Saturday 25 April 2015

Be It Resolved...

Normally I discuss photography here with a mind more towards the creative personal expression side of things. You know, art. Today however I'm going to put that all aside a bit and talk about the pictures that we all take, even if we never think of them as anything more than simple snapshots. In the end, arguably, they're the ones that end up being most important.

One of my favourite things to do when I visit my parents is go through the half dozen or so family photo albums that have built up over the years, and the best photos for me are always the oldest, the ones from the old house when I was just a little kid and the even older ones from before I was born, especially of my parents when they were kids. Who knows if any thought was given to how those photographs would be enjoyed forty years or more into the future back when they were taken, but I'm grateful every time that I see them that they're still around to enjoy. It's to my own shame then that I haven't always considered whether the family photographs I take now will still be there for my children and their children to come, knowing as I do how their existence across time is threatened in a way the old photos I enjoy now never were.

My daughter, now 13. This file from this scan will probably long
gone by the time she has children of her own I'll want to show
this to, but negative should still be around long after that.


Threatened you say? Well yes, let me be counted among those who are saying. Let my explanation begin with the suggestion that, unlike previous centuries, in the digital age if we don't stop to consider the photographs we take as something to be valued and cared for over the long term, next to no one out there is doing it for us. A shoe box was never the best way to store photographs, but it was reliable enough to keep them long enough to show to generations yet unborn. The same can't be said for today's equivalent, hard drives, flash memory or DVDs. Thing is so many of us, wowed by the versatility economy and convenience of modern electronic imaging, don't even pause to consider the ethereal nature of the electronic pulses or magnetic charges that constitute the data which the right software can interpret into something they recognize as a photograph until the day the photograph it was assumed would always be there is suddenly irretrievable. If the images our grandparents and great grandparents took are still around, and technology only improves with time, things like this shouldn't happen right? The truth is things like this are no freak occurrences, they were bound to happen sooner or later and without careful active management things like this will just happen more often as time goes on.

No image is completely safe. Catastrophes happen, Digital images can be lost when a hard drive has a melt down or a phone manages to find its way into the toilet bowl. Traditional photographs can suffer permanent damaged from mildew or a three-year-old with who knows what on their fingers. If we're smart we take precautions to either prevent these things from happening or give us a backup if they do.

But accidents, carelessness and even manufacturing defects don't play in to what I'm talking about here. Rather the kinds of loss I'm talking about are just what happens over the due course of time. Though you'll never know when, they're what you should expect. Here's what I mean - take a reasonably carefully processed traditional colour print and an enclosed hard drive containing images and put them into safe storage free of environmental problems like high humidity or temperatures. What you can expect to find after twenty years is a photographic print that might show a noticeable colour shift and an antique hard drive that you'll probably be unable to pull any usable images from without hiring an data recovery service (currently this will cost roughly the same as a mid-range DSLR kit), no guarantees even then.

It's been noted with some irony that while there are more images being made now than ever before there may be precious little visual record of our time left as more and more data devolves into little more than random bits. This is more than just an imaginary sci-fi scenario, efforts are on now to lessen the blow of what is being called "The Digital Dark Age". (Historians refer to the "dark ages" not because they were such miserable times in which to live but because, with Roman customs like accurate record keeping and making life-like busts of leaders falling by the wayside, so little is known about them.) No one has been more outspoken about the need for this than Google Vice President Vint Cerf. In addition to strategies like data redundancy and active migration over time he notes the need to ensure the data makes sense over time as standards change and old file formats are forgotten about. To address this Cerf proposes developing what he calls "Digital Vellum", in effect embedding image files with the information needed to interpret the data back into visual form. This would be a little like making VHS cassettes with a player built right in - no need to worry that hardly anyone has a VCR anymore.

What can the average person do now to ensure their photographs continue to exist in the future. Cerf has a direct answer for this too... "Print them out, literally."



