Roger Hyam: Blog

Bye Bye Wordpress

2026-09-19T00:00:00Z

I've just migrated this blog from a self hosted Wordpress site to a custom system based on static MarkDown files that are stitched together with Eleventy. It had been running on Wordpress since I started it in 2006. Wordpress has been pretty cool through that time. I seamlessly migrated to each new version and had a few changes of theme to refresh how it looked. Wordpress runs a ridiculous proportion of websites - something like 40%! It is objectively a good system. So why have I migrated away?

Wordpress became way more complex and, for my use, it jumped the shark when the Gutenberg editor became the default in 2018. It has just taken me eight years to do something about it! Since Gutenberg the number of commercial themes and plugins has rocketed so that any extension to the site now comes with attempts to up-sell to the "pro" version. There used to be free, simple themes and plugins that just did the job. These probably still exist but the are buried under commercial cruft. Finally my very cheap ISP runs the Wordpress database incredibly slowly. I just want to display some text and a picture or two but it took ages to load. When I went to update the theme again my heart sank and I grasped the nettle to move away from a dynamic site altogether.

I'm not saying goodbye to Wordpress altogether. I'm still responsible for a self hosted site at my work and another hosted on Wordpress.com. When I retire the former will be someone else's responsibility and the latter is run commercially anyhow.

To do the move to MarkDown I used this utility https://github.com/lonekorean/wordpress-export-to-markdown. Thank you lonekorean and other contributors. Then I did a lot of cleaning and styling and incorporated my landing pages that are more of a gallery than a blog - something that would have been a pain in Wordpress.

I hope this cleaner system will inspire me to write more. I certainly plan to write a blog before I make a YouTube video again.

Every use of AI is disappointing

2026-08-31T00:00:00Z

I asked ChatGPT to:

replace the numbers on the number plate of this car with the word "career"

After a minute of "thinking" ChatGPT produced this

If you'd asked a graphics person to do the same job would you be satisfied with the result?

It looks like it is pasted on.
The number plate is too white
The bolts on the plate have disappeared
UK number plates use the Mandatory typeface which is extremely different from the one used here.

After nearly four years of what is supposed to have been exponential improvement this is still Dancing Bear software. Like a bear it can be made to dance but not very well.

Every time I use AI (voluntarily or not) I'm disappointed with the results and I think most of the world agrees with me.

Parking the Curriculum Vitae

2026-08-31T00:00:00Z

When I moved my blog posts from WordPress to this hosting system I came across my Curriculum Vitae. For some reason I thought it was worth having a copy on the blog. I don't think I have updated it for at least five years. As I'm planning to retire in 2030 it isn't likely that I'll be using it to look for work again but I thought I'd capture it here just for curiosity.

My employment history starts nearly 40 years ago in 1988. I'd done shop and bar work before then but that was the first work "in my field". I was employed as a compiler on the RHS Dictionary of Gardening. This was a dense reference work covering all the plants of horticultural value. I bought myself an Amastrad PCW green screen word processor and sat in my bedsit working through lists of plants. Here I am four decades later. Much water has flowed under the bridge but I'm still sitting in my living room working on a reference work listing all the plants in the world. Grant you the computer is much fancier.

If I do need gainful employment I really need to do something completely different - stacking shelves or something - I'll be done with botanical nomenclature by the time I turn 65.

For stuff that has happened more recently there is always my ResearchGate profile or ORCID public profile. There are so many people compiling digital profiles of you now it hardly seems necessary to have a c.v. Employers can just use Google.

Curriculum Vitae

I trained as a botanist but have also spent time working in commercial IT. I now combine these two interests in my work on biodiversity informatics. I am currently employed by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh where my role is to ensure the gardens gain the most from their digital information assets and emerging digital technologies.

I am a practicing Buddhist. I have been meditating formally since the mid 1990s and currently sit with the Edinburgh Wild Geese Sangha part of the UK Community of Interbeing following the teachings of Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Master, Thich Nhat Hanh. I was ordained as a lay member of the Order of Interbeing in August 2015 with the Dharma name True Embracing Oak (Chân Sồi Bao Dung).

I don't see my Buddhism as a religion separate from pursuing the 'good life' (eudaemonia). I have an interest in the use of these principles as a force for good in wider society.

Way back in the 1980's I worked as a photographer of plants and gardens. Today I enjoy making portraits of willing subjects.

I live in Edinburgh, Scotland with my wife and two daughters.

I am hopeless at partitioning my life so all of the above overlaps in most of what I do.

### Education

1983 -- 1986 B.Sc. (Hons) Biological Sciences Wolverhampton Polytechnic
1987 -- 1988 M.Sc. Pure and Applied Plant Taxonomy University of Reading
1993 -- 1997 Ph.D. "Molecular and conventional data sets and the systematics of Rhododendron L. subgenus Hymenanthes (Blume) K. Koch." Bristol University and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
1999 Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform Sun Microsystems
2011 Post Graduate Certificate in Mindfulness-Based Approaches, Bangor University

Employment

2012 -- Digital Information & Technology Development Office, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
2011 -- 2012 Encyclopedia of Life Rubenstein Fellow: Edinburgh Rhododendron monographs from OCR to species pages.
2011 -- 2012 Project Officer: Synsthesys II -- Metadata on European Natural History Collections -- (half time post).
2009 -- 2011 Project Officer: WP4 of Pan European Species Infrastructure, Natural History Museum London.
2008 -- 2009 Developer: Biodiversity Collections Index.
2005 -- 2008 Technical Architect: Biodiversity Information Standard (TDWG).
2004 -- 2005 Freelance Biodiversity Informatics Consultant.
2001 -- 2004 Senior Developer: Calligrafix, Lempitlaw, Kelso, TD5 8BN
1999 -- 2001 Senior Developer/Team Leader: Orbital Software, Barnton, Edinburgh.
1996 -- 1999 Higher Scientific Officer: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
1993 -- 1996 Scientific Officer: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
1992 -- 1993 Freelance Botanist writing Hyam and Pankhust (1995) Plants and Their Names.
1990 -- 1992 Photographic Technician: University of Reading School of Plant Sciences
1988 -- 1990 Freelance Botanist and Photographer

Publications

Anton Güntsch, Quentin Groom, Roger Hyam, Simon Chagnoux, Dominik Röpert, Walter G. Berendsohn, Ana Casino, Gabriele Droege, Willfred Gerritsen, Jörg Holetschek, Karol Marhold, Patricia Mergen, Heimo Rainer, Vincent Stuart Smith, Dagmar Triebel (2018) Standardised Globally Unique Specimen Identifiers. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 2: e26658. doi.org/10.3897/biss.2.26658
Hyam, R.D. (2017) Automated Image Sampling and Classification Can Be Used to Explore Perceived Naturalness of Urban Spaces. PLOS one 12(1) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169357
Groom Q., Hyam R., Güntsch A. (2017) Data management: Stable identifiers for collection specimens. Nature 546(33). doi:10.1038/546033d
Güntsch A, Hyam R, Hagedorn G, Chagnoux S, Röpert D, Casino A, Droege G, Glöckler F, Gödderz K, Groom Q, Hoffmann J, Holleman A, Kempa M, Koivula H, Marhold K, Nicolson N, Smith VS, Triebel D. (2017) Actionable, long-term stable and semantic web compatible identifiers for access to biological collection objects. Database 2017(1). doi:10.1093/database/bax003
Hyam, R.D. (2015) Taxa, Taxon Names and Globally Unique Identifiers in Perspective. in Descriptive Taxonomy: The Foundation of Biodiversity Research. Systematics Association.
de Jong Y, Kouwenberg J, Boumans L, Hussey C, Hyam R ... (104 more) ... Penev L, Rubio A, Backeljau T, Saarenmaa H, Ulenberg S (2015). PESI -- A taxonomic backbone for Europe. Biodiversity Data Journal 3(e5848):pp. 1-51. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.3.e5848
Hyam, R.D., Drinkwater, R.E. & Harris, D.J. (2012) Stable citations for herbarium specimens on the internet: an illustration from a taxonomic revision of Duboscia (Malvaceae) Phytotaxa 73: 17--30.
Hyam, R.D. (2010) The use of Web Ontology Language (OWL) to Combine Extant Controlled Vocabularies in Biodiversity Informatics Appears Redundant. Available from Nature Precedings <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npre.2010.5168.1>.
Hyam, R.D. (2008) TDWG Standards Roadmap. Proceedings of TDWG, 2008.
Hyam, R.D. (2008) The Biodiversity Collections Index -- Linking 140 Million Records? Proceedings of TDWG, 2008.
Hyam, R.D. (2008) SpeciesIndex: A Practical Alternative to Fantasy Mashups? Proceedings of TDWG, 2008.
Hyam, R.D. (2007) TDWG Standards Architecture -- What and Why. Proceedings of TDWG, 2007.
Hyam, R.D. (2007) RDF over TAPIR. Proceedings of TDWG, 2007.
Hyam, R.D. (2007) The Role of Ontologies in the TDWG Architecture. Proceedings of TDWG, 2007 .
Kennedy, J., Hyam, R., Kukla, R., Paterson T. (2006) Standard Data Model Representation for Taxonomic Information OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology. 10(2): 220-230. doi:10.1089/omi.2006.10.220.
Hyam, R.D. (2006) A Technical Architecture for TDWG Standards. Proceedings of TDWG, 2006.
Pereira, R.S., Donald Hobern, D., Hyam, R. Belbin, L., Blum, S. (2006) Globally Unique Identifiers (GUID) for Biodiversity Informatics Proceedings of TDWG, 2006.
Kennedy, J., Gales, R., Kukla, R., Hyam, R., Wieczorek, J.R., Hagedorn, G., Döring, M., Vieglais, D. (2006) Developing a Core Ontology for Taxonomic Data Proceedings of TDWG, 2006.
Miller, A.G., Morris, M., Alexander, D. (Design), Atkinson, R. (Editor), Pullan, M. (Bioinformatics), Hyam, R. (Bioinformatics), Kowter, A.M. (Logistics) (2004) Ethnoflora of the Soqotra Archipelago. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. [Winner of the Technical Category of CBHL awards 2005]
Pullan, M.R., Watson, M.F., Kennedy, J.B., Raguenaud, C., Hyam, R. (2000) The Prometheus Taxonomic Model: A practical approach to representing multiple taxonomies, Taxon 49(1), pp 55-75.
Chamberlain, D.F., Hyam, R.D. (1998) The genus Rhododendron: a case study to test the value of various molecular techniques as measures of biodiversity. In: Karp, A., Isaac, P.G. & Ingram, D.S.(eds) Molecular Tools for Screening Biodiversity. Chapman & Hall.
Chamberlain, D.F., Hyam, R.D., Argent, G., Fairweather, G., Walter, K.S. (1996) The genus Rhododendron: Its classification and synonymy. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. (181pp)
Hyam R.D. (1996) Review of The Rhododendron Story: 200 years of Plant Hunting and Garden Cultivation. The New Plantsman. 3(2): 124
Hyam, R.D. (1995) Draba. In: Cullen, J. Alexander, J.C.M., Brady, A., Brickell, C.D., Green, P.S., Heywood, V.H., Jorgensen, P.-M., Jury, S.L., Knees, S.G., Leslie, A.C., Matthews, V.A., Robson, N.K.B., Walters, S.M., Wijnands, D.O. & Yeo, P.F. (eds) The European Garden Flora Vol. 4 Cambridge University Press.
Hyam R.D. & Knees, S. (1995) Echeveria and Crassula. In: Cullen, J. Alexander, J.C.M., Brady, A., Brickell, C.D., Green, P.S., Heywood, V.H., Jorgensen, P.-M., Jury, S.L., Knees, S.G., Leslie, A.C., Matthews, V.A., Robson, N.K.B., Walters, S.M., Wijnands, D.O. & Yeo, P.F(eds) The European Garden Flora Vol. 4 Cambridge University Press.
Hyam, R.D. & Pankhurst, R. (1995) Plants and Their Names. Oxford University Press. (545pp)
Hyam, R.D. and Jury, S.L. (1990) A review of the genus Graellsia Bois. including Draba L. section Helicodraba Schultz. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 102: 9-22.
Hyam, R.D. (1990) A review of The Roya Horticultural Society , Gardeners' Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 104: 389-390.
Extensive Compilation and research for: Huxley, A., Griffiths, M. & Levy, M. (eds) (1992) The New Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening. Macmillan Press, London. and Moore, D.M. (1991) Plant Life. Oxford University Press

