Re: Demise of film

        Replacing film with paper negatives? If you mean the
Calotype: the thing to be aware of is that this has to be one of the
most difficult processes to get right. It takes many hours of manual
labor just get the paper ready for the camera (one has to give credit
to the armies of servants, family, friends, students and apprentices
who did all the elbow work before the photographer could step forward
and take all the credit). The likelihood of contamination is
extremely high; the materials are hard to work with (try immersing a
wax-impregnated piece of very thin paper); using silver nitrate and
glacial acetic acid is dangerous. The image is not anywhere as sharp
as modern photographers have become used to since the days of
daguerreotype and wet-plate collodion processes. The scale is very
short, making the long and full-scale print a near impossibility.
Finally: where collodion and even daguerreotype took some seconds to
make a picture, the Calotype took as many minutes. To take a lesson
from history: when collodion was announced, practitioners of the
Calotype process, whether wet/damp-paper or dry waxed-paper, either
ran to the new glass process or quit photography entirely. Even the
messy and even more dangerous wet plate collodion process with its
necessary attendant dark-tent, was preferable to the paper processes
of the time. One can only reason from this that calotype was only a
step on the way, not an end in itself, and was discarded as too
difficult and its results too uncertain, to remain a preferred
method. This last is something I can vouch for: having been
intensely involved in the Calotype processes for the past several
years (along with collodion), I find the Calotype processes to try
one's patience to the limit.

Unless most modern photographers were to somehow change their
approach from the instantaneous result with its long and full scale
negative and print, to the truly slow and fastidious, and be
accepting of the uncertain result, I do not see most modern workers
making much use of the true paper negative. .....
but who knows? maybe when we have run out of fossil fuels and have to
walk to work instead of burning 10 gallons of irreplaceable fuel in
the family Sport SUV, then maybe....

 From the depths of the Black Arts..

Christopher Wright/
        www.visionsinsilver.com

At 10:18 AM -0400 8/8/05, Greg Schmitz wrote:
>On Mon, 8 Aug 2005, Wayne D wrote:
>
>>Using paper negatives???????
>>
>
>That would be one way, but if nobody's making photographic paper....
>For the first 50 years or so after photography was invented workers
>had to make their own materials. Nothing stopping us from doing the
>same thing now. Indeed, and we have 150+ years of research into,
>among other things, photo sensitive materials to draw from. What's
>everybody afraid of.
>
>-greg
>
>>
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "Greg Schmitz" <gws1@columbia.edu>
>>To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
>>Sent: Monday, August 08, 2005 7:54 AM
>>Subject: Re: Demise of film
>>
>>>
>>>Really???
>>>
>>>This is the alt-photo list - does it really matter if they stop making
>>>whatever? I'll still be able to make pictures as long as I can buy paper
>>>and chemicals.
>>>
>>>-greg schmitz <gws1@columbia.edu>
>>>
>>>
>>>On Mon, 8 Aug 2005, davidhatton@superonline.com wrote:
>>>
>>>>Hi all,
>>>>
>>>>Just saw BBC NEWS24. Dixons, quite a large chain of stores here in the
>>UK
>>>>have announced that film cameras are finished. When current stocks of
>>>>film based cameras are sold, they will cease their retail and sell only
>>>>digital. The dominos are falling,
>>>>
>>>>http://dsgportal01.dixons.co.uk/wps/portal/dixons.media.latestnews
>>>>
>>>>tells the story
>>>>
>>>>Regards
>>>>
>>>>David H
Received on Tue Aug 9 10:19:48 2005