer amount of time I wasted on keeping this machine running smoothly and securely was getting beyond the pale. I call myself the IT Department here at home, simply because I was spending a large proportion of every day just footering around and trying to get things right. But that was my position - a new computer wasn't possible, so, what was a man to do? Well it occured to me there was something that could help me out of a fix without costing the earth . . . well, without costing anything actually . . . it was something I had been contemplating for a while:

the weirdly techy world of Linux! 

Oh yes, I thought, a free operating system that can help me out of a fix! So, suitably determined, I backed up all my important files on an external drive, burned several discs of different Linux Distros (their word for variations in Operating Systems) slapped one in the drive, restarted, hit the BIOS settings of my machine, set it to boot off a CDRom, restarted and joined the world of the labcoat brigade.
Let's get this straight - my machine is ANCIENT as in 10 years old, tiny memory, small HDD, it was a low-level Tesco (but Philips built) machine designed as a package to get the average home user using. But it worked. That is until the world decided it was no longer fit for purpose and demanded bigger, faster! So, where did that leave your unfortunate hero? Up a bleeding gum-tree, that's where.
The thing is, maybe leaving the coat-tails of something you've been familiar with for years is a daunting prospect - I know it was for me. I've been a Windows user ever since we first got 'proper' computers in work back in about 1992 (and prior to that everything was done with catalogues and an Amstrad home computer). We used Windows 92 and then when XP came along everything changed - here was something that was useful, worked and was fun too and when the net came to work, well, when most of your day is spent researching new releases and reissues, then obviously it had its advantages!
So yes, making the big leap from unsecure and slow (in 2016) XP, was to say the least daunting.
But you know what, like a terrible landlord, once you've got past the onscreen "Oh you fecking idiot, you know you're going to completely evict 10 years worth of XP schtuff!" and "Help, No! We've nowhere to go!" then a real cavalier devil-may-care attitude overtakes you and before you know it, you're uninstalling and installing Linux Distros with gay abandon!
And that's the state I am in now. So here's a boring list of everything that did and didn't work - as you can see, I've been busy:

Ubuntu (doesnt work on my old machine).
Lubuntu (does work, but updates and then fails)
Xubuntu (does work)
Mint (does work but weird onscreen sizing made it unusable - I have a CRT monitor too!)
Debian (works well, but why breeze through something when you can spend an hour or two doing the same thing)
Elementary (the most user-friendly, but again onscreen sizing made it unusable)
Zorin (works, but can I get it to talk to my Epson scanner? can I feck**)

** In fact it was this thorny problem that stopped me using all of the above that worked. Linux does have a scanner system called SANE, but to be honest if you have an Epson machine you'll be hard pressed to get it functioning. I've downloaded goodness knows how many times the drivers from Epson; I've unzipped, unpacked, installed, un-installed, followed onscreen instructions from everywhere, used command line, used everything until I didn't know whether I was coming or going and to a man, they all failed . . apart from one.

At the moment I am using Q4 OS - it's a variation on Debian and is fairly user-friendly and actually looks and acts a little bit like Windows, except it isn't.
As I described it to my father-in-law, Windows and Mac OS is a bit like a lovely shop window and shop - you see something you want in the window, go in and take it to the counter and buy it - you then take it home and it works.
In Linux (any of them) you don't always see what you want in the window, but it is the correct shop, so you go in, walk up to the counter, ask if they have it in stock, get a part number and bin number and then go through to the stockroom and pick it yourself; then you take it home, plug it in and it might well work, but then again . . .

The thing is Linux is a fine concept, but as a community it is incredibly split-apart - now if ALL of the programmers got togeher in one great brain-mash and said look, this is this, that is that - they're both great (and believe me, a lot of Linux stuff is truly great) how about if we made it this way?
If a UNIFIED FRONT were applied, Linux (per se) would be an OS that an entire world could enjoy with ease.

Anyway, enough of that, I got my scanner working (thank heavens) though now, this morning the fecking prtiner has decided it doesn't want to work again! Schiiiiiite!!

You know, I read something funny along the lines of "Linux is only free if you don't value your time" and I am slightly of a mind to agree with that.

Anyway, enough, your toast is getting cold -

Photography Here


You know when you can't get a full-frame 6x6 print through a letter box, because letter boxes aren't square and the print is?
Yeah, it's quite a problem, so what do you do? That's right, you slice bits off of the top and the bottom so the print resembles a letterbox shape, that's better - it pops through nicely!

What am I talking about?
Well, it's that little known and very rare, but rather handy 6x3 Hasselblad panoramic adapter!