New website launched

2025-06-13T00:00:00Z

I've just turned 60 and have been doing some thinking about priorities. I've launched a simplified website for the more "serious" work I want to take forward. I'm debating with myself if I'll continue with this blog, archive it or take it down. I do know some people find it useful but it is full of a lot of cruft from my past too! I've been running it for nearly twenty years without totally committing so there are many things that I have done that are not on the blog. It therefore doesn't give a good representation of my life and interests.

From trash film to fun with a pinhole camera

2024-10-31T00:00:00Z

My second intentional YouTube video. This time a little more in focus but content just as random.

https://youtu.be/rZq80PO2Cgc

Large Format Remote Release

2024-10-17T00:00:00Z

I've taken the plunge and made a video for YouTube. The plan is to make a few and see if I can develop a style I'm comfortable with. The motivation is just to share the fun I have messing about with analogue photo stuff.

https://youtu.be/bFuXiBR8LQk

Baby Rolleiflex: #6

2024-07-02T00:00:00Z

This is finishing up some Kodak Ektar 100 that was a few years out of date developed in some Cinestill CS41 that was six weeks old and probably coming to the end of its life. I'm shifting back to black and white now. I get my kicks from processing my own stuff which isn't practical with colour unless I shoot fifteen to twenty rolls a month and get the full value from each batch of chemistry.

Photographic angst

2024-06-13T00:00:00Z

We are a bunch of social primates. This means we have two biological driving forces. Firstly we want to fit in. We fear being ostracized by the group because that would mean death. Even if we are inveterate loaners we have to negotiate a relationship with society that supplies us our sustenance in return for everyone leaving us alone. Secondly we want to get on. We seek status within the group so that others know how to relate to us. Higher status means more comfort but status is more of a role in a complex machine than simply a position on a ladder. Witness people defining themselves by their job or their family responsibilities. You can have a status as the unreliable cleansing operative or a big corp CEO but it is still your status. You aren't a nobody. You are always defined by everyone else even if that is via negation.

Alfred Alder was a contemporary of Freud and founded the school of individual psychology. In recent years Alder's psychology has been popularised by the Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga notably with their book "The Courage to be Disliked". In summary: "Unless one is unconcerned by other people’s judgements, has no fear of being disliked by other people, and pays the cost that one might never be recognised, one will never be able to follow through in one’s own way of living. That is to say, one will not be able to be free."

And the trap snaps closed! We are biologically programmed to be people pleasers but can only be creatively free if we are unconcerned what people think of us and our work.

"Existential angst", sometimes called existential dread, anxiety, or anguish, is a term common to many existentialist thinkers. It is generally held to be a negative feeling arising from the experience of human freedom and responsibility. The archetypal example is the experience one has when standing on a cliff where one not only fears falling off it, but also dreads the possibility of throwing oneself off. In this experience that "nothing is holding me back", one senses the lack of anything that predetermines one to either throw oneself off or to stand still, and one experiences one's own freedom. (Wikipedia Existentialism: Angst and Dread).

Photographic angst is that feeling you get when you realise you don't have to make photographs to please people. You could photograph anything anyway you want. You freeze as if stood on the edge of a cliff. It is an intently negative, paralyzing sensation usually solved by distraction onto something else - perhaps trying to produce something to please people but more likely despising those that do it successfully!

Fortunately there is an out

In considering the group and us we are committing a category error. We are the group and our status within the group is in relation to everyone else in the group. Our actions are the actions of the group and as such we have total freedom. To say we are constrained by our group membership would be like saying our right hand is restricted by our left hand. Sure there are limits on our freedom. We can't threaten harmony too much but outside of oppressive, authoritarian societies these should not be considered a prison. It would be like saying you weren't free because gravity prevents you flying. Dancers and acrobats use that gravity.

If being a member of a troop of monkeys does not restrict us then what of Alder's comments, that we can only be free if we overcome our need for approval? That remains true. There is a difference between seeking approval of the group as a goal and being pleased when you receive that approval. If one were to actively seek to not court praise one would be restricting oneself to a limited range of expression almost as much as if one were to only seek praise. Rebels are defined by what they rebel against. What Alder is really implying is we need to take risks to be free. We need to be OK with not getting group approval.

Standing back on that existential cliff edge things look a little different. We do not have absolute freedom. Our group membership is holding us back because as group members we have a responsibility to the whole group not just ourselves. This isn't a constraint because "ourselves" and the group inter-are. What scares us now is that what we thought was a very personal creative drive is actually a responsibility to lead. Simultaneously acknowledging responsibility within the group and a freedom to act in a way you feel right, even if it makes you unpopular, is a pretty good definition of leadership. We can ask ourselves what kind of photographs should be made. If we are capable of making them then get on with it and if we aren't then encourage others to do it.

Baby Rolleiflex: #5

2024-06-02T00:00:00Z

Getting a bit cocky and messing more shots up.

Baby Rolleiflex: #4

2024-05-31T00:00:00Z

Trip to London & back with the baby and some Kodak Gold

Baby Rolleiflex: #3

2024-05-31T00:00:00Z

Baby Rolleiflex: #2

2024-05-30T00:00:00Z

First colour film (Kodak Gold) in the Baby Rolleiflex.

Baby Rolleiflex: #1

2024-05-30T00:00:00Z

First roll from my Baby Rolleiflex. The world seen in square begins...

Envoy Wide Angle

2024-05-08T00:00:00Z

My brother kindly gifted me an Envoy Wide Angle. This quirky little camera was sold by Ilford in the 1950s. Although it has the same name as the mass market, plastic Ilford Envoy it is a very different camera and relatively rare. It has a diecast metal body and quality, 64mm lens (equivalent to about 24mm on 35mm). It can take plates or a 120 roll film insert. But it is a fixed focus camera like its namesake - relying entirely on depth of field for sharpness. (Albeit the Envoy does two push/pull focus settings).

Depth of field range from instruction manual.

This particular specimen had quite a bit of "history". At some point in its seventy year life someone had converted it from taking 9x6cm frames to 6x6cm frames. They cut holes in the pressure plate and back that lined up with the 6x6 numbering on the film and stuck cardboard baffles onto the film carrier. Although this sounds barbaric it was probably quite a good idea at the time. 6x6 is easier to work with and it gives 20% more photos per roll. Unfortunately, in 2024, it makes it much less attractive as a collector's item. I decided to reverse the changes and take it back to 6x9. Functionally it now works the same as when new but it looks pretty hacked about from behind.

Fossil headland at Aberlady (vignette added in post)

In use it is a case of liberation through limitation. Although it is tiny you really have to put it on a tripod. At f/16 it would be in focus from 6ft to 400ft but the instructions say coverage is not 100% till it is shut down to f/22. Using the sunny sixteen rule that means that ISO 400 film will need 200th of a second in full sun. The reproduction ratio means this is the minimum you can hand hold it really. It never is full sun and I rate my 400 films at 200! Effectively you always have to put it on a tripod. Just set it to f/32 frame your shot (the wire frame is quite accurate) and choose a shutter speed.

Compulsory photo of Castle Vennel, Edinburgh

As usual the Edinburgh weather is dull but I had fun and the shots are quite pleasing. They are sharp though I don't really care about such matters. Another working camera for the collection.

Meadows, Edinburgh. Basil Spence designed library behind.

I've gone 6x17!

2024-04-17T00:00:00Z

Another crazy, impulse purchase has occurred. I bought a Tomiyama Art Panorama 170. The 6x17 format is something I've always fancied trying. Having messed about with swing lens cameras of various makes and formats I wondered what it would be like to make really wide, rectilinear panos.

My first exposure in Grange Cemetery, Edinburgh - my testing ground.

The choices to shoot 6x17 are limited. The most flexible camera would be one of the dedicated Shen Hao view cameras. These are gorgeous but pricey. Another option is to get an adapter back for one of my 4x5 cameras. These are let down by the lens support. You need to use a recessed lens board for a 90mm lens (which can be a complete pain) and then get restricted movements on a regular field camera. The longest focal length useable is about 180mm before vignetting occurs on the internal 4x5 aperture of the host camera. That means that, out of the box, I could only use my 150mm lens with an adapter. I could remount my Schneider 90mm Super-Angulon on a recessed board but that would make it harder to use on normal 4x5 film. Adapters are tempting because they are cheaper than a dedicated camera but they come with restrictions and hassles that add up.

From my second roll of film. Trying out a monopod. I need to get used to the framing in the viewfinder.