Let me preface my next point by saying first that I applaud Mr Cerf both for calling attention to this issue and its importance to, let's say it, humanity, and for actively doing something about it. Second, I harbour no illusions that it's a good idea to avoid the digital dark age by abandoning digital technology. This blog may be about analog photography it comes to you in digital form and having a digital camera makes it a lot easier to enrich the content.

That said, imagine a scenario in which all of Mr Cerf's suggestions came together. We'd have a physical print of all of the images we took. We'd have an original raw image as well that wouldn't suddenly become unreadable if the information that constitutes it degrades beyond a certain point and is self contained so as not to rely on a changeable standard or protocol to be reconstituted as an image. Well done, but need I point out that we had all that in the 1840's? As testament to that fact those images are still with us. Up until about the 2000's it was pretty much all we had and still have it today.

So here, for whatever you think it's worth (which I freely acknowledge may be nothing), are my humble recommendations.


  • If you have a digital camera and have a situation where you would really benefit from its immediacy, its capabilities, its economy or its speed, use it. I do. 
  • If you don't own a film camera, get one. As long as it works and you can still get film for it, an old clunker you got for coffee money at a garage sale is fine. Ideal even.
  • If you've never used a film camera, learn. Understanding the process on a closer to the bone level is good for the soul and certainly won't hurt your photography skills generally. 
  • If you have film cameras for pictures of rocks and trees but pick up something digital for family things, give your head a shake. If your film camera is something like a Deardorff get something smaller and more practical as well.
  • Now that we all have a film camera and know how to use it, keep it loaded with a spare roll around just in case.
  • Develop the habit of taking a pause any time you find yourself reaching for a digital camera. Think about the pictures you're thinking of taking and ask yourself if they might be something you would care to have ten or more years from now, perhaps even be something someone who isn't even be born yet would be interested to see one day. If the answer is yes, or even maybe, step back and go get that film camera instead.
I'm a confirmed film photographer but even so it's often tempting just to grab some digi-cam if we're just heading out to a friends' house for a barbecue. It's easier now, no worries about having to deal with the film after, the photos can just be emailed or posted online right away. It's something I may regret ten or twenty years down the road though. I ought to know better.

Years ago I swore off New Years resolutions. For me there should be a better reason to make a resolution than it's a particular day on the calendar, and if there is a resolution to be made, no time like the present. And so be it resolved...

Be it resolved that the collection of film cameras on the shelf is for more than just pretty pictures.

Be it resolved that the proper value of the pictures I take of the people in my life will be recognized and respected, not just for what they seem worth today, but the much greater value they are likely to have as time goes on to both myself and others.

Be it resolved that if it's really important, it goes on film.

Be it resolved that the really important ones are sometimes the pictures that were taken for no reason at all.


Post Script

While the ideas for this week's episode were rolling around the noggin a notion appeared unbidden for a quick little presentation to make the characteristically long winded point you just read in a more direct way. Owing to my recent experiences re-acquainting myself with iMovie it was easy enough to whip together, and so for your edification and amusement I offer the following... the following... Okay, so a good euphemism for propaganda film escapes me at the moment, but anyway here it is.


Monday 20 April 2015

Meet the Beast: Part IV

At long last it's time to wrap up this series with a few final thoughts on the RB67 and how it might or might not be a good fit for photographers in this day and age interested in a classic analog medium format system. As I hope I've made clear to this point these cameras have a lot going for them - they're ruggedly built and designed to perform to professional standards, but drastic changes in the way that the professionals these cameras were designed for work has flooded the market with used systems, often in top condition, priced lower than the most basic of entry level DSLRs. Why would anyone with a fondness for shooting film and an eye towards the increasingly popular medium format think of looking at anything else? Well, there may be a few reasons.

The price of the 17% gain in negative size you get with the Mamiya RB67 (left) is an added burden in terms of size and weight that is much higher percentage wise compared to a camera like the Bronica S2A on the right.

My closing comment in the last episode (the text portion, not in the video) let you in on the fact that I've been using a different camera lately. That's it on the right in the photo above, a classic Bronica S2 or S2A (there's been some debate about which of the two models this actually is, they're virtually identical). I put it there for comparison though, it's still all about the Mamiya. As you no doubt have guessed the comparison is all about size.