Back when  I bought Victor, I tried to accumulate a bunch of accessories too and this was one of them - it'll come in handy I thought - I rather like that stretchy panoramic look and allied to this, all the Hasselblad panoramic photos I had seen all had that nifty little marque of THE TWO V's - but the thing was and little did I realise at the time, that it apparently DOES NOT work with a 500 CM.
I exhaled a loud "Oh Shite!" when I read that.
Admittedly, I should have known -  it didn't fit in the customary Hasselblad way - but it did sort of.
For those of you who haven't a scooby about what I am on about, the adapter is an approx 6x6cm piece of metal with a precision cut (approx) 6x3cm slit in it - if you were to saw one in half, it would look like one of those squared-off bracket thingies you have to the left of the Enter Key on a standard keyboard!
You stuff it in the square opening by the light curtains on the back of a 'Blad and then mount your film back onto the camera. There's a plastic mask (ostensibly clear, well it is for the image bit, but then surrounded by a weird dimply/spotty bit, showing you what will and won't be masked) which  you pop onto the focus screen and then fit your weapon of viewing choice on top of it..
So where was this weirdness getting me?
I know, I really do - it's anathema isn't it - you get a 6x6 frame and then you waste approximately half of it!
But that isn't the point, and anyway, why should you care it doesn't fit the damn camera? It's my camera and my film, I'll do what I like.
Well, whisper it . . . actually . . . if you can find one, buy it now. It fits the 500CM.
OK, it doesn't sit in the space exactly properly - though it will actually, just not snug:


Correct way - might work:

[  Camera Body

Incorrect way - but it does work

Film Back ]

if you can make sense of that!

So, anyway, suitably armed and with a roll of 5 years past it's Use By Date Neopan 400, I set off on a dark and dismal day to see what would happen . . . oh, and I was under the cosh with regards to time - Dad Taxi waits for no man . . .

It was strangely easy getting used to using the cropped viewfinder - I'd had this before on the Rollei whereby I'd used the 645 adapter and this was much the same. Composing was (relatively) a cinch - just had to be careful of verticals (which I wasn't ).

Now these were all taken with the 60mm Distagon, but can you imagine using it with a 40mm Distagon?
It looks really wide already, and using a slow film and a non-grainy developer, you might well get some results that would make you think of larger or more famous Panoramic cameras or backs.
I could have got a Pano back for the 5x4 Wista, but you know what I am struggling to focus that these days - this is just so much more convenient (and not to say more stable in very windy conditions)






Stretch 1 - Crop
Yes I Know I've Got Converging Verticals.
Paper As Below.




Stretch 1 - Actual Work Print- Really Bad Scan
The Perils Of Scanning Resin Coated Paper.
Marks Are From Resin/Scanner Contact Point
Paper Is Ancient Fotospeed, Hence A Bit Lacking In Contrast.




Stretch 2 - Crop
The Perils Of Using Unfamiliar Software . . .
This Is XnView - I Am Used To Irfanview.
Paper As Above




Stretch 3 - Crop
A Bit Squinty, But A Bit Better . . .
Random Puddle At Dundee Uni.
Paper As Above


Well, they're pretty crap prints aren't they, but never mind, it was an experiment - I see where I went wrong and won't do it again (promise) - I reckon in the landscape with a good vista, they might be fine - also, naturally the film plane on the 'Blad is rock solid, so you've no problems with curves or anything - take it from me, the frames are pin-straight.

I'll take more care next time.

Anyway, I s'pose the whole point of this is that if you have to, you can change things and think outside the box. I've made something work that wasn't supposed to work, and with regard to my computer I am having to relearn new software just to replace my old stuff.

XnView and Gimp seem pretty decent replacements for Irfanview and T'P'shop (CS2) respectively. No doubt if I had had more time I could have used Gimp more effectively, but the scanner problems were such a total nightmare that time shot out of the window never to return!

So until I win the lottery or something, this will have to be this - who'd have thought getting a Blog up and before your eyes could take such an amount of effort . . and was it worth it!

Anyway, till next time, one potato, two potato, three potato, four, five potato, six potato, seven potato, more.
 

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Amateur Hour


Morning folks and greetings from the land of night.
Tayside has, for nearly a week now, been caught in a repeat system of low pressure and the sun hasn't really shone at all - in fact it has been a week of unrelenting rain and dreichness the like of which I can't ever remember. So on that note, I thought I'd cheer us all up with a trip back in time!