There are some modern, 3D printed, dedicated 6x17 cameras but I've used 3D printed cameras before and they didn't spark joy. That leaves dedicated cameras with a viewfinder on top. Of these there are the Linhof Technoramas and the Fujifilm GXs. These are good but rare and come in at over £2,000 often with extra shipping and import duties. They are also more complex than view cameras in having sophisticated winding mechanisms. The Tomiyama that I have bought is a bit of an oddball. It feels more like a piece of industrial equipment than a refined production camera. Its construction is simple and it has a basic peep-window film advance that can't go wrong. It was also a lot cheaper than a Linhof or a Fujifilm!

https://youtu.be/MlFEqZeg1mM?si=8m8GdM46oUSh-UwT

Here is Nick Carver (Mr 6x17 himself) with a much more detailed break down of the camera options

The other thing that tipped me towards a viewfinder style camera is the Scottish weather. Often it isn't clement enough to wrestle with a focussing cloth, bellows and movements. I have view cameras that I don't get to use because of the wind and rain so something that is a little more robust is attractive. Having said that, after three rolls of film I'm already missing movements! A rise and fall front would be nice. This is partly because I'm stuck in town for a while and any tilling forward and backwards of the camera is betrayed by verticals at the sides of the frame. This won't occur so much in natural scenes.

Not 6x17 but 6x12 using my Cambo 6x12 back

Two interesting side effects of my purchase are that I've suddenly become relaxed about scanning negatives. I'd been going through a phase of only darkroom printing but this isn't practical with 6x17. The lack of movements on the Tomiyama also inspired me to get my Cambo 6x12 holder out again. This is a nice film holder for 4x5 that slots behind the ground glass. The workflow for using this holder is like using regular sheet film holders and much preferable to having to remove the focussing screen to fit a Graflock film adapter. The last time I used it I had a light leak I couldn't solve but now I think the leak may have been due to the camera it was on rather than the holder itself. The Cambo holder also has a tendency to mangle films if you aren't careful!

This could turn out to be a nice combination: The Tomiyama for full 6x17 in specific landscape settings. The 6x12 back on my Chamonix for more controlled, but less wide, panoramas.

Testing times: A modern film calibration process?

2024-03-03T00:00:00Z

I've been at this a long time (decades) but I think I finally have enough understanding to get a routine film/developer calibration process running. Thirty years ago I tried to do the full Ansel Adams' Zone system process with measuring densities above base fog and stuff. I just used to get very thin negs. I don't think I ever really "got it" - especially reciprocity and bellows extension! I've probably matured a bit in my general approach since then. I'm not in so much of a hurry.

Most recently I've been using the system designed by Alex Bond based on a Stouffer step wedge for 4x5 film. It is a good system and led to what I'm going to describe below. Mat Marrash made a great video that goes through Alex's process that is worth watching. Several things have made me come up with my own variation. Firstly I live in a flat in a country that is dark and cold for a lot of the year so I need a system that will work indoors on a winter evening. Second I mainly use 35mm and 4x5 formats and therefore need a system that will work for both. Thirdly I've started experimenting with Kodak D23 developer with replenishment. This means I need to be able to make test strips like commercial labs use to monitor my developer. Finally, and most importantly, I just don't get all this stuff with tones! I think about texture far more.

We have to talk in terms of the Zone System. If you are unfamiliar or intimidated by it don't worry. The Zone System is a religious belief system that permeates photographic culture like the abrahamic faiths permeate Western culture. It doesn't matter if you don't believe in the teachings of the great prophet Ansel Adams or not. It has established the language we use to describe the tonal values (densities) in subject and final print and it is very useful. (I think I could write a compelling piece arguing that even the great AA didn't actually use the Zone System sensu stricto and certainly not for his most famous works. I'll maybe leave that magnum opus till I retire.)

The Zone System divides values of light and dark (tones) in a monochrome print into eleven zones from totally black at zero to paper white at ten. Obviously this is a continuous scale in reality. We use the language of zones to chunk it into things we can talk about - like dividing a foot into twelve inches or a metre into one hundred centimetres. These chunks equate to Exposure Values. Each Zone is a one stop change in exposure, a doubling or halving of exposure. The zones are represented by Roman numerals plus zero. Real Romans didn't use zero but we do.

Incase you don't have your copy of "The Negative" by Ansel Adams to hand (surely you have a copy!) here is a brief summary of the eleven Zones with my spin on them.

Zone 0: As black as it can get. Like you left the paper out when you turned the light on by mistake.
Zone I: Not quite black anymore.
Zone II: Some hint of texture. Deep tonalities.
Zone III: Dark but actually useful, descriptive texture. You can see what is there.
Zone IV: Normal shadows.
Zone V: Middle, 18% gray. This is the gray of "The Gray Card" you can buy. It is the tone that a reflective light meter assumes the scene is on average.
Zone VI: Normal highlights
Zone VII: Light, descriptive textured highlights.
Zone VIII: Very light highlights - still with some hint of texture.
Zone IX: Very light highlights without texture.
Zone X: Paper white. Like the paper was never exposed.

The zones describe the values on the print not in a real life scene. The lightest a print can be is the amount of light a piece of paper can reflect at you. The darkest is the relative amount a black area can absorb. In an original scene the sun is so bright it will burn your eyes out and the darkest areas are invisible to us. Pieces of paper aren't like this. What is more our eyes adjust as they flick around a scene, continuously varying how brightly we see it. Those Zone II areas become Zone IV if you pay attention to them. The art of photography is (or used to be) converting the immense range of brightnesses and colours in a three dimensional world into monochrome marks on a flat piece of paper. This involves choices, looking at the scene and pre-visualising what it could look like on paper. These choices reflect the artist-photographer's feelings about the scene. In essence, that is what the Zone system is all about.

The way it works in practice is the photographer uses a light meter to meter part of the scene and decides what zone to place it on. By default the light meter will indicate the camera settings for Zone V (mid gray). If the photographer uses the settings suggested then that area of the scene will come out mid gray on the final print. The photographer can tell where the other parts of the scene will fall on the scale by measuring their relative brightnesses with the light meter. They don't have to take the settings recommended by the light meter though. They could choose to place the first area on Zone III (by under exposing two stops) and then see where the other areas will fall. They can get a good idea of how the final print will look given the choices they make during exposure. They can also adjust the development of the film to increase or decrease the spread of the zones.

For all this to work the photographer has to know how the film, developer and paper will respond, relative the light meter readings. This, at last, is the actual subject of the blog post! How do you make sure that if your light meter says X you can reliably place that on a particular zone and estimate where the other parts of the scene will fall given certain film/developer/paper combinations? You need to have a feel for your equipment and materials. Here is my approach.

You can see from the descriptions of the Zones that the scale goes from no texture to lots of texture then back to no texture. For just five of the zones (Zone III to Zone VII) there is what I call "descriptive texture". Check out "The Negative" for lovely photographs illustrating all this if you can get your hands on a copy.

When I'm more deliberately making a photo I tend to measure the darkest area that I want to record detail in and place it on Zone III or Zone IV. This involves taking a reading then under exposing by a stop or two. I then measure the area that has highlights I need to capture texture in. It should be about 5 stops above the low reading. This isn't such a worry on modern black and white film because we can print through or hold back development. The important thing is to get enough detail in Zone III to be able to print the dark details. If they aren't captured then you can't print them. This is what I think of as the "true ISO" of the film. Increasing development only affects these areas a little. This is why you can't infinitely push film speed. Pushing film will increase density of the mid tones (Zone V, 18% gray) and high tones but not the shadows. This is fine if you are primarily interested in the mid tones. The film will appear faster. But if you are after a full range of tones you will miss the shadows.

Nikon F5 shooting test strip of muslin covered light box.

The picture shows the setup I use for 35mm. You could do something similar but specific to your equipment. I take an LED light panel and cover it with a coarsely woven white cloth. A cheesecloth would do. I prop it up and set the camera so the panel fills the whole frame. Focus the camera. I'm using a Nikon F5 so I use programme exposure mode, center weighted metering and autofocus. I want the weave of the cloth in focus as texture but I'm not bothered if it is totally parallel or anything. For the first test on a new film I'd set the ISO to half the speed written on the box. I then use the +/- exposure compensation to make twelve exposures, at each whole step from -5 to +5 with two at 0 in the middle. It would be eleven exposures if you didn't do two at 0 but those two frames are really useful. Things to watch for are exposures going over 1 second where you may fall into reciprocity issues but depth of field doesn't matter so you can open up the lens as much as you like to avoid this. Also if you are not using through the lens metering you will need to allow for bellows extension - see below.

I develop the film and cut the negatives into two strips of six exposures, splitting it between the two frames that are the same density as the first cut. This makes things easy because the very underexposed frames may appear almost blank. I write the corresponding Zones onto the negatives with a fine sharpie. The double frames in the middle are Zone V and the others step out in either direction to Zone 0 and Zone X. Here is what the strips look like.

HP5 Plus @ ISO 200 in D23r Stock for 16 minutes

This is looking really good to me. There is good textural detail in Zone III and even a little in Zone II. Zone VII shows good detail and I can just about see it in Zone VIII. This is supposed to be a soft working developer so the results are not unexpected. But the object of the game is not to produce negatives. If you were to scan this you could get nine or ten stops of dynamic range which would be fine. You could move the sliders around in Adobe Lightroom and get something good on screen or out of your inkjet printer. Stupidly I prefer analogue darkroom prints so let's try that instead.

HP5 Plus @ ISO 200 in D23r Stock for 16 minutes on Multigrade Grade 2

When contact printed on Grade 2 multigrade the examination of the negative is confirmed. We get texture in Zones III and VII with a hint in II and VIII. This means images on this combination of settings should print predictably and controllably. If we print at Grade 0 we can get more detail and obviously less at higher, more contrasty grades.

HP5 Plus @ ISO 200 in D23r Stock for 16 minutes on Multigrade Grade 0

The benefit of this approach is that it is fast to set up and repeatable. I can add a test to the beginning or end of a roll of film I'm using to make images or I can roll a short length specifically for this purpose. I can therefore keep an eye on my stock developer and see if it is changing.

HP5 Plus 4x5 @ ISO 200 in D23r Stock for 22 minutes on Multigrade Grade 2

I take the same approach to testing 4x5 film. I use the Stouffer step wedge placed in contact with the film and make a single exposure, basically following the process outlined by Alex and Mat. Because I am doing this in a confined space I have to be careful of two things. There is no through the lens metering on a 4x5 camera so I have to compensate for bellows extension which is x2 in my setup. This means I take a reading and open it up six full stops! That means it is very easy to get into reciprocity failure territory especially with slower large format lenses. I find it just about works for ISO 200 @ f/5.6 and 1/4 second but it might not be convenient for much slower films.

Let me know in the comments below if this has been informative or you think I'm doing something terribly wrong!