The Bronica is a fairly typical 6x6 cm square medium format SLR. Though it's a bit heavier, in terms of physical dimensions it's roughly the size of the more widely recognized Hasselblads such as the 500cm introduced at about the same time. To be fair the RB67 will produce somewhat larger 6x7 cm negatives, but the slight increase in negative size comes at the price of an anything but slight increase in equipment bulk. It's not just a weight increase either, the RB takes up more shelf space and requires a roomier camera bag when you bring it into the field.  The problem is only compounded when you add lenses and other accessories that are similarly scaled up compared to most other popular medium format gear.

Is all the extra bulk necessary to go from 6x6 to 6x7 with a medium format SLR? Another well known 6x7 format SLR is the Pentax 6x7 (later to become the Pentax 67). Though they shared the RB's format, these cameras had a very different design philosophy. Gone is the revolving back design, the integrated bellows focusing and the in-lens shutter, these cameras could only be described as scaled up 35mm SLRs. With a waist level finder and normal lens a Pentax 67 would come in at around 2kg, about half way between a similarly equipped Hasselblad and an RB67. The layout of these cameras however limited the usefulness of waist level viewing, so prism finders are the norm for the Pentax's, bringing the total weight just shy of our Mamiya. Add to this the fact that vertical shooting with the Pentax will require a heavier tripod and the RB is arguably the easier camera to carry and handle in the field.

Carrying an RB67 to get this image rather than a typical square format SLR involved a huge penalty in terms of weight sheer size, only to end up cropping the result down to the square dimensions a smaller camera would have given me.

Whether the larger negative is worth it or not is of course a personal question, one that I had to answer for myself. There are times that for particular images I've really appreciated it. At least as frequently however I end up cropping an image square, completely negating any advantage carrying all that extra bulk gave me, not to mention the extra bit of wasted film that gives me 10 rather than 12 exposures per roll. The appearance of a new square format camera in my collection is a good clue to the direction I've been leaning as of late.

That said it was actually one of the RB67s other shortcomings, a seemingly minor thing, that got me to thinking about moving to a square format system. Back in part II of the series I discussed the normal/mirror up switch on the lens and how leaving it in the wrong position can leave a photographer firing away with nothing to indicate the shutter wasn't opening until the blank film emerged from the processing tank. This was not a problem so long as I stuck to my usual "slow photography" M.O. of shooting tripod mounted, locking the mirror and using a cable release. For reasons I'll save for a future episode I've been thinking of expanding my approach in such a way that, given my predisposition for absent minded oversight, would inevitably find me staring at clear pieces of film where anxiously anticipated images should be. And of course there's also the sheer size of the RB, did I mention the size?

While in my experience the range of Mamiya Sekor lenses available for the RB67 (Sekor is Mamiya's house optical brand) are entirely up to professional standards optically, if you make the usual assumption that bigger lenses are faster lenses you may be disappointed. Normal lens for most medium format SLRs typically have an f/2.8 maximum aperture and it's not unusual for there to be a number of equally fast lenses in the range. Though lenses in the RB range are larger than those for rival systems in about the same proportion as all the other components, the fastest lens anywhere in the RB67 system has an f/3.5 maximum aperture, and no lens outside the "normal" range is any faster than f/4.5. This isn't something I consider a real disadvantage when in slow photography mode (though paying a penalty in both size and speed doesn't necessarily sit well) but it does start coming into play when I start envision radical concepts like purposely leaving the tripod in the car.

Though the Mamiya RB67 was always considered a camera for the professional photo studio this is by no means an indication that it's not up for use outside the controlled indoor environment. In fact it's quite the opposite. Their failure resistant all mechanical construction mean these cameras are anything but delicate. As so many of them outlasted their usefulness as the computer age brought more speed to the business of photography than a camera like the RB could keep up with it's no surprise that so many of them have found their way into the kit bags of photographers looking to bring them further afield. Doing so requires a willingness to accept the limitations that once made photographers look at the RB as cameras of the controlled environment, their size, their weight and the methodical approach using one demanded.

