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  #1  
Old 11th April 2020, 07:59 PM
JakubV JakubV is offline
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Default A distinct 'old' look

I am not quite sure if this is a right category, but I suspect my question is from the realm of film emulsions.

So, I was looking at some photographs when I came across this one: https://tinyurl.com/s5lxfoy (it's from mid 30's, I think, by amazing photographer, ethnographer and film director Karol Plicka; more samples here https://evikysupliky.rajce.idnes.cz/...Karola_Plicku/)

I have seen this kind of picture rendition in a number of older photographs and I was thinking how can one emulate it today - I mean the rather high resolution and clearness of the image together with pronounced grain.
Is it just a function of using large format (e.g. 8x10) with a film that is not quite up to par with modern standards? Ans if it is so, can it be done now at all? When I look at modern large format photographs, they are too 'smooth' and 'nice' even with fast films.

And with smaller format, there is always problem with clarity and resolution when one goes for pronounced grain...
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Old 11th April 2020, 09:07 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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JakubV, there are some great ethnic shots here and the sky in most of the landscapes looks a little strange to my eyes. Not better or worse than the modern film may show but just different.

I have seen a few threads on another forum asking how to repeat the " old days" look. Some say that the materials, lenses etc have changed too much to be able to replicate the 1930s/40s maybe even the 50s look. Others say it can be done in various ways which they mention but I am not convinced that they have ever tried to use those ways to replicate an "old days" look

If these are 4x5 negatives or 8x10 then I'd need to see prints from modern film 4x5 and 8x10 to compare

In a sense I am a newcomer to photography who started in a serious way only 2003 with modern materials and a modern 135 film camera
so I may not be the best person to compare "old days" photographs to new ones. The closest I come to the old days is a 1954 Agfa Isolette I which I suspect in essence is not much different to what a 1930s medium format camera would have been like. However from what I have seen of my negatives and prints from that camera, there is not any real difference to my prints from my P645N except that the lack of controls on the Agfa means that things can go wrong more easily such as exposure, focusing etc

Mike
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  #3  
Old 11th April 2020, 09:44 PM
JakubV JakubV is offline
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Thanks for mentioning the sky - it indeed comes across strange at times, to a point I started to suspect that in some prints it has been montaged in like in the times of blue sensitive and ortho emulsions.

As for the modern look, accidentaly I have recently bought a book all in 8x10, so I can compare in person so to speak, by (also) slovak photographer Alan Hyža and while he used quite old lenses (couldn't find exactly how old, but he mentioned in some interview that they were by default not mounted in a shutter), he used standard modern film (e.g. TMY https://tinyurl.com/qnj9n6k) and the quality of images is stellar - hardly any grain, controlled tones high and low.

Indeed, I have some MF cameras from 50s and they are more or less normal modern cameras...after all, modern lens formulas comes from turn of the centuries with coating developed in the next decades.

So, I tend to believe that the formulation of emulsion might be a culprit here - the thick emulsions of yore with more random (in size & spatial distribution) halide crystals ought to be worse in terms of grain an image quality.
Also, I have only assumed that the photo was made in LF - but it could have been some kind of MF, e.g. Graflex or any number of odd-sized cameras intended for glass negatives smaller than 4x5...that would help with the question of grain in the image. To bad not much records about material and techniques used can be found now.

Yet I'd love to be able to recreate this look when needed - closest I can get are Foma 100 and 400 films (which are quite grainy) in developer that can restrain the graininess (but not as much as D-76 or 23), but they tend to have very different tonal response and I have not ben able to come with a filtering mehod that would work reliably in various lighting conditions.

Now, if you call 17 years a newcomer, I wonder when I'll be able to call myself that with 4 under my belt

Jakub

Last edited by JakubV; 11th April 2020 at 09:55 PM.
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  #4  
Old 12th April 2020, 12:16 AM
big paul big paul is offline
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I think more silver played a big part
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Old 12th April 2020, 08:02 AM
Lostlabours Lostlabours is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JakubV View Post
I am not quite sure if this is a right category, but I suspect my question is from the realm of film emulsions.

So, I was looking at some photographs when I came across this one: https://tinyurl.com/s5lxfoy (it's from mid 30's, I think, by amazing photographer, ethnographer and film director Karol Plicka; more samples here https://evikysupliky.rajce.idnes.cz/...Karola_Plicku/)

I have seen this kind of picture rendition in a number of older photographs and I was thinking how can one emulate it today - I mean the rather high resolution and clearness of the image together with pronounced grain.
Is it just a function of using large format (e.g. 8x10) with a film that is not quite up to par with modern standards? Ans if it is so, can it be done now at all? When I look at modern large format photographs, they are too 'smooth' and 'nice' even with fast films.

And with smaller format, there is always problem with clarity and resolution when one goes for pronounced grain...

it's not a function of using larger formats, I can show you superb images made in 1910 with 10"x8" and 12"x10" cameras shot on glass plates.

It's actually a case of using smaller formats with older fast films and probably uncoated lenses. There's also the probability that in many cases you're looking at poor reproductions, or modern prints off old negatives.

An example would be Andre Keretesz, there was an exhibition at the arbican in the late 1980's of his early pre WWII work. The prints were small but jewel like all contemporary, and on warm-tone papers many of us dream of. A year or two later I saw a major Kertesz exhibition somewhere else that included some of his early images as well as his post WWII wirk. The difference in quality was startling, the modern prints off the pre WWII negative were larger and while good had lost much of the soul and feel of the early contemporary prints, if you'd seen them alongside they'd be like chalk and cheese.