Last roll of Kodak Double X (5222)

2024-02-14T00:00:00Z

Double X is movie film stock manufactured since the 1950s and never officially sold for stills. The smallest lengths available are 400 ft reels that cost around £250. It is perfectly feasible, if time consuming, to manually split these down into 36 exposure rolls. You get about seventy from a 400 ft length. That is £3.60 a roll or 10p a shot which is pretty good value. The downside is that it is quite a commitment. You have to love the stuff to shoot seventy rolls of it.

I bought half a dozen 36 exposure rolls of Double X off a guy on eBay for roughly double the bulk loading price - which is reasonable as he had gone to the trouble of putting them together. I thought that if I really liked the character of the film I would maybe buy a 400 ft reel for myself. I've shared before a couple of the landscape shots I took on the film.

I really like the tonality you get from this film if the light is right. The blacks do have something about them that appeals. The grain is quite distinct and big but I can happily live with that. On the downside it isn't that sharp. I guess the micro-contrast isn't needed in a film that is intended to be projected at 24 frames per second rather than stared at, one frame at a time.

My initial plan was to use it with two bath developer to control the highlights but that proved to produce pretty thin negs. I ended up using Ilfotec HC and then D23 stock. The D23 was probably my prefered approach. Perhaps another developer would have given more acutance.

These are some darkroom prints from my last roll. My conclusion is that I really like this film. I could see myself buying 400 ft but not just now. The advantages over something like Ilford HP5 Plus aren't that great.

I think I'm going to concentrate on Ilford HP5 going forward. I can shoot it at 35mm and 4x5 and really get to know it. I still have plenty of Fomapan 100 to use up but once that is gone I'll be left as an HP5 guy - for a while.

The Goose set aside

2024-02-12T00:00:00Z

There are so many things that I've had a play at and not documented. Here is another. Back in 2021 I printed out a WillTravel camera for use with a Fujifilm Instax back - but also an adapter so I could use it with regular 4x5 film. This is what the original WillTravel camera was designed for. Having messed with it for a while I binned it - kept the parts obviously. It wasn't fun to use for me because it was a bit too plasticy. It was 100% made of plastic! The idea of a walk about 4x5 camera stayed with me though so I assembled a Polaroid 600SE from sketchy bits off eBay and printed out a 4x5 back so I could use regular 4x5 holders on it.

The 600SE (known as the GOOSE) is a bastardised version of the Mamiya Universal produced by Mamiya for Polaroid. The lenses and backs were deliberately made to be incompatible between the two cameras so that Polaroid could sell the geese at a discount and not eat into Mamiya's sales. Polaroid, after all, made their money off the film whilst Mamiya had to make a profit from the cameras. Because Polaroid pack film is dead the GOOSE is pretty useless these days unlike the Mamiya Universal, lenses and backs which work great with 120 film if you don't mind the weight. That doesn't stop enterprising individuals selling geese for good money!

Polaroid pack film was smaller than 4x5 inch sheet film (4.25 × 3.25 inches I believe) so I wasn't expecting full coverage and the wider lenses would be stupidly wide with lots of fall off but might look good.

Having discovered I could build the thing and get it to work with a 150mm lens I lost interest as usual. But today I thought I'd take it for a spin again. Why exactly had I put it to one side? Would it be fun to use?

Here is a test shot from this morning. I kinda like it. I focussed on the angel's face at f/8 but it is soft compared to the cross behind. I'd need to do some more work on calibration of the rangefinder. If I had a project where it seemed appropriate then maybe it would be fun. But the thing is as awkward to carry as a real live goose. So maybe not such fun after all.

Cheap as chips is fun

2024-02-07T00:00:00Z

Back in April I bought a HOLGA 135 Smart 35mm Film Camera from Amazon for the massive sum of £12.95. It was the cheapest reusable camera I'd seen so just had to give it a go. I loaded it up with some Fomapan 100. A 400 ISO film would have been more appropriate but I keep a bulk roll of Fomapan for testing and messing about like this. It is probably the cheapest film you can get. Then I took the camera on my trip to the Isle of Skye. Here are a couple of shots from walking around Dunvegan one evening.

This was the same trip as I photographed Brenan's Hut and the fallen tree at Larachmhor Garden (on the mainland). To be honest it was as much fun using this "toy" as my 1900 whole plate camera.

Walking with friends

2024-02-05T00:00:00Z

Near the end of last year I enjoyed a mindful walk with friends on a local beach. At another time I walked with friends in the woods. Working on film and printing in the darkroom is fulfilling but now it is time to start scanning the prints and sharing them.

Technical: The upper shot is on Kodak Double-X and the lower one on Ilford Delta 400 if I remember correctly. Both are Leica camera and enlarger on Ilford Multigrade paper.

Kodak Double-X for Landscape?

2024-02-04T00:00:00Z

I bought half a dozen roles of Kodak Double-X from a guy on eBay who breaks down 250 ft lengths into 36 exposure cassettes. Double-X is a motion picture film that has been produced since the 1950s. Most recently it has been used by Christopher Nolan for the black and white scenes in the movie Oppenheimer.

This is a view of St-Johns-in-the-Vale in the English Lake District. And another shot in the church that lies in crook of the valley itself.

I do like the tonality and could live with the grain too but wonder if the advantages outweigh just going with an old familiar like Ilford HP5 Plus. These shots were developed in Ilfotec-HC (same as Kodak HC110). I'd like to try it in D23 but that might be too soft.

(These are quick and dirty work prints as ever!)

Breaking into 2024

2024-02-03T00:00:00Z

I went to the local cemetery to break the block I inevitably develop over the Christmas and New Year period. It is so dark here. First shot of the year with my new favourite camera on a very light weight tripod - more on that another time. Do you spot the rookie mistake?

After so many years of doing this I still don't always check my edges. I have bellow vignet at the bottom of the negative that I missed. It is not a shadow. I could crop it out if I was enlarging but I like to work on the basis of always contact printing the entire neg. There is a whole philosophy behind that.

Back to Instagram

2024-02-03T00:00:00Z

I gave up on social media (other than commenting on YouTube videos) a few years ago but have decided I need to loosen up a bit. I still feel the great animosity towards the social media platforms. They are not a benign force. But it is hard to "kick against the pricks" (Acts 5:9 & also Johnny Cash). I've decided to start posting again but on my own terms. I'll only post what I have already shared here. I'll post scans of prints not digital work. I do have a naive feeling that things might be opening up with Meta-Threads starting to support ActivityPub federation. We will see on that one! Visit my Instagram here.

Perpetual golden hour?

2024-01-05T00:00:00Z

My first opportunity for a dedicated photo trip in 2024 was a few hours at Tentsmuir beach after running some errands. The walk was really pleasant and I enjoyed doing some looking but ultimately no exposures were made. It was a typical Scottish winter trip. Theoretically it is golden hour for all seven hours of daylight because the sun only reaches 11° above the horizon. This can lead to gorgeous light if the sky is clear but it seldom is. The light is travelling through so much atmosphere that any cloud at all makes life very gray indeed. The forecasters just can't predict the cloud cover and rainfall more than a few hours ahead. Heavy rain by 15:00 stopped play and led to an unpleasant drive home in the dark.

Looking at landscape photos online or in popular books you would think our world is 80% golden hour, 10% blue hour and 10% morning mist. It makes me want to do something different.

Phone snap of Meadows in Edinburgh whilst walking back from the shops, 16:30 on 27th December. There was the faintest glow in the sky that is amped up by the phone.

On hope: A response to Lea Ypi

2023-12-22T00:00:00Z

I just read an article in the Guardian by Lea Ypi titled "The day my students stopped me in my tracks – and changed how I thought about hope". There is someone wrong on the internet and I have to put it right by tea time!

Lea Ypi is a professor of political theory at LSE. The thrust of the article is that whilst giving a lecture on Kant’s 1784 essay, "What Is Enlightenment?" her students pointed out that having a duty to hope for a better future was a luxury of the privileged and didn't stop genocide and all the terrible things that happen today. Lea had a crisis of faith and lost hope herself. She describes getting over it as follows:

I tried to remind myself of my particular standpoint in the world. And how my existential despair, my philosophical dilemmas and my questions reflected my privilege. The people who suffer from injustice, who withstand daily insults to their dignity, who are marginalised, silenced, exploited, left to die or killed cannot afford to ask themselves if they have hope. They cling on to life, they try to cope, they fight. Their continuing struggle, whatever form it takes, cannot afford the loss of faith.

Lea Ypi (2023)

Two things amaze me about this article. Firstly is the assumption that there are two kinds of people, the privileged and the people who are suffering, and that the latter don't have complex inner lives in which they might suffer existential angst. There is a whiff of arrogance about this world view but what is more worrying is the assumption intellectuals can afford big thoughts because they are not going to suffer, die and be forgotten! This implies ignorance of the nature of being human.

I take great comfort from a Buddhist practice called the Five Remembrances which monastics have chanted daily for two millenia:

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

I've condensed this down to a single word or kōan that I use. I simply ask: Is that a requirement for my happiness? Is it a requirement of me taking a compassionate action? It doesn't take much thought to see that anything, and I mean anything, that is conditional on a particular outcome leads to misery. We know that purchasing "things" doesn't make us happy but neither does expecting anything else of the world.

There is a famous (probably apocryphal) story that when St. Francis of Assisi was hoeing his garden, a person asked him, “What would you do if you learned the world would end tomorrow?” St. Francis replied, “I would continue hoeing my garden.” The existence of the garden beyond tomorrow wasn't a requirement of his hoeing. Other examples in Christianity include the prayer of St Ignatius: "To labour and not to ask for any reward. Save that of knowing that we do thy will." Or there is the opening of Ecclesiastes 1: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” which can be translated as meaning all is empty. Hindu and Jain religions, indeed probably all spiritual traditions, stress non-attachment to the results of your actions and trusting in divine will or fate as a key to happiness. There is a famous quote from Krishnamurti on being asked why he was so happy:

“I don’t mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom. It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes, deep inside yourself, you’ll feel good no matter what.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Where then hope? There is the mundane, contemporary meaning of hope that we use every day. This is the one that is used to sell the gullible lottery tickets. I think we can agree that version of hope is corrosive. It leads to a cargo cult mentality and ultimately disappointment and misery. Then there is the spiritual version of hope. The second of the three Christian spiritual virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. Hope in this context is not attached to a worldly outcome. St Paul says "But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." (Romans 8:25). By not seen he means the spiritual, beyond the material, rather than a square meal you "hope" is around the corner. Digging around the Greek word that is translated to hope in the bible is ελπις which would better be translated as "expected". We have faith because we expect something to happen not because we yearn for it to happen. This is closer to the archaic meaning of hope which was close to trust. The thing we expect or trust in is spiritual not physical. In Buddhism there are the five powers of faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom. I think the diligence and ελπις overlap here. You keep going because you have faith in the process leading to liberation/nirvana/God - not a material outcome.

