A story I heard at this PMA should reassure all darkroom aficionados and quiet some of the doomsayers. A high school with a strong photography course decided that digital was the wave of the future: the wet darkroom was a thing of the past. They therefore closed the wet darkroom and offered only a...
Most printers strive to make fine prints. Some succeed while others fail. The road to success does not start in the darkroom; it starts before you ever press the shutter release. A fine print can be of any subject. The single most important key to...
From the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, handcoloring was associated mainly with the days before color film. But it has never really gone away. Handcoloring is far from new: handcolored daguerreotypes survive, as do tintypes. Long after color processes...
Ilford’s new Multigrade Art 300 (MGA 300) paper is a completely new, different, silver halide, wet-process printing paper: the company’s first new paper in 13 years. The tonality is rich and subtle, and the feel of the prints is incomparable. As a bonus, it is perfect for handcoloring.
Dateline 1940: "The fastest film in the world is the new Tri-X, with twice the speed of Super-XX." If you want the numbers, the British Journal of Photography Almanac for 1940 (actually written in 1939) reckoned it was 7000 H&D.
As Tom Shay from Fuji pointed out, film technology is changing so fast that the manufacturers seldom wait for a show to announce advances or bring out a new film. Consequently, you may have seen announcements about new films before photokina.
There are those who say that there really isn't any reason, anymore, to go into the darkroom to tone prints. After all, you can sit in front of the computer and change color balance, alter brightness and contrast, and bend curves to get all kinds of...
It's always fun to try out a new photographic printing paper, especially when it turns out to be as versatile as the new Paterson Acugrade Warmtone. It is a medium weight, Variable Contrast (VC), Resin-Coated (RC) paper with a semimatte, pearl...
There are quite a few new photographic papers available this year, despite many changes in the business. As with film and chemistry, the paper business was affected by the "Ilford Factor."
From late August 2004, when Ilford went into receivership, to early February 2005, when a management buy-out succeeded, the future of Ilford was in some doubt.
Innovation is not the word which immediately springs to mind when you think about camera bags. And yet, innovation there was at this photokina.
Case in point: A properly loaded backpack with a two-strap harness, lumbar support, and sternum straps is the most comfortable and best balanced way for most people to carry heavy camera gear. But until now, you had to take...