In the dim distant days of 1962, flash photography to ordinary mortals and to impecunious high school students meant using flash bulbs. Flash bulbs were expensive so flash illuminated photography was not an option for routine picture taking. At that time, Kodak was making a high speed film, Tri-X Panchromatic. It had the then marvellous speed of 400 ASA and that allowed indoor, available light, photography if one combined the emulsion with a fast lens.
A fast lens in those days was anything bigger than f2. Jungle John progressed up to a Miranda s.l.r. in 1962 and with that camera and its f1.9 lens, together with Tri-X pan, pictures could be taken indoors.
The Miranda DR (its mother, the Model C-1 is shown here), a fine, flexible camera. It had auto stop down, upward swinging mirror, bayonet mounted f1.9 lens, "split" focussing aid and a removable pentaprism with a ground class beneath for studio use.
Colour film was never used because of the expense of the stock, the fact that one could not develop it in the simple darkroom available, the expense of colour paper and the glacial speed of the colour emulsions then available. Colour negative exposures today routinely made at I.S.O. (A.S.A.) 400 and 800 in 1963 implied a speed of I.S.O. 24 or 32. "Fast" colour exposures were made at I.S.O. 100. Diapositives were an option occasionally chosen but they, too, could not be hand processed and did not produce a print without special and expensive paper.
Without sunlight in a room, illumination was still marginal and the resulting negatives left much to be desired in density and gradient; there was little latitude in the fast emulsions. Grain was always of the "golf ball" dimension with the film of the day at these speeds. The tired old D-76, off temperature hand processing and washing didn't enhance grain and agglutination, either! Ah, but we had fun. Photography was an escape for the nerdy from home life and the resulting impossible social world.
(For those not up on the physics1: silver halide emulsions work because of a "cascade" effect. The halide chemistry is "unstable". The arrival of a light quantum triggers a "decay" effect in the emulsion. Film would not work if the process were to end there because the length of exposures required to achieve a reasonable density would be up in the tens of minutes. The normal exposure time for a portrait in the later part of the 19th century varied from 35 seconds to a minute and a half. The trick that the film chemist achieves with silver halide technique is setting off a "chain reaction" of sorts in which the transition of one halide molecule sets off reactions in neighbouring molecules. Of course, this process must be limited or the whole frame would go black with the first photon to arrive. Achieving this balance, that is to say, obtaining an image but using little light was the triumph of film chemistry.
The reader begins to see why it is that fast, silver based, film tended to be grainy; there was a little locus around each "event" from the beginning of the process. Aged, exhausted chemicals, open to oxidation and otherwise poorly stored, as well as the poor processing practice and temperature problems of a high school darkroom worsened already bad grain, agglutination and gradation issues.)
These photographs have been scanned at an honest 1,200 pixels per inch directly from the negatives. That scan interval approaches the grain and agglutination size in some places on a few of these old negs in the files, that's how bad some of the emulsions are!
Looking at these old films brings another detail of theory to reality. The savants say that emulsions will change with age and in these negs there is plenty of "age". Developed and "fixed" emulsions really aren't. Emulsions continue to change over the years. The intervening 40 years have not enhanced the quality of the images, as the viewer will shortly have an opportunity to see! Scratches and dirt have accumulated, too.
(010113. A paper of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has just been encountered. Here is what that body of experts has to say on the subject:
Chemical Processing and Image Stability
Major silver deterioration occurs when photographs are not correctly processed and washed, that is, when exhausted fixer is used or when photographs are not fixed for a sufficient time, or when washing is inadequate. Improper washing fails to rinse residual thiosulfate complexes (fixer) from the film or paper. Residual fixer left in the photograph reacts over time and causes the image, binder, and support to turn yellow or brown and the silver image to fade. High temperature and humidity speed this process. Photographs that were not well fixed remain light sensitive and may darken when exposed to light. Damage from residual chemicals occurs with time and can go unnoticed for years. To prevent this type of damage insist that all photographic chemical processing and development be done to ANSI standards, especially when duplicating negatives, making reference prints from collection negatives, and if feasible, when acquiring new photographs from photographers. ) Yup, they're right!