In Lea Ypi's article she confuses the two types of hope. Firstly she says "Being hopeful has nothing to do with how the world goes." but then loses hope because she expects "... that, at some level, politics can remain accountable to morality?". Her hope is bound to an outcome, a requirement of the world to fit in with her will. This is an example of assuming that the world gives two figs about what you think. No matter how clever your thoughts are they are not the world. The great spiritual traditions of the world have known this for millenia. The theistic religions frame the solution as submission to or trust in God's will. The non-theistic religions place trust in the process leading to release from suffering. In Western philosophy it might be summed up by the absurdism of Camus and others where meaning is found in moment to moment relationships.

Having gone backwards and forwards through the article a few times I can only conclude Lea Ypi still doesn't have a clue what hope is. Her closing comments:

Perhaps this is the real political meaning of the Enlightenment: whether there is hope or not is only a relevant question for those who have the privilege to doubt it. That is a small fraction of the world.

Lea Ypi (2023)

Let's "hope" this whole thing has just been mangled by a sub editor on its way to publication and that politics professors actually think more clearly than this.

Hello Fediverse!

2023-12-19T00:00:00Z

I've just added an ActivityPub plugin to Wordpress so that my posts should appear in the federated social media sites like Mastodon.

If you have a Mastodon account or an account with another ActivityPub site then you can follow my posts here with @rootAdmin@www.hyam.net.

Fallen Tree at Larachmhor Gardens

2023-05-20T00:00:00Z

I spent a few days at Larachmhor Garden near Arisaig and made some plates, only two of which I'm happy with. This is the first. (Whole plate, emulsion RH28, 2-bath development, flat scan).

Brennan's Hut at Larachmhor Garden

2023-05-20T00:00:00Z

This shows the ancient magnolia by Brennan's Jubilee Hut at Larachmhor Garden near Arisaig. It has a colonial feel to it. (Whole plate, emulsion RH28, 2-bath development, flat scan)

Should I start using "Photographist"?

2023-03-24T00:00:00Z

If a term applies to everyone then it isn't very useful. Now everyone takes photos all the time with their phones everyone is a photographer. The word is losing its meaning. Or it is beginning to mean just a guy (and it is usually is a guy) with a dedicated camera (probably an expensive one). I don't want to be that guy.

I came across the term photographist. It sounds incredibly pretentious but is probably more appropriate for what I do when I make photos using 19th Century techniques. It had dropped out of use by the 20th Century. Maybe we should revive it? The thought makes me cringe though.

The Victo - a New Year Project

2023-01-10T00:00:00Z

I had a few days off after the Christmas and New Year and couldn't resit another renovation project. I'd been wanting to have a go at a half plate camera as a smaller and lighter alternative to my whole plate. Half plate is slightly smaller than the 'modern' 5x7 inch format at 4¾ × 6½ inches (120 × 165mm). Before Christmas I spent some time at Camera Base here in Edinburgh picking a derelict from their storage room and matching it to some plate holders. Book-form plate holders were not standardised between makers like modern film holders are.

Ready for first light.

I wanted to create a usable camera rather than a perfect restoration so replaced the tripod base with a plywood one with a regular tripod thread and spirit level. I also adapted the front standard to take Linhof style lens boards so I can switch lenses between a bunch of different cameras.

As it came

Unsurprisingly the bellows were rotting so I ordered replacement, synthetic bellows from a supplier in China (You can find them on eBay). The bellows arrived the first week in January and I was really pleased with them.

Measuring up for new bellows

The Victo is double extension so can handle lenses up to about 300mm

Gluing the bellows

Advert from about 1910

I have two period appropriate lenses to try out that I'll maybe write more about in the future. I have poured some half plates and am just waiting for a reasonably bright day to go and try the thing out.

Update: Finally got a chance to a plate. The first few I poured were terrible as I didn't level the cooling slab in both directions so they are thicker on one side than the other - OK for testing though.

First half plate in the Victo. Rough and ready test shot as always. Positive is Multigrade print on Grade 2 layed on the light box next to the negative. Development was two bath which controls the highlights well.

What's he doing with that old camera?

2022-12-01T00:00:00Z

When I'm out with a plate camera people often stop and ask me what I'm doing. I love to talk about old school photography but am sometimes struggling with light and temperamental equipment and need to concentrate. I've therefore had some cards printed with this website address on them.

Whole plate camera in the Lake District

Really Quick Summary

I like making photographs using more-or-less the same technology as would have been used in the 19th Century - specifically in the 1870s. Sometimes I do other stuff but that is my focus. I do it for fun. I don't have anything against digital photography (I do that too) but I work with computers all day and want to get away from them when I can. I don't currently sell prints but one day I might.

Historic Context

Before 1839 - Loads of people worked on different ways of capturing images with chemicals. Many of these were unsung heroes we may never know about.
1839a - Daguerreotypes - Very detailed positive images on polished silver plates. Popular for portraits for 20 years but a dead end technically. Difficult and toxic to do today.
1839b - Calotypes - Negatives on paper sensitized with silver iodide printed to positives on paper sensitized with silver chloride. A bit fuzzy because of the paper used. Fox Talbot patented the Calotype but it was quickly superseded by improved versions. Widely used for 30 years, notably by Hill & Adamson in Scotland. I've not done calotypes but may one day.
1851 - Wet-plate Collodion - The same basic chemical process but in a film of collodion on a glass plate. The whole process must be completed within five minutes, before the collodion dries. This has the clarity of the Daguerreotype and the reproducibility of the the Calotype. It was the dominant technique for 30 years. Images of the Crimean War and American Civil War are collodion photos. Lewis Carroll's photos of Alice and Julian Margaret Cameron's images of Charles Darwin are collodion photos. I've done a little wet-plate photography myself but the logistics are too complex to do it consistently.
1871 - Richard Leach Maddox invented a way of combining the silver chemistry with gelatine so that it can dry on a glass plate and still work like a wet-plate does. This was a tipping point for photography, as significant as the move to digital. Silver gelatine plates are shelf stable. They can be made in advance, not necessarily by the photographer. Plate making can be commercialised.
1879 - George Eastman invents a plate coating machine. Once plates can be made on an industrial scale teams of scientists can be employed to improve the technology with the profits. A flexible film base is developed. Movies become possible. 20th Century culture occurs!

What I do is based on the period from 1871 to the mid 1880s where photographers would make their own silver gelatine plates, just prior to industrialisation. This means I can make and print plates in the dark evenings and make photos when the weather is good.

"You Press the Button, We Do the Rest" was an advertising slogan coined by George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, in 1888. The point at which it all changed.

Cameras

I have more cameras than you can shake a stick at but the one I use most often is probably an Unnamed Whole Plate from around 1900. It takes 6.5x8.5 inch glass plates rather than film. I have holders for twelve plates but can only carry six. I also use a 10x12 inch Vageeswari plate camera made in India, probably in the 1950s as a copy of a much earlier camera. "The Vag" is very heavy so I can't carry if far. Then there is a wooden 1910 Victo half plate with red bellows, a 2023 Chamonix 4x5 inch (Walnut and Carbon fibre construction) for plates and "shop bought" film and a modern Intrepid 8x10 inch for film.

Film and Photographic Plates

People often ask if they still make film. Yes they do and yes I do - kind of. There is a resurgence of film photography and after much restructuring Ilford and Kodak are still making film along with other smaller players. Photographic film consists of a photosensitive emulsion on a transparent backing. It is quite possible to make a simple photo emulsion at home and coat it on glass like the Victorians did and that is what I do. I buy large sheets of 2mm picture framing glass and cut it down to the appropriate sizes. The photo emulsion only has four active ingredients: Gelatine, Ammonium Bromide, Potassium Iodide and Silver Nitrate. They need to be combined in a very specific way. It takes me two evenings to make about 300ml of emulsion which I coat on six plates at a time over subsequent evenings - eighteen plates in all. The resulting plates are very slow (insensitive) and only respond to blue and ultraviolet light. If I add two drops of Erythrosine (E127 red food colouring) it extends the sensitivity to green a little. Plates like this have a special look and are very satisfying objects to create but they can't record the sky as it appears too bright to them. This is why I also use shop bought film sometimes. Commercial film is incredibly sophisticated compared to the homemade stuff. Imagine the difference between the first car patented by Carl Benz in 1886 and a Mercedes-Benz saloon from the 1990s.

Sofia 2022 - Render Unto Caesar

2022-11-05T00:00:00Z

I had a week long work trip to Sofia, Bulgaria to attend the TDWG 2022 Conference. Most of the time was spent with colleagues in a conference room or on a trip to Rila Monastery. There wasn't much opportunity for photography but I took a little Olympus XA2 for day to day use and my Canon T90 (plus 50mm f/1.4) to use on the one day I had to myself.

Pile of small prints from Sofia trip.

I have a "Render unto Caesar" approach. If it is born analogue it mainly stays analogue. I don't routinely scan negs. I make little 3.5"x5" prints in the darkroom instead. If I like a shot I may go to 5"x7" or even 8"x10". This means that my trip to Sofia has resulted in just over two rolls of Ilford Delta 400, a few evenings messing in the darkroom and a small pile of prints. I still have some negs I might print so the fun continues!

Pinboard in the office

One print made it as far as the pinboard above my desk at the office. Only when I went to stick it up did I notice the similarity to the Hiroshige woodblock print already there. Did the Hiroshige inspire me to take the photograph or do trees just look like that?

I could have taken my Fujifilm X100V (lovely camera) but then I'd have taken a gazillion photos and shared a bunch online and probably not been as satisfied. But then I kind of wish I'd done that anyhow...

Paper Negatives in Two Bath developer

2022-11-03T00:00:00Z

Multigrade Paper negatives on a light box. Left is two bath TD-200. Right is Ilford PQ

This is a quick note to self. Two bath film developer is designed to control highlights because the developing agent that is absorbed in the first bath soon becomes exhausted in the dense areas when the film is immersed in the second bath containing the accelerator. It occurred to me that this would be really useful when making paper negatives (in this case Ilford Multigrade V). I thought I'd give it a try with my Stouffer step wedge - a quick darkroom experiment to test a theory.

It appears that, in principle, this would work well for picture taking. On the normally developed negative (2 minutes in PQ) the last step that can be separated is Step 7 giving the neg a max of 5 stops of dynamic range. On the two bath (TD-200 from the Film Developers Cookbook) there is separation all the way down to Step 1. The very dense areas don't look evenly developed though. I only gave this two minutes in each bath because the image started coming up in the first bath - possibly because there is an accelerant in the paper. It is possible that bathing it for long enough to get even development might reduce the range of tones but I suspect that by giving longer exposure (lower ISO) it would be possible to get a negative with 7+ stops of dynamic ranges - which is much more useable.