The reasons for this change in quality were firstly that the way photographers exposed and developed films changed in the 1930's with a move to 35mm, and in the late 40's and 50's with the wide spread use of coated lenses, and also the use of light meters. Originally with uncoated lenses photographers over-exposed more and laso processed to higher densities and contrast often with Pyro staining developers. This helped overcome the inherent low contrast of many uncoated lenses.

The second factor was the papers were crafted to match those higher density negatives which are very difficult to print with modern papers. This was one reason Museums etc used Centennial POP (made for them ny Kentmere - who also sold it here in teh UK under their own name).

The big changes came with the use of 35mm and a need to redefine techniques to get the best out of these small negative. New ways of working were explored and published in Leica publication but one person Hans Windisch really brought these approaches together in his 1938 publication Die Neue Foto Schule.



One of the advertisers is Gossen meters, others are Leitz, Rollei, Exacta, it was also published in English as The New Photo School in the same year. This is the basis of our modern approach using precise exposures, just enough development in fine grain developers.

Ian
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Old 12th April 2020, 08:10 AM
Richard Gould Richard Gould is offline
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I think that it is down to film that simply oes not exist today, I remember using old Efke films getting a look something like this, it 3 efke was silver rich film, also many papers in the 40's and 50's were also very silver rich, again Efke and Forte papers, also the lenses, many in the forties were still uncoated, and having a few uncoated lenses they give a very different look to the print/negative, and a lot of lenses were much simpler design's to todays lenses, again I have and use a lot of simple folders and get a very different look to my negatives than my very modern, computer designed lenses,The nearest film you will get is Foma films, they are one of the last poured emulsion films in the world today, develop them in Rodinal, using a camera from the 40's fifties, and you might get somewhere near this sort of look,I have some old Barnack Leica's and I have tried taking Foma 400, orange filter, on a Leica and a modern Minolta dynax same subject (still life) same film ( foma action) developed in Rodinal 1/50, using 50mm lenses, and the difference between the the 2 negatives is remarkable, I should add same exposure, so I believe it is a combination of all 3,
Richard
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Old 12th April 2020, 08:40 AM
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CambsIan CambsIan is offline
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Pretty sure this is of no help, but the nearest I have got to an "older" looking print is this one (shot on Foma)

http://www.film-and-darkroom-user.or...pictureid=4311

Not really like the example prints, but I like it.

Ian
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Old 12th April 2020, 09:53 AM
JakubV JakubV is offline
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Thank you all for suggestions

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lostlabours View Post
it's not a function of using larger formats, I can show you superb images made in 1910 with 10"x8" and 12"x10" cameras shot on glass plates.
Yep, that is true...I assumed that large format was used in examples (it definitely reminds me of a look of Edward Weston's Armco steel prints), but it could have been smaller format and the small optical imperfections could be from imperfect folder mechanism and not from LF camera movements.
It's very interesting, what you say about the shift to 35mm (looks like Ernst Leitz has ruined it for me ) - definitely makes sense and now I start to understand why some peculiar things are written in my book for novice photographers from 50s that deals with medium format as standard...pyro developers, 1-2 stops of overexposure (compared to what I would have expected now), 30-50% longer dev times etc.

Quote:
Originally Posted by CambsIan View Post
Pretty sure this is of no help, but the nearest I have got to an "older" looking print is this one (shot on Foma)

http://www.film-and-darkroom-user.or...pictureid=4311

Not really like the example prints, but I like it.

Ian
That's the foma look, very nice...still I can't achieve tonality that I'm after all the time. The best what I was able to do was a still life on Foma 200 with light-pink drapes used as background illuminated by standard tungsten bulb - I have only scans now, but I presume it'll do well on paper too.

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Originally Posted by big paul View Post
I think more silver played a big part
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Gould View Post
I think that it is down to film that simply oes not exist today, I remember using old Efke films getting a look something like this, it 3 efke was silver rich film, also many papers in the 40's and 50's were also very silver rich
...
I have some old Barnack Leica's and I have tried taking Foma 400, orange filter, on a Leica and a modern Minolta dynax same subject (still life) same film ( foma action) developed in Rodinal 1/50, using 50mm lenses, and the difference between the the 2 negatives is remarkable, I should add same exposure, so I believe it is a combination of all 3,
Richard
They did put more silver in, didn't they
I've got to try Adox Silvermax for that matter (shame it's only available in 135) and maybe get me some uncoated Tessar...

Jakub
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Old 12th April 2020, 10:52 AM
Alan Clark Alan Clark is offline
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Jakub,
The grain in the sky in these pictures doesn't seem to me to be sharp and crisp like film grain. It reminds me of the effect I got when I made a 10 x 8 pinhole camera and used paper negatives. These pictures are sharper than my pinhole efforts, of course, but the texture in the sky looks like what I got from the texture in the paper negative. I used Ilford Multigrade 4 RC glossy for negatives.
If you have a large format camera maybe you could try using paper negatives and see what happens. Just a suggestion....

Alan
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Old 12th April 2020, 10:57 AM
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monst monst is offline
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I think a lot of the look is the lenses and as said earlier a nice silver rich emulsion. This is one from my old Graflex, a very different shot to the one being talked about but stopped down you get a similar result. This was foma 100 on a 5x7 Graflex and a Dallmeyer Pentac
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