Kodachrome last remaining film roll developed in Kansas

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Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 4:26 am

After a few years travelling, I'm almost settling down again, first thing I've bought since back here is an Omega C670 enlarger, to replace the one I lost in a house fire a few years back, plus darkroom gear.

I paid less for everything than my previous enlarger cost.

Picked up a NikonF50 with a 28-85 lens for $120 for doing B&W, I'm stocking up on Agfa 100 and 400 film, also got my eye on a twin set of Pentax 645s' with 4 lenses, 6 film backs, case, filters for $1100, I figure on talking them down a couple of hundred.

My first camera was a Box Brownie, it was my Da's, before WW2, I used it till I bought a 120 Kodak, then finally got Pentax Spotmatics in the 60's, which lasted 30 years till the house fire ruined them.

Using a Nikon D60 digital now, plus the F50.

Still doing my own B&W printing, trying for archival prints.

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 4:34 am

I don't care because Kodak stopped supporting Kodachrome years before digital cameras came out. I threw away at least 10 prepaid mailers when the last Kodak developer closed down. It was never about digital. A digital image is at best a handful of megs after compression. One slide of ASA 64 is 580 megs. If I took off my prime f1.2 and put on a prime f2, stopped down to f22 and did my job right the image projected on a bright screen was amazing.

I've stockpiled a life's supply of Extar 25 and Kodacolor 100 and will cry when they stop processing C-41.

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 4:38 am

I work with wet plate collodion. Really. Ambrotypes rule. That's serious hands-on photography. Silver nitrate, ether, cyanide... Serious stuff. One of these days I'm going to try my hand at daguerreotypy, but I need a fume hood for the mercury.

@leonsumbitches, long after (current) digital formats become unreadable, Edison wax cylinders and Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's carbon-coated paper recordings will still be playable. My CD collection will not. Sometimes the old techniques really are better.

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 4:43 am

@Connie: Check this out:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_daguerrotype_panorama/

140,000 megapixel equivalent -- in 1848!!!

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 4:45 am

In a fit of off topicness...

Irish and enlarger in the same post Laughing

And back to the topic...

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 6:17 am

^^ @ Badger, I've warned you about those photos I have of you.

Wink

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 6:43 am

I wonder if someone is going to say that digital cameras killed the daguerreotype. Those are some amazing images Juan. My son sent me an image he made in his freshman chemistry class using wet plate collodion and a pinhole camera. He scanned it at high resolution and then reversed the image. Its a really nice image as the surrounding buildings were built in the 1800's but I think it lost something in the translation.

The one thing I will miss about Kodachrome 64 was the total and complete control it gave me. What I shot is what I got. There was no computer at the lab that would darken faces because it was a beach scene or try to lighten a night shot.

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 6:43 am

@ Irish I now am worried about what you said about the pics you have of me. If you can print your own and have all of that darkroom equipment. I think we really are brothers from another mother.

@ the topic, I am bummed. I love my Mamiya/Secor SLR and the 85 - 205 zoom lens I bought... um... 30+ years ago. Digital is quick, but there is nothing like composing a picture and watching it come to life in the dark room.

I think I will take my Chevy to the levy, but the levy is dry. Shocked

I never did have a Nikon Camera though. I went a different route. Cool

The new cameras are so tiny... Wink

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 3:18 pm

@ leon Our first computer was also a Tandy 1000 and the girls played many games inserting different 5.25 floppies because we had no hard drive. A very small HD cost upwards of over $500 USD. Before then there were no "home" computers.

This is the first president I can recall although Roosevelt was pres when I was birthed.

In case non-Americans can't figure him out from the pic, that is Harry S. Truman.

*** BANNED *** Joined: 18 Jul 2004 Posts: 2049

Juan Freizwidatt wrote:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_daguerrotype_panorama/
140,000 megapixel equivalent -- in 1848!!!

Most excellent site - I only wish that blue enlarging rectangle was available for all the photos. You did catch the two women skinny dipping just to the right of the big rock I hope.

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 4:49 pm

Connie L. Gus wrote:

My son sent me an image he made in his freshman chemistry class using wet plate collodion and a pinhole camera. He scanned it at high resolution . . . but I think it lost something in the translation.

Try one with a fine 19th century lens like HBH, Harrison, Hermagis, or Dallmeyer rather than rudimentary pinhole. They made some great lenses then. But you're right, the images lose a lot in scanning. However wonderful digital may be in many ways, no scan can possibly convey the richness and clarity of an actual collodion or daguerreian plate in physical form.

Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2011 10:38 pm

Still have most of my camera collection..

Bessler Topcon Super D is tops still.. (New in 1958)

Many older Nikons, Rollies, etc.

Now, I've succumbed to the digital age along with HDR manipulations.

Seems wrong somehow..

And yes, I wondered where my film had got off to.. You say Kansas? Laughing

Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2011 10:43 pm

Quote:

no scan can possibly convey the richness and clarity of an actual collodion or daguerreian plate in physical form.

I feel your pain.. however, I suspect it was due to the larger size the glass plates were produced in.

Even the film guys knew about 6x6 and 6x7 being better than 35mm..

And the 4x5 inch press monsters, and portrait size 5x7 and the hero sized 8x10 films..

As she said, bigger is better.. Rolling Eyes

Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 12:03 am

WillEater wrote:

I suspect it was due to the larger size the glass plates were produced in.

Actually, most ambrotypes and daguerreotypes are rather small in scale. "Mammoth" plates were occasionally made as negatives, but most images were quite small. Not 35mm, of course, but the most common sizes were ninth plate (2 x 2.5"), sixth plates (2.75 x 3.25") and much less frequently quarter plate (3.25 x 4.25"). I very rarely see original half-plates (4.25 x 5.5") and even more rarely see whole plates (6.5 x 8.5"). The images in the link I posted earlier are whole plate, and that makes them all the more extraordinarily rare. Large plates were expensive.

That certainly changed with the advent of dry-plate glass negatives, where 4x5'" was common for amateurs and larger sizes routinely used by professionals. These images are much more abundant and can be utterly shocking in their detail. Just spend a few hours at shorpy.com and you'll be amazed at the fantastic photographs that were made from large format glass negatives. But that's a different world from the earlier daguerreian and wet plate processes, with one-off direct positive images. No negative and no enlarging.

All that said, even ninth plate daguerreotypes and ambrotypes are vastly more impressive in real life than in scans. Some of that has to do with the detail but a lot comes down to the unique character of images made with actual silver surfaces or deposits. Not just silver as part of the chemistry as in traditional B&W negatives and prints, but layers of pure silver forming the 'white' of the image. Remarkable.

Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 3:23 am

^^ @ Juan

I want to cuddle you, and adopt you.

I used to spend hours teaching darkroom stuff to people that couldn't grasp the history, the techniques that lead to full tonal printing, and developing.

And didn't recognise a fully developed and full tonal neg and print if they even produced one

Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 4:29 am

^^^^
Too bad you're not your avatar or I'd take you up on your offer. Laughing

But I know better..... I think we're about the same age and adoption is not an option.

I had dinner a short time back with a friend of my wife's; her new boyfriend was a professional photographer with a degree in photography from UCLA. He knew nothing about the history of photography. NOTHING. He had no idea what a daguerreotype was. He'd never heard of collodion. He worked with film for years before moving entirely to digital, but for him there was always a darkroom option to correct/alter/adjust. Not as easily as Photoshop, but still, options existed. With original methods what you shoot is what you get. You have to learn how to do it right the first time. There's no tweaking possible.

Even developing and fixing collodion images is an art, way more complex than traditional B&W.

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