Every so often, withdrawal sets in.
I know when it's coming. A wave of nostalgia-like emotion takes over all rational thought after a rummage through the refrigerator in search of a snack only to find a roll of film on the wrong shelf; a session on the light box, or as now, a quiet moment spent flicking the pages of another good book.
The tome in question is nothing special in photographic terms, but Cote D'Azur by Pierre Borel published at thirty five shillings (one pound seventy five pence to you.) by Nicholas Kaye of London in 1957, contains 169 b+w heliogravure printed photo illustrations.
Hardly any of the photographs are what one might label outstanding, but they have, nonetheless, the characteristic appeal of an era now well past; content is arranged in a more formal compositional way, the emphasis on each frame of directional and contrasting lighting effects brought to bear on a potter's hands, or to give extra dimension to an image by way of contre-jour, to the carpet weaver's labour of love. This is a collection of workaday travel photos, but they are endowed with a certain charm rarely seen today in the colourful interpretations of stock photographers.
The 1950s and early 1960s marked the end of a period during which this treatment proliferated across a wide range of subjects since the late 1920s. The French exploited the technique more delicately perhaps than the Brits, but in either camp, one can spot the genre.
But it is the reproduction of illustrations in this book contributed to by more than two dozen photographers which started me thinking yet again, that all is not lost for the silver halide.
The gravure printing process lends an aesthetic quality to photographic reproduction not seen, as is mostly the case today, with litho and web offset. With gravure, blacks are deeper, richer. The mid-tone range compacted, while highlights, relative to black, appear brighter. The effect is similar (but not the same), to results which can be obtained using duotoned ink-jet printing on fine quality matt papers, but better seen in quadradot litho printing.
The gravure process was especially suited to high quality photo reproduction and it did not always need a high quality original to produce the desired result, as many of the images in this book show on closer examination.
They are littered with visible signs of a process operator's spotting brush - a task many of us now spend tedious hours applying in photoshop. Often, it's apparent in these images, that the camera and lens used to make the original or the photographer's technique or a combination of all, was a little off the mark. Many are not really that sharp, even where they are supposed to be.
None of this matters however. Reproduction size being what it is, the largest gravure prints on a page are about 8X6 inches, the old whole plate format. And at this size, when viewed from a normal book reading distance, the reproductions more than satisfy the demands of the reader to gather from them the information intended by their authors.
The very fine details those of us blessed with perfect sight are able to discern from reality are hardly ever discernable from a photograph printed to a nominal 10 x 8 inch size, even less so when printed with an ink jet printer or reproduced on the pages of a magazine or a book. Life size reproductions would be needed to make a proper comparison between what we actually see and what it is possible to record using the best lenses with film or digital capture. However the image is normally printed on the page or in a print, it remains a poor impression of what we actually saw at the time of exposure.
A handful of digital cameras can now match (and some exceed) the fine detail quality obtained with film, but most don't and certainly those in the small sensor arena fall far behind when it comes to delineating the macro and micro details of whatever it is we think we see of life. Yet powerful on-screen examination of high quality digital images at far higher magnifications than we would normally view a print at, elicit gasps of awe and admiration on discovering minute detail we thought it was impossible to record with a film camera, and perhaps also, were not actually aware of in reality. When was the last time you ran a roll of Kodak's Technical Pan through your camera, processed it carefully and made large scale prints from the negatives?
Digital capture may provide undreamed of conveniences for some, compared to the work-flow experience of film and paper. Nonetheless, in my view, images captured on film are endowed with a very different aesthetic as well as, in many cases of medium and large format, a technical quality not visible in the reproduction of digitally captured images. This is one of the reasons why I keep my film cameras and lenses and use them whenever an opportunity arises.
It would be easy to accept the logic the greater convenience and economy digital capture provides for every aspect of my photography and simply off-load all the film gear, but, and for a raft of other reasons I won't go into the detail of here, the inconvenience of using film, the uncertainty of knowing whether the shot was canned or not, processing, scanning, cleaning, filing and archiving the negs or slides is not part of the work-flow I consider more painful, tedious or wasteful than I did in a previous era; it's all part and parcel of my photographic baggage, deep rooted from a time which began on a kitchen table with soup plates filled with dev and fixer.
In fact, with film, I'm more aware now of how much more relaxed life is when I'm using it. The heightened intensity which seems to attach like some sort of transparent and sticky goo to any process involving a computer, dissolves into nothing more than a sublime pleasure for the moments when awareness reminds me of what I know about working with film.
Scanning for example, is a time consuming occupational necessity, when the purposes of shooting all these frames is to transfer the images they contain to the printed page. In the old days, long before anyone had ever heard of a dedicated desk-top film scanner, screened film positives were required from which to make the metal printing plate. B+W half tones were relatively simple to produce, but four colour printing first required a set of separation negatives - cyan, magenta, yellow and black - from which the screen positives could be made. This required a lot more time and accuracy if it was intended the end result should look anywhere like the original; often it didn't.
Now, the whole process is computerised; separations from scanned RGB files and exposing the plate are made by the press of a button. In most instances, the detail clarity, depth of colour and tonal range of what you see on the page today - even poor newsprint - far exceeds what used to be possible.
It's true the higher the quality of the original scanned image, the better the reproduction. However, the differences in the printed page result obtained from a relatively low spec RGB scan and a really high one only really become apparent when reproduction sizes are significantly increased.
A few years ago, I did some research on this subject by comparing reproductions of the same film image scanned using high-end desk top scanners and several different models to be found incorporated in the type of mini-lab found in your nearest Wal-Mart or Tesco. The results were an eye opener and since, I have used the quick and cheap high street process regularly to meet magazine deadlines. With a little tweaking in photoshop (or similar) to reduce noise and open out mid-tones, reproductions up to whole A4 page and beyond bear reasonable comparison with reproductions from files obtained from high end scanners; however much I might admire the quality of older gravure reproductions mentioned above, repros from these cheap scans are at least as good and sometimes better.
When there is time, this is a painless way to work with film. It's relatively inexpensive compared to the price of individual scans made on a laser drum and a lot less time consuming than doing it myself one at a time, even for the few frames I might need from a roll of exposed film. The plus side is that I get to visit my lab from time to time, chat with the staff, perhaps grab a coffee while I'm waiting or even, heaven forbid, use the process time to whip around a store and stock up on groceries. Mostly however, if I don't use the waiting hour or so to grab a few more local frames on another roll of film, I indulge myself at the newsstand counter, catching up on all the stuff I have missed, not read and often, can't bear to look at. Simple pleasures made possible by using film.
ends.
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www.ajaxnetphoto.blogspot.com 2007.
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