A few frames in the collection were made on Plus-X Panchromatic film. The difference in quality of grain and gamma are dramatic. The remarkably better quality may have its origin in the original exposures but it may be, too, that the Plus-X Pan emulsion has endured the years better. It would have been a thicker emulsion. At higher magnifications, the Tri-X frames show numerous cracks ("alligatoring") but the Plus-X has remained stable in that regard. This deterioration of emulsion is troubling. In older films, it has presaged the separation of emulsion from base and so complete loss of parts of the image. The possibility of that happening to this record is all the more reason to commit these precious images to digital storage.
Modern image processing software is in use here. It is astonishingly powerful in enhancing these old negs. Improvements in gamma and gradation that would have taken hours of repeated experiments with filters and multigrade paper for each print can now be done in minutes while sitting at a computer screen. Some things, such as mathematical redistribution of pixel density and variable curve corrections of density simply cannot be done in the lab. Spotting is a lengthy process because of the amount of dirt the years have deposited. Spotting is almost a pleasure, though, because a near perfect result can be obtained from dirty and scratched negatives.
If you have read this far in the technical section, you have been an habitué of darkrooms and you will understand that something is missing in this "printing" process. It is the atmosphere and it is wrong. The airless and humid confines of the darkroom are somehow necessary to inducing the right frame of mind, to producing inspiration. To do this job of making electronic prints properly, one should close all the windows and place beside the keyboard open trays of hypo and acetic acid!
To truly evoke memories of that poorly ventilated O.B.H.S. darkroom at the front of the biology lab. one should also be accompanied by another fellow, one who insists on smoking in there just for the pure hell of doing so! Are you reading this, Sandy Campbell?
It is this type of negative, below, that is too often the raw material for the prints on this web page. Here's a picture of Pat Daniel and Sandra Schutz untreated. The compression processes have eliminated almost all of the spots and scratches but the gradation problem remains obvious. In the "School Life" photo pages of this album, there is a larger "print" of this negative with some enhancement for gradation and definition.
In future visits to this page, you will encounter an improvement in the quality of some of the photographs. Your webmaster started this page as a tyro with the image processing software. As time goes along, its more sophisticated features are explored and the results become better and better. The learning curve is steep at the moment; the webmaster has much to assimilate but he is highly motivated. Each of the better prints takes at least two hours, exclusive of travel and scanning time, to prepare. Pat and Sandra, the first attempt at a truly terrible negative, have taken twice that so far. Under this regimen, training is lengthy and effective! Eventually some of the early work, like this print, will be redone taking advantage of the training provided by later prints. Look for progressive improvement as you go through the pages!
So, dreadful though the technical aspect of that last negative is, it should be possible to do better for Pat and Sandra after a few more weeks.
When the School Life pages are on display, expect quality more like this picture of Bernd Schalke and a radiant Jane Hassen. This one was done in about an hour.
Bear in mind that all these photographs have been reduced by a factor of about two orders of magnitude in pixel count. This has been accomplished in part by a size reduction algorithm in the image processing software and in part by the Joint Photographic Experts Group algorithm. The rather fuzzy images here are sharp in the full sized files where the negative is in good condition.
If you encounter an image here that you would like to have full size, send the webmaster your address, email or snail, and he will dispatch a full sized copy. Be sure to specify the format desired. Note that though the file that you see here will be between about 15 kilobytes and about 40 kilobytes the original scan will be about 2.2 megabytes so that if you have requested it over the 'net, it will take a while to down load unless you are a patrician with a big pipe! In the snail version, reduction will be made to fit the file into 1.44 megabytes.
Eileen will receive her snapshots back together with a diskette of the images posted here. The digital data which expresses her precious images will not fade, yellow or become wrinkled.
Hey, you're not supposed to be reading this stuff if you are bored! Skip on into the pictures.
1 "There is no chemistry, it's all physics" Feynman.