Pre-flashing the paper also extends dynamic range but in the opposite direction - into the shadows. It might be worth doing a comparison or even a combination of the two.

At the moment I'm not planning to use paper negatives like this but in the future this might be an interesting thing to try. It might make ULF cameras more affordable to use!

Effective use of single Ilford Multigrade filters

2022-10-08T00:00:00Z

There are loads of YouTube videos out there about split grade printing with Multigrade filters. It is an excellent technique for getting the most out of a negative. But what if you just want to do some quick work prints and don't have time to mess about with multiple filters for each and every negative? What is the most efficient way to reach the correct exposure and contrast grade choice without wasting too much time and paper doing tests?

With film the old adage is "Expose for the shadows, develop for the hight lights." If you don't get enough light in the dark parts of the scene when you take the picture you can never recover it later no matter how long you soak it in the developer. On the other hand the highlights will always have plenty of developable silver and will just keep getting denser if you extend development. I wondered if an analogous (but not the same) approach could be taken with paper. Expose for the highlights and pick a grade for the shadows. Or perhaps the other way around. The contrast control in MG papers is achieved with two emulsions that are sensitive to different colours of light so there is no reason it would mirror the way film worked but having a rule of thumb would be really useful. I thought I'd do some tests.

Highlights side of the step wedge. Only steps 14 and 15 show change through grades.

I took a Stouffer step wedge I bought for testing film. Each step is 1/2 stop. I made seven contact prints all at the same exposure (grades 4 and 5 are double as this is how the filters are designed). I wanted to see if expansion in tones occurred more in the highlights or the shadows or evenly in both.

Shadows side of the step wedge. Steps 6 to 11 change dramatically through grades.

Laying the prints on top of each other to compare either the highlights or the shadows it is clearly visible that changing the grade leads to expansion in the shadow areas more strongly than in the highlights. Only steps 14 and 15 are markedly affected by grade changes in the highlights but grades 6 through to 11 all change in the shadow side.

This suggests the best approach is to choose a middle grade (2.5) and get the exposure of the lighter parts (not extreme highlights) of the print right not worrying about the shadows then adjust the grade either up to make the shadows contract (less detail) or down to open them up (more tones). Changing the grade should have little effect on the exposure till you get to grade 4 and 5 where you will need to double your exposure anyway and may want to tweak it up a bit. Expose for the highlights and pick a grade for the shadows is the correct approach. I'm sure I read this somewhere a long time ago but going through this exercise might help ingrain it.

One dev to rule them all and in the darkness bind them?

2022-10-04T00:00:00Z

A thinking aloud/allowed blog post.

I've decided I need to rationalise things a bit on the old developer front. Choosing the best developer is a rabbit hole that I'm not keen to fall down. I've been reading the film developer cook book and it just depresses me. It can result in years of anguish rather than doing anything fun in the field and darkroom. Although I acknowledge messing with developers can be fun! The real question is, which developer(s) will suit my needs just now?

Currently I have six developers in the cupboard. (The Multigrade is actually empty as I'm working through the warm tone at the moment.) I also have a little bag of Metol and many of the other ingredients to make my own developers up. There is even some instant coffee in the kitchen and aspirin in the bathroom if I want to go down the caffinol route. The world is my oyster. But what do I do and what do I want?

My own silver gelatine glass plates. For this I use Ilford PQ Universal. It works very well, although I do wonder if I could get lower contrast with something else. I can either scan these plates or print them on a printing out paper like Argyrotype but they are usually too contrasty for Multigrade papers. It is my most used developer but oxidises after opening which is why it is decanted in a glass bottle in the picture above.
Argyrotypes from my glass plate. This is a printing out technique so no developer. Water with a pinch of citric acid.
Large format film (4x5 & 8x10). I've used Ilfotec HC and it works well. I could use PQ as it is recommended.
Silver gelatine darkroom prints, Ilford Multigrade papers. I've used Multigrade in the past but I like it warm so got a bottle of Warm Tone which is nice. It is nearly used up now. I could use PQ for this too.
35mm film, typically HP5+ but whatever is lying around. Currently I'm working through 30m of Delta 400 but will probably switch back to HP5+ or maybe Foma or something next. I have used Ilfotec HC for these films but wasn't happy with a roll of Delta and, seeing Ilford recommend DD-X for Delta films, I bought a bottle and have been using that. It is a very nice combination but expensive and a bit "slick". Good if you want smooth tones. May be good for scanned negs. I prefer traditional emulsions I think. I also have a ton of Kodak Tech Pan to play with, some of it very old.
Simplicity. I don't mean the brand name of the range of chemicals from Ilford but a simpler life. If I could do with one or two developers then decisions would be easier and keeping a fresh supply more straight forward. I wouldn't have that nagging feeling of things going off in the cupboard.
Economy. By this I don't mean money so much as lack of waste. I could use ID-11 and chuck it out as soon as the stock looked brown and it would be an economical way to develop films financially but wouldn't feel like it environmentally. Getting the best use of what I buy, for myself and the planet, is what I mean by economy.

What jumps out from that list is that Ilford PQ Universal could be used for everything except the 35mm films. It is a warm acting paper developer. It works on my dry plates and it is OK for traditional emulsion sheet film like Fomapan. The only issue is Ilford don't recommend it for small formats of film, 120 and 35mm. They literally say: "Do not use PQ UNIVERSAL to process general purpose 35mm and roll film formats." in the technical documents. Which is about as emphatic as you can get. I presume they mean for quality reasons and not that the combination is explosive! But if I did use PQ Universal for 35mm I could live with just PQ, Rapid Fix and an stop bath. It would be simple and economical and I could concentrate on other factors.

What film developers might I consider in addition to PQ?

ID-11 (clone of D-76). I used this extensively/exclusively in the last century. I would pick it as a default film developer but I'm slightly worried about metol poisoning. I develop at home and wash films in the bathroom. The risk of triggering a reaction in a family member or guest might not be worth the benefits. At the moment they think everything I do is harmless - lets keep it that way. But it remains a possibility. I only have a box of it because I added it an order to trigger free delivery.
Ilfotec HC (clone of HC-110). Would be great as a film developer. Expensive and oxidises but seems to keep working even when brown. My fall back choice is to buy another bottle of this. It is currently £39 for a litre (but that is 100 35mm films at 1+31) though and it would be painful if I didn't get through it.
Pyrocat-HD. A lot of large format photographers rave about this. If I were intending to use alternative printing techniques on my film negatives then this would be worth it because the staining increases the UV density. I get my alt-print kicks from my glass plates though and so will stick to regular multigrade prints from film. So no need for Pyrocat-HD at the moment. Maybe I'll try it one day. I'm not aware that people use it much at 35mm.

Now I could spend forever reading about this on the internet or I could do some tests. So let's get testing.

My first test is to expose the last dozen frames of the current roll of Delta 400 on the same scene with the same exposure then snip off the last six or so frames and develop them in PQ Universal (6mins @ 1+19) but develop the rest of the film as usual in DD-X (8mins @ 1+4) so I have a direct comparison between official recommended development and officially NOT recommended. I can see if the PQ is "good enough" for what I do which is typically small darkroom prints.

Phone snap of Delta 400 developed in DD-X vs PQ Universal - superficially similar looking negs.

I'm not interested in scanning 35mm negs, it makes my heart sink. I usually make small prints. Here are two 5x7 off those negatives. Of course this is a scan of those prints so has been through another process and I've know idea what device you are view this on. Basically the prints are very similar and could be made more similar if I wanted to spend hours working on a test shot. The PQ neg did need to be printed on Grade 1 paper but the DD-X was fine on Grade 2.

5x7 Multigrade prints. A = DD-X on Grade 2. B = PQ on G1

Both acceptable but the tone and ease of printing is definitely more pleasant on the DD-X negative. The PQ neg was more grainy under the focus magnifier but that probably wouldn't show much till printing bigger than 8x10. To test this I put my enlarger up as high as it goes, it is under a shelf, which gives a print about 16 inches across.

16 inch prints from same negs as above. A = DD-X and B = PQ Universal

Conclusion: Ilford PQ could be used for everything but I don't feel I want use it for everything. Those 35mm negs were OK but didn't spark joy. The DD-X ones had a bit more wow to them. Should you used PQ for small negs? Only if there isn't anything else available. There is a quote from Ansel Adams about just about any developer being capable of delivering good results given enough work.

Another Road

Perusing the Film Developing Cookbook (in a hot bath, it helps) there actually is a developer that is billed as the one developer to rule them all. To quote:

Two-bath developers give excellent results with almost all films at a fixed time and temperature. It is almost impossible to overdevelop with two-baths, and it takes an effort to underdevelop. They are ideal for photographers who want quality negatives but are not interested in obsessing about developers.

Film Developing Cookbook 2nd Ed page 113

This sounds like what I'm looking for! With two-bath developers you have two bottles, Part A and Part B. Part A contains the developing agent but no accelerator. Part B just contains accelerator no developer. You stew the film in Part A for three minutes and the developer soaks into the emulsion but hardly any development takes place because the conditions aren't right. You switch to Part B for three minutes and the developer that is in the emulsion starts to work. In highlight areas it becomes exhausted more quickly than in shadow areas so is self limiting on contrast. This is analogous to how a printing out paper works where increasing density acts as a mask to slow down shadow areas in the print letting the highlights catch up. What is more you can just keep re-using Part A stock solution with no change in timing or results for twenty films and Part B for ten films. Stock keeps for six months. Let's put it to the test.

I made up some TD-200 from Film Developing Cook Book except I used 4g Metol because I was unsure when mixing if the 3g in the book was a typo or not. All the other formulas have 5g but the "Leica Developer" I've seen elsewhere has 3g. Ho hum. Suck it and see I guess.

Phone snap of Fomapan 100 and Delta 400 in TD-200, 4 mins A and 4 mins B @ 17C

Before my first coffee of the morning I made some exposures on Fomapan 100 and Delta 400 and stewed them both in the TD-200 at the same time. This is last nights washing up and this mornings coffee - what a mess.

Scans of 5x7 inch prints. Top Fomapan 100, bottom Delta 400. Both in TD-200

First impressions are what lovely negs. The details run all the way into the shadows and highlights. I printed them both on Grade 2. Whilst I changed films the sun came out so, although the Fomapan looks much more contrasty it is largely down to the change in the subject. This is art not scientific testing after all.

To me this looks great as a developer to rule them all. The question is whether it will work on my glass plates. They have the same issue of run away highlights. Lets put it to the test...