Those limitations are still present, but they're not insurmountable. After all, photographers have been carrying much heavier and slow to use large format cameras into some of the least accessible locations in the world for over 150 years. With a good carrying system and a strong back (or failing that a good chiropractor on speed dial) these cameras will put up with almost any environment a photographer hearty enough to haul it that far is likely to tolerate. Once there a willingness to take the time the RB67 demands can result in images that make it all worth while and more.

Thursday 16 April 2015

Meet the Beast: Part III




At last the thing is done. Even with the intermezzo post I'm coming in half a week late. It's not the first time I've made an instructional video (I had a small series of beginner level chess videos going a few years back), but as much as I should have really learned by now when I'm planning one of these things it seems I still lack any sense of what a slog I'm getting myself into. On top of that I decided that since my iMovie skills had gathered a few years worth of rust it was a good time to give some other video editing software a go. Not such a great idea as it turned out. The editing process didn't really get rolling until I finally gave up and started over with iMovie.

All this isn't to say I may not try a video episode again but it's certainly not something I'm going to raise any advanced expectations for. If I do try it again it'll just appear here one day unannounced.

As I mentioned before there were other things going on in my photographic world at the same time which I'll talk about next time in the final installment of this series. I might as well make my little confession now though... I've been seeing another camera.

Sunday 5 April 2015

Success At The Tinker Table

Work continues on the next installment of the "Meet the Beast" series. With the challenge of figuring out the video editing software, combined with holiday events that effectively make this a short week for me however it seems like a good time for a brief interlude to talk about other photographic goings on. I haven't used this forum to discuss large format photography here very often. There's the 8x10 pinhole project which I hope to have more on soon, especially with World Wide Pinhole Photography Day fast approaching. I'd have to go back through the archives however to see if I've ever even mentioned that I do in fact own a 4x5 camera that sports a traditional glass lens.

The optically okay-ish 135mm Wollensak Raptar in its once recalcitrant Rapax shutter, now brought to heel.

Part of the reason is that, interesting and excellent as the format is, I'm not currently equipped to do much with 4x5. Even if I could find a 4x5 enlarger that would fit my budget the darkroom is crowded with a medium format enlarger. Nor do I have the capability of scanning 4x5 without stitching, and even then I have greater ambitions for my negatives than a scan can provide. Even so I'm sure it would have been getting some now an then usage if not for the fact the shutter has been on the fritz for some years now, at least until recently.

The camera itself is a Tower Press Camera, which is actually a re-branded Busch Pressman, itself a less well known competitor to cameras like the Graflex Crown Graphic. The lens I have for it is the 135mm Wollensak Raptar with matching Rapax shutter that in all likelihood was the one that came with the camera when it was purchased new, probably some time in the late 1940's to 50's. When it came into my possession in the mid 90's the shutter was sticky, a common afflictions for leaf shutters of this vintage. Setting it for a half second exposure meant the shutter would stay opened for about a full second and so on. I compensated as best I could and the exposure latitude of the film took care of the rest.

When I dug it out last year from the shelf where it had remained almost completely disused through the starting a family, raising young kids years however the situation had deteriorated. Shutter speeds were now all together unpredictable. Sometimes even at the slower speeds the shutter seemed to open and close after the duration set, while at others it might stay opened two or three or more times as long and occasionally even required a little coaxing to close.

The 4x5 Tower Press camera. I've modified mine to suit my purposes, removing the rangefinder and accessory viewfinder to save weight. For my needs the ground glass is the only thing I'll ever use for framing and focusing. I've made a few other modifications including re-skinning it with a burgundy vinyl I believe was intended for upholstery.


