Kodak To Stop Making Black and White Paper 501
Swirsky writes "For those of us who remember spending quality time in a dark room with Kodak Rapid RC paper and a bottle of Dektol, here's some bad news - Kodak will stop making black and white photographic paper. Black and white photo work (especially because you can use a safelight!) is a wonderful way of introducing someone to photography. I guess if we want to do it, we'll have to use home-made emulsions on paper. As a pro photographer, I'm bothered by this, though admittedly I haven't done b/w darkroom work in years."
Image editing.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Who uses kodak B&W paper? (Score:5, Interesting)
When Ilford stops making paper that will be a sad day. Kodak stoping isn't even newsworthy.
Re:Image editing.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:DSLR seems like the only way to go (Score:4, Interesting)
And converting a color CCD image to B&W isn't the same, since the pixel filtering is likely involved (if it's a professional digital camera with multi-ccds and a beam splitter, it might be ok).
And obviously you never looked at mid-frame size camera. Digital media is approaching to 35mm camera, but nothing beyond that.
Re:Image editing.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Consolidation is good for the market (Score:3, Interesting)
Ilford makes a lot better paper, especially their Fiber VC glossy. And Agfa makes an incredible Resin Coated (RC) VC glossy (MPC 310), with incredible tonal depth.
I just can't wait to burn through my remaining Kodak polycontrast paper.
Nobody serious about B&W printing will miss Kodak. And if anything it will just mean Ilford and Agfa (who are both struggling) will enjoy a larger market-share. Maybe even Oriental will make an American surge.
For those of you who are curious about what traditional photography has over digital in an age where digital is approaching (and soon exceeding) the resolution of film, it mostly has to do with art, and the feel of the print. For journalism, tourist shots, birthdays, and pr0n, you won't get much for the hassle of chemicals. But there's an organic quality that digitial is missing, which affects artistic expression.
It's kinda like this: a CD of Jazz music played over a solid-state stereo has a completely different feel than a staticy record of Jazz music played over vacuum tubes.
Which is better? Well, it's purely subjective.
-j
--
photos @ http://www.ghostmanonfirst.com/ [ghostmanonfirst.com]
Re:Image editing.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Finally, I think there is more uniqueness in 'wet' photography than in digital, adding anther level to the art. It adds to whatever the thing is that makes a piece of art special. Each printed photo is unique, and is slightly different from the next, being that it was crafted by human hand. Each print is unique. While digital requires an artist behind it, once a print is made, it is reproduced without the artists hand... on a printer (if it is even printed). Which to me makes it less than something hand printed by the artist.
But then again it is all art. And that is the beauty of it... we all get to appreciate it in our own way. Unless of course it is 'performance art'... then yer jest f'ing goofy!!! ;-)
Re:DSLR seems like the only way to go (Score:5, Interesting)
No DSLR uses multiple CDDs (AFAIK). You'll get rather a good B&W by just taking the green channel.
Finally film resolution is always quoted for some tiny contrast ratio (20%? something like that). Digital resolution is at 100% contrast ratio so it can actually look sharper even when the lpi is lower.
If anyone's not seen it, this DSLR vs medium format shootout [luminous-landscape.com] from a few years ago has some interesting stuff in. Has a film person made a rebuttal? I'd be interested to see.
Art, tradition and the value of options (Score:3, Interesting)
We've got good consumer home equipment printing options and affordable big commercial labs (filled with automated equipment and button-monkey "technicians") and digital photo everything within easy grasp and price. Digital photography is cheaper all around and has many noteworthy advantages over traditional photography.
Also, even the most weenie digicams one step above the Wal-Mart toys has a B&W and Sepia setting, and the good digicams have tons to offer.
So why fuss or lament ??
Because the collective body of knowledge, experience and artistry in photography is formiddable, and black & white process is an inseperable part of that. Because printing photos (again, where the discontinued paper comes in) is a whole different world from actually taking the photos. Because artists use B&W and it's the most sensible place for newcomers to start learning since it's easier and cheaper than traditional color process.
I'm not sad that Kodak for business reasons decided to quit making B&W paper. That was a business decision from an old company that's confused about it's current and future place in an industry it helped define, and trying to survive. I AM concerned that some will view this as the demise of traditional photograhphy. I don't believe it is.
If traditional small format (8 and 16 mm) motion picture film can survive in a digital imaging world, then traditional photography certainly can.
Photography has a history of invention and evolution, this is just another step.
B&W process will move to the edge, the background. It will step away so that newer processes can rise, but it will not be lost, not for a very long time at least.
While digital process photography will take over the mainstream, B&W process will remain in the hands of the artists and those who wish to learn the craft of photography.
Bottom line, B&W is not dead, one important company's decision to get out of the business is not it's tombstone, and the value of having a significant body of knowledge + traditional options + modern innovation and evolution leading the way makes the craft all the more rich and strong.