I nipped out to the local cemetery and found a very high contrast scene. Bright sunlight on a white stone and detail disappearing into the shadows. I made a whole plate of my basic silver gelatine emulsion (RH25) and stewed it in TD-200 and presto I have a plate I can print on Multigrade, albeit at Grade 1 but that is acceptable for a scene like this.

Grade 2 contact print on 8x10 paper of whole plate (6.5x8.5) developed in TD-200

Inverted soft scan of plate developed in TD-200 showing detail all the way down.

Conclusion: TD-200 (or similar two-bath developer) may be the one developer to rule them all. Except two-bath developers don't handle low contrast scenes very well, where an increased contrast in the negative is need to get an adequate print on Multigrade paper. The Film Developing Cookbook says the best approach is to use a high contrast developer for these special circumstances. By jingo I've got it! We already have a high contrast developer to hand, Ilford PQ Universal.

A couple of weekends of messing and we have an overall conclusion. Two developers to rule them all:

TD-200 two-bath - All pictorial film including my own glass plates unless a great increase in contrast is required.
Ilford PQ Universal - All paper and pictorial film requiring increased contrast over TD-200.

What this doesn't cover is trying to get pictorial use out of my stash of Tech Pan document film but that is another story - it may be three developers in the end.

Two developers in three bottles - plus a bottle of argon?

Just one more thing. Oxidation is bad for Part A and PQ goes brown pretty quick. I investigated getting some Tetenal Protectan gas to spray in the bottles but it has been discontinued. An alternative is wine keeper (under various brands) but those are very expensive for the amount of gas you get. Everything to do with wine snobbery is expensive apparently. Then it occurred to me that Argon is used for MIG/TIG welding and costs less than a 1/30th what wine keeper costs. I just needed to buy a valve but even including the cost of the valve it worked out and 1/15th the cost of wine keeper and if I need to buy more it will be even cheaper.

A quick Hill & Adamson retake

2022-09-18T00:00:00Z

I dropped my daughter back at St Andrews University the other day and it gave me the chance to make a reproduction of a Hill & Adamson view. It was very sunny and very busy with tourists - who appear as smears.

The Pends - 1843-47 - Hill & Adamson - salt print from calotype. CC by NC - National Galleries of Scotland.

The Pends - 2022 - Roger Hyam - scanned silver gelatine glass plate.

I'm really getting the itch to go full calotype. Maybe this winter I'll work up a protocol.

Lacock Abbey 2022

2022-07-23T00:00:00Z

A trip to the West of England gave an opportunity to visit perhaps the most significant location in the history of photography, Lacock Abbey, the family home of William Henry Fox Talbot. I grew up just down the road from Lacock but had never visited. Of course I had to take my plate camera and repeat some of the famous images. We had about three hours there and it was hot and very sunny so not ideal for photography. The village and house are fascinating outwith their link to the invention of photography. We also had a delicious pub lunch.

Fox Talbot's image of the lattice window. Positive from possibly first camera negative in 1835.

That most famous window from the outside on one of my plates.

Selfie with my whole-plate. It had to be done!

Entrance to the house.

Fox Talbot could ask staff to stand still for a photo!

Today the upper story is a flat.

I made just five exposures across three scenes. It was hot work. The property and museum are definitely worth a visit but perhaps a little disappointing for the true enthusiast (nut) of historical techniques. I guess this is because they have to be suitable for a general audience.

Some Argyrotype prints from the plates.

Technically the challenge wasn't just the high contrast provided by the bright sun but the fact that the gravel paths tended to glow brightly in the ultraviolet resulting in plates that are very difficult (if not impossible) to print well with simple alternative techniques and so I've resorted to scanning. If I had been doing this on modern film I could have given something like N-2 development to compensate.

Perhaps I'll return in a few years when I've mastered calotypes. If I do I bet it will be raining!

Photojournalism is dead

2022-07-18T00:00:00Z

Screen grabs Monday 18th July 2022

I woke this morning to find the same image used as the lead across three media outlets. This isn't a one off picture of a burning building or scoop from a war zone but a woman with a fan on a train in London. It is credited to Reuters - no photographer.

How is it that three ostensibly independent publications choose to use the exact same image for a 100% predictable story. This heatwave has after all been forecast for nearly a week.

Many publications have long since done away with staff photographers who might provide original material for this kind of thing so is it that there is little material on the wire for them to choose from? Is there a kind of group think on the picture desks that makes them choose the same image? Do picture desks even exist anymore?

Because it is an image the similarities are very striking but the headlines and content are pretty similar too. Might all journalists be going the way of the photojournalists?

Guillotine Shutter using BBC micro:bits

2022-07-04T00:00:00Z

I got covid so had to stay at home for ten days. I couldn't really work due to the brain fog. It was like having very bad jet lag and I didn't want to mess with production servers in that state. But you can only sleep so much and so I worked on this low input project. It was something I could do for about an hour a day with things I had to hand.

Guillotine shutters are just what the name implies. A shutter in the form of a gravity driven guillotine. They can either be implemented as two plates that slide down one after another (the delay between release governing the exposure time) or a single plate with a slit in it (the width of the slit governing the exposure time). Mine is the former kind aimed at exposure of several seconds or more on my own simple silver gelatine plates. It only achieves what I can do by simply removing and replacing the lens cap except I can control it remotely now.

The slide is plywood joined to a cut down Cokin-P filter holder with epoxy resin. The release mechanism is a BBC micro:bit and a small servo run off two AA batteries - a total of three component.

https://youtu.be/R8WPfP6A410

Watch the guillotine in action.

The remote is a second BBC micro:bit in a case and powered by a button cell. The micro:bits are aimed at school children. They are microcontrollers with a few sensors, LEDs and a BlueTooth radio that can also be used to send simple (non-BlueTooth) singles up 70 metres between two micro:bits. They are very easy to programme in Python. It would be possible to add many fancy features. On the servo side I just added the ability to set the exposure at T or between 1 and 9 seconds. On the remote side I set the ability to delay exposure by five seconds - so the remote can be hidden. I also made the remote beep each second during the exposure.

Post covid me in the garden (simple phone scan of the plate)

I don't have a big project planned for this thing. I thought it might be useful to practice environmental portraiture which is pretty hard to do without a willing and very patient subject. I'm pleased with the first test shot in the garden. This has the feel of a vintage lens but it was taken with a relatively modern process lens at f/5.6 5 seconds. They are definitely not designed for this hence the soft edges. It's a shame about the wall bisecting my head!

I was inspired to make the shutter by Borut Peterlin who uses one for his New Earth project - naked self portraits in the woods. Don't worry I'll not be getting my kit off any time soon. Although maybe ...

https://youtu.be/POEPy88XQGg

Here is the code I used on the microbits incase it is of any use to anyone. Very simple grunged together stuff not written to be re-distributed!

microbit_python Download

Cemetery Trees - the forgotten project

2022-06-08T00:00:00Z

Whilst we were under periods of looser Covid restriction during 2020 and 2021 I had a project photographing the local cemeteries near where I live in Edinburgh. It was an opportunity to make many test exposures as I honed my emulsion making skills. But somehow the project petered out. I was using my Wista 45D camera with 4"x5" plates. I then scanned them and inkjet printed on various kind of paper. There was something unsatisfactory about the hybrid workflow and I moved to making larger plates and printing them on salted paper or with argyrotype. Of course Covid also became less of an issue so we were free to go further a field. That's not to say I won't revisit this way of working in the future. But I totally forgot to share anything from the project outside an Adobe Lightroom gallery. Here are a few of the photos from that time.

I used hand cut and coated 4"x5" glass plates.

Perhaps my favourite tree and one of the first I photographed. Grange Cemetery.

The trigger for me was to concentrate on the trees and let the gravestones look after themselves.

Grange Cemetery is only a few yards from my house and so was the main destination.

Juxtaposition at Dene Cemetery. I visited in mid winter and must go back again.

Grange Cemetery surrounds Marchmont St Giles (not to be confused with St Giles cathedral) so feels like a graveyard but it is very much a commercial Victorian cemetery like many others.

Newington Cemetery has a very different atmosphere and is quite overgrown in parts.

A few of the prints have mad it into IKEA frames and onto the walls of the flat.

The Vageeswari goes on its first outing

2022-04-30T00:00:00Z

Working at the Botanics in Edinburgh means I can get access to the currently closed Palm Houses. They are about to undergo a major restoration. It is an amazing space to be in so I've visited twice, once with my whole plate camera and once with the 10x12inch Vageeswari.

Argyrotype prints from whole plate glass negatives.

Vageeswari in action.

Digital rush (phone scan) of an 10x12inch glass plate.

I've got really mixed feelings about how this is going. On the one hand my new system for guessing exposures using the rate of darkening of some argyrotype paper seems to be working. On the other hand I made some rookie mistakes with getting bellows vignetting and allowing a damaged plate holder to come open as I took it out the bag. I think I'll make more visits and keep working the project till I'm happy or frustration gets the better of me. I'll probably concentrate on whole plate rather than 10x12.

My system for helping judge the amount of actinic light present. This is especially useful in glass house where it is unclear what the glass may be stopping.

Vageeswari 10x12 inch field camera

2022-04-09T00:00:00Z

I've been falling behind with posting. I swear I'm going to post more often.

Working with glass plates and contact printing means that you can only make prints the same size as the plate your camera will hold and there is always a desire to go a bit bigger - till things get ridiculous. Things started to get really ridiculous in early February when I saw a camera for sale on the Oxfam website. It was a 10x12 inch Vageeswari. It was very expensive but it came with four, yes that's right, four double plate holders. The battle with buying old plate cameras is finding matching plate holders. This is especially the case when you are working with dry plates. Wet plate collodion workers only need one plate holder because they can only use one at a time. To have enough to hold eight plates right from the start was wonderful. It needed a home. I wanted to make a donation to Oxfam's work, especially in Yemen, so I could justify it. Reader, I bought the camera.

Here are a sequence that tell the tail of the first exposure.

Vageeswari as it came

As is common no focus screen

Four plate holders were of varying condition and much was covered in dark wood stain. Not sure if this is original.

Note the V.C.W. (Vageeswari Camera Works)

The base was for traditional field tripod with three separate legs.

I did a load of cleaning of the stain but not to the extent of making it "perfect". I also made an adapter plate so that I could use it on a normal tripod. This still allows the rotating base to work and is removable.

A new ground glass screen was relatively straightforward. Most screws are rusted though so I'm wary about undoing any I don't have to as they could lead to far more work.

The lens board was, of course, not any standard size although it had an ingenious spring mounting mechanism. I 3D printed an adapter board so I can use Sinar compatible boards. I have a Sinar to Linhof adapter too so I can now mount almost any lens.