About 30-odd years ago, after my father had died and I had moved away to the all too distant environs of Dundee, my Mother (a woman of great resources and proper Blitz Spirit) battled on valiantly in our little cottage in the middle of nowhere.
I've written a lot about that place because it still means so much to me, however for her it was a rural solitude too far. She did try, but eventually succumbed to the intense loneliness, and, typical of her nature, decided she had to do something about it. So, aided and abetted by my Sister she decided she would like to move back to my Father's birthplace, Lincolnshire. She got a map, stuck a pin in it (literally) and looked at properties in the environs of the pin, ending up in a wonderful wee village about 20 miles from Boston, called South Kyme.
At the time I thought she was mad, truly barking, but after I visited her I realised that she'd made exactly the right choice. South Kyme had (at the time) a pub and a shop/post office and one of the strongest community spirits one could ever wish for. Community spirit isn't for everyone mind, but for Mum is was perfect and exactly the sort of elixir a sorrow and silence-hardened spirit could wish for. They welcomed her with open arms and she, in her typically ebullient nature, made friends quickly.
Her cottage was a semi-detached farm worker's cottage, it was small, cosy, had no front door (because of the prevailing winds), had an inside and outside toilet, an old pig-shed and a wonderfully overgrown garden that needed licking into shape. For Mum it was a panacea. The wonderful sandy soils of Lincolnshire meant she could grow wonderful veg, and everything she touched seemed to turn to green abundance. It was a little oasis of peace and happiness and very much a place of her making.
Ali and I visited it together before we were married (obviously I'd visited it before that too) and then at semi-regular intervals thereafter. When Alex Turnips came along we took him too and he loved the garden, my Mum's cooking and her slightly dotty happiness. The cottage only had two bedrooms - Mum's was at the front, and the guest room was at the rear. This initially had 2 single beds in it, but eventually this was changed to an enormous double on the bottom, double on the top, bunk affair, which took up the majority of the room, but was fun and comfortable.

Yes OK Sheepy, very interesting, but wot has it got to do with us?

OK - nothing actually, but it sort of does, because whilst staying in South Kyme I was fortunate enough to have several really good photographic adventures, so I am going to detail one of them and explain why I have decided to re-print the negatives.
At the time life was photographically very simple for me - I had a couple of cameras, but really all I ever used was my 1965 Rolleiflex T (called Ollie) and a rather spindly but functional Slik tabletop tripod. Metering was done by the ever-present Gossen Lunasix 3S, and apart from a cable release, that as they say was shallot. Incredibly simple really - I had a 16-on conversion kit for Ollie, but I rarely used it. Obviously though, as is so typical of our hobby, I hungered for better gear.
It is so typical isn't it - you always think the grass is greener and the better image is over the next horizon/new camera and life goes onwards till there really isn't much further to go and I've done that.
LF? Yep - TWO 5x4 cameras . . . no 10x8 though, that always seemed a bridge too far from the lugging around point of view. 
Good 35mm? Yep - got a Leica, got a full range of Nikon F stuff too. 
120? Well, yeah apart from the aforementioned Ollie, I also have a really nice old Minolta Autocord with an astonishingly good lens; I've also got the Koni-Omega rapid with the 90mm Super Omegon - again a truly wonderful lens, and really I have taken my 120 leanings to their nadir with the Hasselblad and the 60mm Distagon which is without doubt worthy of its reputation and the best lens I own . . . so where do I go now?
Well it's kind of perverse and in rather the same way that purchasing a Paul Reed Smith customised Custom 24 back in the early 90's (ordered from the factory no less) made me feel that I didn't ever need to struggle with guitar playing and subsequently meant I virtually never played another note on a guitar, so, buying the Hasselblad has all but deflated my photographic sails for the moment. 
I haven't wanted to buy a single thing since buying it, because where do you go? 
And more importantly WHY?
I love using the Hasselblad so much I feel that maybe I should cut-out everything else and just use it but then I know that won't do and I'll want to move into other formats at other points of time . . . and although this is an aside, it was this feeling about using my old cameras that made me think about my friend Ollie The Rollei again and realise that what I had with him was a very special relationship. 
So I started re-examining the several hundred rolls of film I'd taken with him and that led me to remembering photographic journeys and that led me to thinking about my Mum's hoose and hence this blog! 
You see, being a Sheephouse isn't all random stuff - there are sometimes thought processes involved and sometimes they work out fine!
So you've got the setting and the camera - how about film?
At the time I was using a combination of TMAX 100 and HP5+, but what I had forgotten from the notes was that I used Ilford's incredible Perceptol exclusively. 
I think that was Barry Thornton’s influence - I seem to remember him going on about it in "Edge of Darkness" - a great book by the way and well worth reading. In my notes I have written that I used it at a Dilution of 1:3 and at around 24° Centigrade, which seems way too hot, but that's what I have written.