Re:Who cares .... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a photographer for 21 years, from 1957 to 1978, where lots of my work came out of a B&W darkroom (and where I did the work with my own little hands), Illford was popular but crap compared to the control one had with Kodak Polycontrast papers (although the Illford filters worked better with Pollycontrast).
I taught photography and darkroom technique as well as working in advertizing, technical and photojournalism photography. Perhaps your pictures were muddy on Kodak paper because you didn't know how to make a good negative. The extra gamma (contrast) of Illford papers was often a crutch for bad photographers.
And the only way to let your photo speak for itself instead of being pseudo art was to use a glossy paper (matte and semi-matte was for the photo clubs) although ferrotyping was silly.
So, now my dream of an exibit of my old work (including the first Woodstock Festival as well as the Vietnam anti-war protests in DC and NYC and Berkeley) in 16x20 and larger is dead?
Re:Digital always win (Score:4, Interesting)
We observe in analog...
the pixels in a digital image shouldn't be aligned.. they should be slightly random.. the frames in video/computer monitors should be a constant sequence of random photons. Digital audio should be Hi Def and slightly fuzzy and data storage should have a level of redundancy.
Until that is met, purists will continue to dislike the tech.
That said, HDR cameras (http://www.cybergrain.com/tech/hdr/ [cybergrain.com]) and HD cameras will revolutionise (even more so) the imaging world.
If I can see a scene, capture it with a single click and later frame it, adjust the colours display it on a high dynamic range monitor, or modify the image so the mountains are as visible as the sun setting behind them, then I say this overcomes a *massive* shortcoming of current and previous cameras.
I don't care for the "art" of technical photography. The real art is in seeing and capturing the images.. the technical side is a clumsy romanticised inconvenience.
I don't know anyone who uses Kodak b/w paper (Score:3, Interesting)
The general shrinking of the market is worrying though - my digicam just doesn't do what I want it to (big enlargements, shallow depth of field, nice grain) but I can see film and processing getting a lot more expensive. I don't think it will ever disappear though; the lab I use have just bought a few millions' worth of new processing equipment and black-and-white was never completely killed off by colour. I don't think there'll be much R&D going into film any more, but Tri-X is decades old and people still like it :-)
Re:The Way to Learn Photography (Score:3, Interesting)
Your definition of photography is engaging but I can't subcribe to it. Photography, for me, is the interplay of light and form. There is a need to have a "working knowledge" (differs with each practioner) of light and optics; then there follows a need to come to an understanding of our visual system, with this comes composition, and, composition requires a personal aesthetic, as well as groking the basic grammar. Colour theory has to be acquired with the taking of colour photos. But after all this is learnt you're back to basic form and light, which is why Ansel Adams is such and enduring master. Learning darkroom technique teaches masking and burning which, for me, is the magic touch of photography.
Re:Are records better than CDs? (Score:3, Interesting)
They're only better than regular CDs. SA-CDs and DVD-Audio are pretty much at the limit of human hearing's ability [silcom.com].
Re:Digital always win (Score:2, Interesting)
It's the same argument in photography: Digital is too precise. There is truth to the concept of "too much of a good thing."
And, yes, I still prefer vinyl for my audio, but that's only when I listen at home. Otherwise, I do own an iPod (and vinyl is still a bitch to transfer to an MP3).
Re:Image editing.. (Score:2, Interesting)
An honest to goodness 4x5 CCD (4"x5" -- those are the dimensions of the film and thus the CCD must be at least close to those sizes) would be ungodly expensive to make and create files that are really, really, really big. Think of a picture that can be blown up to the size of a building and still look nice. Don't get me wrong, the technology is there, but the market for a $50,000 digital 4x5 back really isn't.
uninformed ./ posts annoy me (Score:2, Interesting)
B&W film has a much better dynamic range than any digital camera out there that I know of. Now before someone points to camera X that I haven't seen that you have to take out a second mortgage to get, I'm gonna talk about the digital cameras that most people have, including some of the higer end cameras like the D70, D2H, etc...
While the dynamic range of some of the new digital cameras are approaching that of color film, it's still not there yet and still no where near that of a good B&W film. It's just not. Now for most people in most circumstances, it doesn't really matter. Sure there are sometimes when I would like the extra dynamic range but most of the time I would have been shooting color film anyway so it's a moot point. I would like to get back to artful B&W shots and if I do I would definately switch back to film.
Darkrooms are fun, they just are. I've spent a lot of time in a darkroom in college and I would love to have one in my house but it's just not practical for me right now. It's a shame that Kodak is getting out of the paper market but I guess it's not being profitable for them anymore. Photoshop just doesn't have the same fun factor and it's a shame that future generations of photographers will most likely miss out on the darkroom experience but that seems to be the way things are going.
So we've seen where film excels, what about digital. I think digital is one of the best things to happen to photography as well as one of the worst. It is the best because it gives you an instant look (ala polaroids) at what you just created and you can just delete pictures or even choose to not have them printed. It is an incredible tool to help you learn because of that. However crappy digital cameras make crappy pictures which is usually compounded by the fact that people who don't know how to take a picture in the first place, usually buy these crappy cameras. It used to be in the film world, that at least the picture was usually taken on 35mm film and there usually wasn't too much people could mess up that couldn't be fixed in post processing. I have seen more blurry, underexposed and grainy pictures taken with a digital camera than I can shake a stick at.