My options? I certainly couldn't try to work around it, especially with the price of 4x5 film. I could send it away to one of the more reputable independent service people who will work on a shutter like this, but even if all it needed was a simple CLA the cost of this, combined with two way shipping (probably international) would have exceeded what the lens is worth. The Raptar optics are okay but they're hardly celebrated or sought out. I'd be better off putting the money towards a newer better lens with a more reliable shutter. With nothing else to loose and armed with a few bookmarked sites and an old PDF of the service manual I managed to scrounge, early last summer I made the fateful decision to give it a go myself.

 Now I'm not a complete putz when it comes to this sort of thing, but nor do I have skills enough to dare taking apart anything I'm counting on ever using again. I rated my chance of success as 50/50 at best. For a long time it looked like I had been too optimistic. Based on what I'd read it seemed my best hope was to douse the timing mechanism with enough lighter fluid to clear out the decades of gunk that was slowing everything down. Complicating things was the foolish decision I made not long after I acquired the camera to remove the useless (at least to me) old style flash sync posts. It hadn't affected the workings of the shutter at the time but the missing parts made the innards of the shutter mechanism hard to match up with what the service manual said I should be seeing and it was done so long ago that I had no hope of filling in the blanks from memory.

Never the less I went through several cycles of seeming to have it working only to assemble it all and find there were still problems. Eventually I reached a point where no matter what I did the best I could accomplish was to get to the point the shutter could be cocked, I could press the release and hear noises as though it had fired properly, but this was accompanied by an actual opening and closing of the shutter blades perhaps one time in ten. A difficulty I confronted each time I made a new attempt to get things put back together right was a particular spring that didn't seem to fit back in the way the service manual suggested. I had no idea if I had it in right or if this was responsible for the persistent problem I was having.

For the next half a year I went through spending a day or two trying to get it working, giving up in frustration then coming back to it a month or two later to give it a fresh go. Then last month a breakthrough. Rather than focus on the problem spring I decided to give the whole mechanism a good once over, discovering in the process a loose part that looked suspiciously like a particular piece of the flash sync assembly that had probably been floating around the housing for the better part of twenty years. Once removed the reassembled shutter again fired. The only problem was that it seemed to be firing at the same speed no matter what I set the dial to. Probably that cussed spring. With luck though it would mean just one more foray into the cog-works. With new determination I resolved to reconcile the positioning of this one last part with the diagram in the service manual. And it was then, right then at what might have been the finish line that the one thing I had been so careful to avoid for months happened. Tensioned and nearly into position an untimely slip of the screwdriver tip caused the spring to do what springs are wont, leaping out of the housing into some nook or crevice unknown.

My tinker table is but a small island of semi-organization cleared away from what is otherwise a junk storage area in the dank basement of our century old house. After an hour\s search I had to reconcile the cost of any further wasted time with the microscopic odds of success. If one were looking for a needle in a haystack they might well give up in frustration with the phrase "Forget it, this is like looking for a tiny hair-thin tension spring on Joe's basement floor."

Time to pack it in then. I had a few little boxes of spare camera parts but I had nothing even close to this spring. It's not like I could make a replacement myself was it? Well... was it? I mean that's crazy. Even if I had that kind of hair-thin springy wire there's no way I could twist it into the right part. But did it have to be that kind of wire? All it did was keep tension on a tab as it moved back and forth perhaps a millimetre. As long as I could fashion a part that did that, who cares if it's like the original part. After months of fiddling with that tiny little spring it took five minutes with needle-nose pliers to twist a paper clip into just the right shape to go where it needed to go and do what it needed to do. After all my doubts about how to position the tiny lost spring there was no doubt my paper-clip spring was in there just right.

The shutter has a few little quirks now. For time exposures it doesn't work on the "B" setting on "T" I have to give it a quick press to open the shutter as it will close if the shutter button isn't immediately released. When cocking the shutter if the speed is set to anything slower than 1/25th I have to give the shutter release a little tweak to make it stay. When the shutter is tripped though it fires at the speed set. I don't know that a shutter speed test would find it's particularly accurate, but there's no obvious lag and I don't imagine there will be any need to compensate any longer. Overall it's working better than it has at any time since I've owned it. Losing that little spring proved to be a lucky break after all.