Oh yeah, here's another aside:
Speaking to Bruce and people at Scottish Photographers meetings it seems like organisation of photographic media is something virtually non-existent
Why? 
It is easy and about a billion-times worth doing in that you can find things easily. For this blog, I went to my notebooks (which I have kept since film number 28) had a quick trawl through to 2004, scanned the notes, got the film numbers, found the negatives (all numerically organised per format) got the contact prints, again numerically organised and stored in boxes per format and went to the darkroom. The whole exercise took under 5 minutes. 
There was no 
"Oh schhhhhit, where the feck are those fecking negs? I knew I had them here, but they've gone OH SCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHIT!" 
Nope, I tra-la-la'd and skipped all the way to the darkroom from my study (a skip of albeit two skips, but all the same). I did the printing and filed everything back where it belongs. 
A Piece of Piddle.
So all I can say to you, is that, if you haven't got your negatives and contacts organised, please spend some time and do so - doesn't take long, can be as simple or not as you like (I like 66/1, 66/2, 66/3 . . or 35/1, 35/2, 35/3, or 54/1 . . . get my drift?) but is so worth doing I shouldn't even be telling you.


Right, onwards with the printing (at last they cry, at last) and here to welcome you to her lovely hoose is my old Mum, Lillian Mary Ellen Rogers - be sure to get some fresh welshcakes and butter too whilst you're on your tenth cup of tea!



Lillian Rogers

Actually, this is from the same bunch of films the prints for the article are from. That one was made on Kodak TMX 100 and developed in dilute Perceptol.
It was made on Ollie the Rollei at f5.6. No idea of the shutter speed though. It was handheld too and demonstrates why Rolleis are probably the ultimate portrait-making tools.
It has captured my Mum perfectly and of a lifetime of photos, I think this is my favourite.
The print of Mum is an older print, on Ilford Grade 2 Galerie - it is untoned, and I made it about 4 years ago. I haven't needed to change any contrast or brightness whilst scanning - it is, as is.

Right, the prints below are all reprints.
I had had a go printing them all back in 2004 when the negatives were made but I always felt the prints made then lacked that certain something and were a bit heavy-handed as it were - you'll know what I mean if you print much - things were either too contrasty or too dark or the balance was off a bit, or I'd just not got things spot on . . . you know the sort of thing.
These reprints were all printed on that ancient Agfa MCC fibre I have been trying to use up, and because of base-fog, they've all been printed at the equivalent of Grade 4 (I dialled in 100 units of Magenta on the DeVere's colour head).
Despite its obvious age, the Agfa is still an extraordinary paper and I fell whilst the scans below are OK, they haven't done any justice to the prints physical qualities - there's an air of the wonderful fenland liquid light visible in the paper which doesn't translate very well to the screen. Och well, that's life I suppose - you could maybe pop over some time and have a cup o' tea and I'll show them to you . . .
The prints are all developed in Fotospeed developer, stopped in Kodak Indicator and fixed in Ilford Rapid and then toned in Kodak Selenium and air dried by hanging from a line in my darkroom using plastic clothes pegs - why plastic? Wooden ones actually transfer splinters to the print! I had to use a little PotFerry on print 3 just to aid the atmosphere, this was thoroughly washed under running water before the selenium - if you don't you end up with mysterious staining.
Oh, and that curious curve to the rebate at the top of every frame? It's the curve of the film as the photographs were taken - these negatives were held in the glass carrier on my DeVere (and were thus utterly flatter than a piece of paper, steam-rollered and then placed under a 20 ton weight - in other words FLAT) and whilst I always do that old photo-journalist trick of braking the feeder spool (with my thumb - thus increasing film tension) as I am loading the take-up spool on Ollie (and indeed any camera that uses 120 film) it has done nothing to take away the horizontal curve across the film's horizontality (as it were) . . . see me afterwards for a more thorough explanation!
See what you think though and I'll detail the wee adventure after . . . just going to go and put the kettle on.