I think the little P&S digital cameras (the good ones at least) are great because they are usually small and unobtrusive and great for parties and other events where most people would typically use a camera. However, just like that film P&S camera, you're still not going to be able to take a good picture at a graduation or a wedding with that little flash in a dark room 100 feet away... it's just not going to happen, it's going to be dark and probably blurry.
Re:Digital isn't always better (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who cares .... (Score:2, Interesting)
IBM made counting machines, which the Nazis chose to purchase. IBM didn't make machines specifically (and knowingly) to commit genocide. I.G. Farben make special batches of Zyklon B without an indicator odor just for the SS (industrial batches came with a foul 'indicator odor' so that workers would know when they were in the presence of poison gas). I.G. Farben also ran their own concentration camp (named 'Monowitz' if I remember correctly). Their complicity in war crimes was clear, and nothing like IBM's selling of general purpose counting machines.
For more information on this stuff, there is a great book: "The Crimes and Punishment of I.G. Farben"
Is 60yo history so extremely important to affect our daily lives today? No doubt??
The phrase 'Never Again' only has meaning if we know which things should never happen again. Some people and governments seem to have already forgotten.
Re:Who cares .... (Score:2, Interesting)
Ilford and Foma papers are great, and have usually been cheaper than Kodak papers for me, anyway. I haven't used Oriental Seagull paper yet, but I hear nice things about it.
B&W has been steadily shrinking since the C-41 process took over for consumers. It's actually getting harder and harder to get honest b&w film. People who want b&w images using conventional chemical photography seem to be moving to the chromogenic, C-41 process films like Kodak's T400CN and Ilford's XP-2. They cite finer grain and workflow simplification--C-41 films seem to scan easier. Unfortunately, they don't know what they're missing--I've always found c-41 films to be very mushy-grained in b&w, because the "grain" is really composed of fluffy dye clouds rather than hard-edged silver halide crystals. Plus, c-41 stuff is a royal pain to print onto b&w paper
I wonder how much longer I'll be able to enjoy this b&w hobby of mine though. As it is, most of my photography is digital now--but I've been toying with the notion of getting an 8x10 view camera and investigating non-silver processes. Time to see if I can find an old copy of WH Fox Talbot's The Pencil of Nature and go back to the very beginnings...
Re:uninformed ./ posts annoy me (Score:3, Interesting)
See: Clarkvision: Film vs. Digital [clarkvision.com]
Another place where digital fails miserably is in long exposure times. While film has reciprocity issues, those are accounted for mathematically, whereas digital noise is difficult to eradicate. Some may equate this to film graininess and that is true where ISO speeds are concerned. Instead, I am speaking of when exposures are many seconds. That is a simple "for-example" of a place where film remains superior...and there are others...consider infrared photography, which can be done in digital, save for the fact that most digital cameras filter out the IR light. A film camera only requires a different sort of film to become a very capable IR camera.
Another irritating thing to me is that non-pros assume that 35mm is the first camera of choice for a professional. Unless they are news or wildlife guys, this is not necessarily true. In fact, most studio-based pros use at least 120mm film cameras, and you can take the megapixels required to match film to the power of four. If they are using 5X7 view/field cameras, which is the minimum for a serious lanscapist, it is ^16 -- at minimum. And that is simple LPI acutance.
Further, the gigapixel digital photos are stitched for the most part, which comes with it's set of issues and challenges that far exceeds the capabilities of almost any point-and-shoot person. Fact is, most people have no clue about nodal point calibration, exposure matching and other gotchas that make the gigapixel photograph take literally days to execute and then assemble. Even a 100 MP cylindrical projection is a challenge to the casual amateur, and most of their works will not approach the level of so-called "fine-art" photographs.
Finally, you are 110% correct about color spaces. However, monitors that use the Adobe RGB color space are coming in to the market now, even if they are prohibitively expensive. Remaining in a single color space throughout the workflow will be a major boon to digital, and in 5-10 years I predict this to be the norm rather than the exception as it is today.
The bottom line is that it is wishful thinking to say that one technlogy will make the other "go away." Chemical photography will have it's uses far into the future and it will be quite some time before issues like noise, range and contrast are completely solved. Until then, guys like me will keep a plethora of cameras -- ranging from a Nikon D2X all the way to a fully manual Nikkormat -- in our camera bags. We are paid to capture images and I care not one whit which tool I use, but I do care passionately about whether or not I get on paper what it is that I set out to capture.
Eastern European papers are getting popular too (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sure the popularity of these new papers hasn't helped Kodak. I gave up on Kodak a while ago due to their constant re-shuffling/re-branding of the product line. As long as HC-110 is still available I'll be happy.