Kyme Fen 1





Kyme Fen 2





Kyme Fen 3




 
Kyme Fen 4 



The adventure unfolds:

Now, if you can imagine . . . it doesn't happen very often in this world these days, but I was awoken by a cock crowing! I guess a lot of people would call it annoying, but I think my farm boy genetic roots didn't mind at all - a new day was dawning, so it was up and at 'em!
The light was just greying into life and I left Ali and Joe soundly asleep in the bunks, hauled my 'outdoor' clothes on, grabbed the camera and tripod and crept downstairs and out into the mild and mystical dawn. Dawn, especially in Spring and Summer is my favourite time of day - the air just smells right and there's no noisy cars around, though this being rural Lincolnshire there was a fair bit of haulage going on - farm produce and livestock - that sort of thing.
The Kyme Eau (which is what it is called) will give you an idea of the areas deep roots, and though that is a Norman name, in reality this little piece of heaven was undrained Fenland occupied by fishers and farmers right back into the Neolithic.
There was a fantastic book about SK by Margaret Newton - it was called "South Kyme - The History Of A Fenland Village" (ISBN 0952481804) . . . good luck finding a copy if you're interested!
Anyway, luckily for me, even though the area is 'proper' working farmland and has been worked and worked for centuries, somehow the light which must have shone over those olden Fens has been retained and there is an air of stepping back in time (despite the telegraph poles in KF 2 and rubbish like the MacDonald’s carton in KF 4).
On that morning that light existed.
It is watery and soft and translates beautifully into silvery greys in prints. Honest, it is so transaparent and fresh and quite unlike anywhere else. The skies are big too around that part of the world due to the flatness of the land and this lends a vast airiness to the overall scene.
As I stepped out along The High Street (actually just a road through the village - if you want to see it - Google Maps - put in the postcode LN4 4AD) I could feel an atmosphere gathering. As I often do when setting out to seriously make photographs, the combined weight of all the old 'tog ghosts lands upon my shoulders willing me on to make the most of it.
I turned left and heading towards the Church following the metalled road and then climbed a gate to access the path that runs along the river. The Church is beautiful and was visited a number of times by Henry VIII - it still retains that air of a place cut-off from the world and it really was like stepping back in time.
The fields shimmered with a really heavy dew and my feet and trousers were utterly soaked in a few steps, but what did that matter to me! The dawn chorus was full-on, spiders webs dripped with dew and light and I can truly say that life doesn't really get much better.
Aware of just how fleeting the dawn was, I shot quickly with the Rollei T mounted on my trusty, Bambi-legged Slik tripod and an old Prontor cable release pressed into action.
I surprised myself, getting more soaked as I strode boldly across wet fields. No wellies for me - pah!
Here are the notes I made at the time:



Please excuse the scrawl, but I can read it . . .
And then the sun arose properly bathing me in warmth and light and making my trousers steam! I knew that that was it, I could take no more, but with a little luck I had got what I wanted to get.
The proof though would be in the developing.
I slowly wandered back to Mum's house breathing the fresh air and listening to the sounds of a world awakening.
I let myself in, quietly climbed the incredibly narrow and steep staircase, snecked the latch on the bedroom door, got undressed and slipped back into bed beside a warm wife and (despite the cock still crowing) went back to sleep for another couple of hours.
We got up to my Mum's clatter and her usual "just-to-get-you-going" mega-feast of breakfast and another day of our holiday.


Now that Mum is dead I can look back on those holidays we had there with great fondness for all the laughter and fun and talk.
Ansel Adams once said someone described Edward Weston's Carmel house as "the little house with the big mood" . . . I think I can say the same about South Kyme.


And on a final note:
 
I know most of you probably think it is a faff, however time and again I've found making notes about every film you expose to be revelatory and totally useful at later dates! My original notes were made in a small Tesco notebook, however these days, my notebook of preference is a nice little ruled Moleskine - they're well-made, have acid free paper and the little band to hold the pages together lasts and lasts. I usually detail everything like exposure, lighting conditions, film, film number, developer, temperature, agitation as well as small details of the trip - here's a recent trip:




They really do come to life, especially after a few months have gone and you've forgotten everything you did to make a certain picture. As far as I am concerned, make notes - it's a no-brainer.

TTFN and remember to phone your Mum.











Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Hey Sugar . . Take A Walk On The Mild Side

Firstly can I say a big thank you to ALL readers whether human or robotic - like Bruce's Online Darkroom plateau of ONE MILLION PAGE HITS, so too have I hit somewhat of a landmark.
It's been hard at times writing FB - this computer is creaking at the seams and I am in definite need of an upgrade . . which might possibly happen this year - watch this space . . .
Anyway, gone are the early days where I bared my all and talked long and slow about everything that concerned me - FB has since turned into an occasional where I get to expound on all sorts of schiite (albeit mostly photographic schiite) for you my lovely readers . . .
When I were but a lad, new to t'game, just typing "Fogblog" into Google got you several pages of blogs about weather, birds, fog and Cartesian Dualism and all sorts.
I was on about Page 3 of Google results which was a little disheartening to a young whipper-snapper to say t'least . . . caps were dragged off heads and wrung dry, clogs were chucked at t'monitors and a right ol' palaver went on with the gnashing of teeth and the wailing of women
However now?
Well go on . .click on this link here
OH YES, Number 1 in the charts, which to me is a sort of little victory as I have always been a bit of a Number Two in a lot of people's eyes! 
So, much happiness, and much gratitititititude is being sent out to yourselves - thank you.

Well, you've dotted the T's and crossed the I's . . (or something like that) on another year of Christmas excess - you've split your trousers, burst your shirt, beaten your Granny, drunk your cabinet dry and generally behaved so hedonistically that you're now sat in your chair in your pants like one of 2000AD's Mega City Fatties (oh how prescient that cartoon truly was) . . .


     http://furry.org.au/Drhoz/new/dredd/heavyweight013.jpg


 . . . well, not quite maybe, but in truth even though I only had one helping of Christmas lunch and one-and-a-half of pudding, I still feel like he looks . . . . eating to excess is I often think really bad for your soul. You enjoy it, but end up feeling so crap that you wish you hadn't.

Anyway, the title of this Blog is a stupid interpretation of what good mate Bruce said that he liked about my colour stuff - apparently it is subtle.
That pleases me - garishness is something I try and totally avoid - subtlety in colour reached a zenith and has since sort of dropped away - my ideal of colour is entirely down to the Kodachrome/Ektachrome look of the 1960's and 70's.
That is my idea of colour.
This is a slide of my father-in-law (in Durham) circa 1972 - the colour is wonderfully understated and naturalistic.





And here's an even earlier one from the late 1960's.






Youch - that's a sharp as a knife isn't it!
It was taken with an Agfa Sillette- a zone-focus camera with a wonderful lens. 
They're both Kodachrome Transparencies, processed by Kodak.
Those wonderful old cardboard mounts have the date printed on them too, just to keep you right on your memories! So for the former it's July 1972 and the latter is April 1969.
I find it truly remarkable that these slides (OK they have been carefully looked after and stored properly) still display a naturalistic colour that is all but missing from today's photography. I guess there's a program to replicate the look out there, but it couldn't replicate the patina on the cardboard mount or the date or the signs of careful handling over the passing decades . . 
Oh how much we have lost.

Anyway, that look and the inspirational work of Ernst Haas, and to an extent Elliott Porter and Stephen Shore are what drive my colour aspirations . . . that and just general Sheephousian Weirdness.
Subtle is what Bruce said.
See what you think.



















There's nothing trick about these - they're JPGs straight outta the camera.
Canon AWB was on.
EI's were 200 and 800 and most everything was manual. I underexposed by a half to one stop on most of them, just so everything wasn't Auto 'Dayglo' Exposure . . you know the sort of thing, where everything is correct and nothing looks right!
And that's about it - camera was the EOS 50D and the lens was the v.cheap 40mm Canon prime pancake.
I like what it is doing, in fact it is this naturalness of colour and slightly muted feel that drew me to a Canon DSLR in the first place.
Now all I need to do is get the bloody things printed!

Well, that's enough o' me guff - you've got to get yourself ready for the intense binge-athon that is Hogmanay . . .oh yes, no matter where you are reading! (Gawd I can still taste Highland Park whisky, 3 years after a Hogmanay wheat beer and three [LARGE] triples excess).
Hoots mon - see you on the other side.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Season's Greetings (But Why Is It That ALMOST Everything Chinese Made Breaks?)

Greetings playmates - we've made it through another year and onwards to the next one - I wish you all the best for the Seasons and also all the best for a rooty-toot New Year!

Now, a thorny problem - well I don't know if you've noticed but it is a global world we live in - yer large corporations (and yes camera companies, that means you too) are now far more concerned with shifting large units of something which is effectively the same thing as you have in your kitchen - in retail terms "white goods".
You know, the numbers game - X-number of boxes containing X-number of Consumer Products. All manufactured in lovely clean factories (mostly) in China.
The relentless march of new model X versus new model Y; cameras out of date whilst still languishing on retailer's shelves.
You know the sort of thing.
It's called modern commerce.

It pisses me off actually.
I mean, I look at my Leica M2 or my Rollei T or the Nikon Fs, or the Hasselblad or Wista or Sinar and think, Mein Gott - they REALLY don't make them like that anymore - these were mostly assembled by hand by a highly skilled craft force the likes of which you'll never see again.
I'm not denying that China (et al) doesn't have a highly skilled craft force - of course it does, but the problem comes from the oft-vanishing bottom line.
It isn't all cheap Far East though - you do get cameras manufactured in Europe (and America and Japan) - please stand up all you lovely tiny (and that includes Leica) camera manufacturers - now, no looking around the room, but lets say you could probably hold your Christmas party in a cupboard whilst outside on the street there's a multi-float parade going on from the Big Four. But that's the way the cookie has crumbled.
I do wonder how long the smaller manufacturers (and even the big ones) can keep going against the relentless onslaught of the phone though - yes certainly there's a small army of concerned photographers who will want a new Alpa (and I count myself amongst them) but really - could you honestly afford one?
Nope.
So how on earth do they continue to stay in business, when they can only be selling a tiny amount of new cameras every year?
There's a problem you see - the world is awash with old cameras and people continue to buy them. And if, like me, you love using old cameras, you must surely realise that what you are using was actually a pinnacle of mechanical engineering wrought tiny.
(Well, I'll add a caveat to that, they're MOSTLY that - obviously there were a lot of cheap cameras and they haven't really survived that well, but then again, even the humble, very very 'umble, Olympus Trip, is a damn fine ingenious and reliable piece of equipment. It goes wrong some times, but if you're handy with a screwdriver and feel a bit brave then it is fixable. So try doing that with your Panasonic Lumix or Samsung or Sony whatever, or Canon or Nikon - are these modern cameras fixable? - possibly, but tbh unless you like the idea of being a brain surgeon and rocket scientist at the same time I would say chuck it in the bin and buy another!)
But would you consider doing that with your M3, or your Standard Rolleiflex from the 30's? Would you feck - you'd get the little beauty repaired because not only is it a damn fine piece of engineering, it has a soul.
Like that bag of old soft toys you've still got tucked away a real soul. (I confess I have my 55 year old teddy bear (called Tedson) at home and whilst I don't cuddle him every night, I know where he is and sometimes go and say hello, because he has a soul, albeit imagined by me).
Call it Zen, call it Craftsmanship, whatever, but a lot of old cameras have souls - they're imbued with the hopes and dreams of great images by their previous owners.
My Rollei and Minolta Autocord are very elderly gentlemen who have had hard lives but still like a wander down to the shops with their flies open.
My Nikons are also reasonably elderly chaps who took up running years back and are still doing it.
My M2 is a retired watchmaker who has looked after himself and knows how to stay healthy.
The Wista and Sinar the same.
The Hasselblad is a newly retired surgeon, enjoying a more relaxed life.
You see - SOUL!
The Canon EOS 50D - whilst it's a VERY GOOD digital camera (same with the wee Lumix) has nothing there at all - they're effective machines produced in immense quantities, but they have little to make you feel affection for them.

OK, so you're wondering what the hell I am on - machines with soul?
Can it be possible?
Well only if you're seriously deranged like me, but for the rest of you, they probably just come down to reliable and unreliable.
And I can understand that POV, but you see folks because of globalisation we have a massive worldwide problem - profit versus build.
Y'see in a bid to maximise profits from all you young dogs hungry for the next gadget, albeit phone, camera, whatever, build quality seems to have gone to shit.
Though (truth be told) I haven't been on the end of an unreliable 'modern' camera, a number of 'consumer' items I have bought recently have been defective.
Samsung laptop? Screen gone to shit in 2 years!
GE flourescent tubes - supposed lifespan 15 years? 2 years and they failed.
The worst though is my ongoing tale of woe trying to find that most basic of artefacts - the electric kettle. There's not a single one for sale in the UK that isn't made in China - big names and small names - the whole lot, from Dualit, Kitchenaid and Smeg, down to the lowly Tesco Value - everything in between - fine upstanding names of post-War manufacturing -  Bosch, AEG, Philips, DeLonghi, Breville - you name them and they ALL outsource to Chinese manufacture, and the crazy thing is, the massive price differences for, what is essentially the same thing and no doubt the same innards (roughly) made in the same factories. After my 3 year old Chinese Breville kettle started delivering chunks of metal from its supposed "stainless steel" interior (in reality - stainless coated steel) into my morning tea, I started hunting.
It involved the world's most boring man activity of heading to my local retailers and lifting every kettle and looking at the labelling:
Made In China
Made In PRC
All essentially the same thing.
I wanted something European, but no luck.
So I gave in and bought a Bosch - 15 boils in and the thing still tasted overwhelmingly of plastic . . . 16 boils in and the lid failed. It went back for a refund.
Next up Lakeland. I've had a few Lakeland things over the years and they have all been decent. This was Made In PRC and ROHS Compliant - all very impressive. The kettle took about 5 boils to stop tasting of 'stuff' - fine, thanks goodness I thought, and came down on the Monday morning to a worktop covered in water from a leaking kettle.
Schiiite!
So that went back.
We then thought feck it, I did more kettle lifting and read more pages on kettle consumer reviews than anyone would want to do in a lifetime and ended up with a DeLonghi. It too is Made In China, but I am hoping that the massively inflated price for 'design' equates to higher QC.
You see QC (Quality Control) is, I think the one differentiating thing in Chinese goods - that and materials.
My brother has this fantastic joke:

"Did you hear about that fabulous new metal alloy the Chinese are using these days? Shit-ite!"

It's a cracker isn't it, but oh so true.

Several years ago I needed a crowbar - so I went to B&Q and surveyed the goods they had for sale - the once proud name of JCB had a range, I thought they sounded tough so I checked them out . . .
Not a single one was the same.
They all had a flex too them that was not appropriate for something required to be strong - in other words they were shite.
I looked at the labelling - Made in China - there was no QC, just a cheap piece of junk metal for bargain-hunting DIYers.
So I went elsewhere and bought a European made Gorilla bar - it was tough and did the job required, and it's still one of the most solid things I have ever used.

It's true though - in the hunger for ever-cheaper goods, that we, the money-wielding West are driving, quality of materials heads right out the window and in comes the shit.
And a huge amount is just that - SHIT.
And more fool you for buying it - and that includes me.
But you see it has taken a while to dawn, but I am now trying to take a stand - albeit a seemingly lone voice in a wilderness of consumerism.
If I can, I try to buy European or Japanese or American or even Vietnamese made.
If I can't I will seriously rethink about whether I actually need it - it's that bad.
Sadly it is unavoidable that you simply have to buy Chinese, but if you can, please try and look at where things are made.

You would think from this that I was against everything Chinese, but thankfully thanks to an Orient-loving Aunt that is far from the case.
I love my early 18th Century Chinese sword, and some of the marvellous export porcelain I got when my Aunt died.
I love my local Chinese supermarket because it is fun and weird and the food is superb.
I love the history of China, the resourcefullness and hardship and the transcendence of the human spirit, the uncanny ability to forge things.
The West owes China more than it can ever imagine from metalwork to paper to fireworks to tea, but sadly that is often forgotten.
China wants to be loved again, but what I hate is that we in the West are capitalising on that innate Chinese willingness to please, for any price.
We're guilty as hell in demanding of them a quick fix for our product-hungry society.
Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

It's our fault a lot of shoddy goods come out of China, and yet and yet, isn't that pinnacle of craft and skill, Japanese sword and knife-making, based entirely upon innovation from Chinese techniques and knowledge?
Thankfully there are some superbly made Chinese goods - truly fantastic quality using decent materials - but sadly they do seem to be few and far between.

So as you can see, it isn't all anti-Chinese workmanship around my way, I appreciate their abilities as a nation, but when you hear the cry from my kitchen "This Fecking toaster CANNOT TOAST!" you'll know that another Western profit-before-quality white good has hit the fan!

Anyway, that's enough away from photography.
Here's something made on American film (Kodak), processed with British chemicals (Ilford and Fotospeed) printed on British paper (Grade 2 Ilford Galerie), also processed with British and French chemicals (Ilford, Fotospeed and Kodak) taken with  a German lens (1966-ish Schneider 90mm non-Angulon) on a Japanese camera (Wista DX) with a Japanese film holder (Toyo).
Oh, and the light was all Scottish (Dundee, under the lead-in part for the Tay Rail Bridge).






Just as a little adjunct to this - I know I have railed against Photoshop all my photographic life, but the adjustments to the final presentation of this print were done using that free version of CS2 that is out there, and you know what I was delighted with the ability to fine-tune the truly terrible auto-scan exposure I get from the cheap Epson scanner into something that looks more akin to what I have hanging on my wall.
It was surprisingly easy to get it looking right.

Anyway folks - that's it for the noo.
The Season is upon us, so before you force yourself to eat Mince Pie # 675 I will bid you a fond farewell.
thank you for reading this year and I'll set-to in the New Year with a more determined outlook - honest - refurbing those windows lost me a vast amount of light!
Be good, take care and until the next time, watch out for the normal people.