It is a difficult thing to store so I made two storage/transport boxes for the camera and plates and lined them with green felt.

First light! It's been cold and windy but I had to try one shot using my Symmar 300mm f/5.6 (a moderate wide angle lens on 10x12 inches but lots of coverage).

It works! Although this isn't the sharpest of plates because there was quite a bit of wind.

Vageeswari was an Indian camera manufacturer. Mr K. Karunakaran set up the company just after the second world war, at about the same time as Indian Independence I guess, to make field cameras in the style of the British (but also Indian made?) Houghton Butcher cameras which were also copied by the Japanese as the Asahi Asanuma field camera. Everyone was copying everyone else in those days. The British companies stopped making old style plate cameras mid century partly because of the war and partly because the technology had moved on but in freshly independent India their was probably still a market for a new, old fashioned camera. I'm sure they were popular with enthusiasts later as well. It appears the Vageeswari Camera Works did very well till it faded out in the 1980s. Mr Karunakaran only died in 2016 at the age of 90 and did much more in life than just this. You can read an obituary here.

From this history we can deduce my camera might be only forty years old but is most likely about seventy. The bellows look like they have been replaced (badly) and the focus mechanism is pretty knackered but just about useable. The important thing from my perspective is that Vageeswari continued to make Victorian style book-form plate holders when the rest of the world moved to ANSI standard sheet film holders. Book form holders are really bad for film but great for glass plates. I now have an Ultra Large Format (ULF) camera with plate holders. This is something that can only be had from very expensive (and very good) bespoke camera makers today.

Famous photographers who use the same camera? I just noticed that Borut Peterlin uses one for his smaller works! Here is an example. Borut's looks better condition than mine but then he's a pro.

https://youtu.be/ehM_UInuuNI

Borut Peterlin using a 10x12 Vag.

Now what was it I was going to photograph again?

Triptych Panorama #1

2022-04-09T00:00:00Z

I finally got to make what I'm calling a triptych panorama. I've been thinking about doing these since I first started printing the entire plate with a black border. The print consist of three 6 1/2 x 8 1/2 inch plates laid next to each other to make an Argyrotype contact print. The plates can't be perfect because of the hand poured emulsion and neither can the print because the paper isn't great and is hand coated. The edges of the glass are rough because they too are cut by hand. The perspective has to be off because you can't bend the plates like you can a digital file. But the image also has the realism of being a photograph. I'd like to make more of these.

I'm not sure the best way to share the physical object so here is a quick snap.

A detail

It took me three trips to North Berwick Law to get this right. The first time was scouting then I made the images but got the exposure wrong and finally it came together. All the plates I made and the printing and traveling it was probably a week's work to make a single print.

Of course it is trivial to make a pano with a phone. It took about 30 seconds. But where is the fun in that!?

These are the Act of Union Beech Trees on the East side of North Berwick Law. They are the only survivors of a woodland planted by Sir Hew Dalrymple one of the Scottish Commissioners of the Act of Union, tasked with negotiating the agreement with his English peers. He was a big land owner and planted them to celebrate the union of the kingdoms. Read what you will into the fact that they still hang on or that they are nearly all gone! There is a thriving wood of Scots Pines rising up to take their place when they do fall though.

Glass Plate Prep: First of a series?

2022-01-09T00:00:00Z

I've been toying with the idea of making YouTube videos about historical photography but have struggled with the fact that I'm not really into video (I prefer old things) and I'm a bit fed up of the whole bloke talking at the camera genre. I've been making some B-Roll of various parts of the process and it came to me to just start bunging that together to make a B-Roll only style video. No commentary just fly on the wall. Here is the first. More may, or may not, follow.

https://youtu.be/qNuy8B5o_eQ

FT2- Panoramic Camera

2021-12-03T00:00:00Z

Yet another test shot. Note uneven dev at the top because I was tight with the developer!

🇺🇦 In February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. Playing with old Russian military inspired tech isn't fun any more. My FT2 will rest in the cupboard till better times. Thoughts and good wishes are with the people of Ukraine and those in Russia who have been dragged into this madness.

I have spent some time 3D printing film cassettes for my KMZ FT-2 Panoramic Camera. I've submitted the designs to Thingiverse so that others can use them but am also putting everything here for safety. You can see the 3D models on Thingiverse here or download the from here:

FT-2_Cassettes_Frames

Work in progress. The original brass cassette is in the foreground. The plastic ones are near identical externally but the spindles are different.

The FT-2 is a crazy camera from 1950's USSR. The predecessor to the far more common Horizont and Horizon 202 panoramic cameras of the 1980s. There's quite a lot about it online. This is a nice article on Kosmo Foto or there is one on Camera Wiki or on Living Image.

Fedor Tokarev

The legend varies depending on who is telling it. Basically Fedor Vasilievich Tokarev was a weapons designer in the early USSR. He was a mate of Jo Stalin (you kind of needed to be). He designed the pistol and rifle used extensively by the Russian armed forces during the Great Patriotic War (a.k.a. WWII). He had an idea for a camera, probably to survey the effects of artillery damage, and at some point in the 1940s (probably after the war) he asked the guys at KMZ (Красногорский механический завод) to make it. They didn't want to but, because this was Stalinist Russia, they put it into production. By the 1950s there was much need for foreign currency so export versions were produced and sold in the West. KMZ are better know for the Zorki ranger finders and Zenti SLR cameras. Today Zenit even sell an M series Leica under license. The FT stands for Fotoapparat Tokareva (Фотоаппарат Токарева) or Tokarev's Kamera. The pistol he designed was the TT-33 or just called the Tokareva. It is a little like Kalashnikov in the next generation of weapons designers but unfortunately Mikhail Kalashnikov did not design a camera, at least I don't think he did.

The FT-2 sold until 1968. A total of 16,662 were made. By the mid 1960s it was replaced by a much more sensibly designed swing lens camera called the Horizont and nearly fifty thousand of these were produced but it too was discontinued in 1973. The Horizont was resurrected in 1989 as the Horizon 202 and a series of similar models. The Soviet Union fell in 1989 and I wonder if this was KMZ looking for old products they could bring to market in a more open world. Production continued into the 21st Century.

The Horizont and Horizon models are very similar in that they use a 28mm f2.8 lenses to produce a wide angle image on a 24x58mm negative which could be printed (or these days scanned) like any medium format negative. They take standard 35mm film cassettes. They are fixed focus cameras but you can close the lens down to f/16 and get things from as close as 1m to infinity in focus. They are built like Zenit SLR cameras.

The FT-2 is a very different animal. It has a 50mm f/5 lens. You can't change the focus or the aperture. The nearest focus is maybe 30ft away. It is a panoramic camera but not really a wide angle camera. The vertical field of view is the same as a standard 50mm lens and actually slightly shifted upwards. It is only stretched horizontally. The negatives are 24x108mm, nearly twice that of the Horizon 202 and requiring a large format enlarger. When you hold an FT-2 in your hand it actually feels more like a pistol than a camera. Whether or not the legend is true it totally makes sense that this thing is designed for military reconnaissance use not regular photography.

In many respects the FT-2 is a terrible camera but it is also very unique and makes images like nothing else. Just to add to the awkwardness the FT-2 takes non-standard 35mm cassettes. My camera came with two which made it useable but frustrating. Whenever I finished a roll (twelve exposures) I'd needed a dark bag to reload the cassette. There are many examples of FT-2s which have been separated from their cassettes. This is why I've spent the last few evenings designing 3D printable cassettes and some frames to help scan the resulting negatives. I know I should have been working on a cure for cancer and world peace but this seemed more important.

Here are my notes for those interested in printing their own cassettes.

Design

There are some challenges in that the space for the cassette in the camera is only 39mm high but the film is, of course, 35mm high. This leaves just 2mm top and bottom for the lid/base and the spindle top. I've therefore left the bottom ring off the spindle and replaced it with a peg in the base of the cassette. The top ring is still fragile. I'm more interested in photography than 3D printing so am not going to wrestle for hours to print at less than 0.8mm in regular PLA on a cheap printer!

Code

I designed it in OpenSCAD. The SCAD Code is not elegant. It is just something functional to do what I need. You may need to tweak it for your printer as the tolerances are tight.

No attempt is made to keep this pretty so SCAD drafts renderings will look odd because of the overlapping surfaces. Do a full render to see the models properly.

Printing

Print 0.16mm regular black PLA. I use a XVICO X3S - very cheap printer.

Cassette Lid

The lid is rendered the "wrong" way around. This is because it is easier to flip it on the z-axis when it is imported into the slicing software than mess around in code trying to get it right. Feel free to mess around in the code and improve on this :)

Spindle

The spindle needs to be printed on a 45 degree slope with some support. At 45 degrees the support stuff shouldn't get on the top surface of the disc. Amount of support and angle will vary. I had some failures. It is also a fraction too long by design. During finishing sand the top down to fit the camera snuggly.

Cassette Body

The body should be lined on the walls with "felt". Cut a strip 36mm wide and long enough to go around the cassette and out the film slot. After it is stuck down trim most of it off leaving just a little sticking out. I use sticky back Fablon Velour (it is used on card tables and that kind of thing). CS glue it if it comes loose.

Scanner Frame (lid and base)

This can be used to scan on an Epson V800. It is about the right focus distance. Put a tape hinge on one side and tape tags on the other. You'll need to trick the scanner into thinking that is it looking at a negative frame by leaving a gap near the top. You can work this out by looking at the negative holders that come with the scanner if you haven't done it before or look at Ben Horne's 8x10 scanning mask for a clue (https://youtu.be/Ack_CWovz4Y?t=292).

Scanner Plate

You can use this to stand the scanner frame on a regular light table if you are going to digitise with a camera. I designed it to fit the Intrepid 4x5 enlarger light source which I use fo digitising regular 35mm film.

Maybe not as elegant as the brass original but they do the job.

Tips

Feed and take up cassettes are identical but the feed side is upside-down.
Do NOT tape film in feed cassette as you will lose your last frame unless you then open the camera in a changing bag.
Do tape film in take up cassette as so you can be sure to pull it through.
Leaving a tape tag sticking out the side of the cassette make it much easier to pull the cassette out of the camera and saves you getting your keys or a screw driver out.
Remember closest focus is 15m (45ft) away! Maybe 30ft if you don't blow the image up.
Remember you are mad to even consider using this camera.

License is free to do what you like but a credit would be appreciated.

WillTravel Instantly!

2021-11-10T00:00:00Z

It started with a me buying a 1950's Mamiya-16 just because I thought it looked like such a cool camera. The trouble is the film cassettes are like hen's teeth so I thought I'd get Barney down the road at OpenFactory to 3D print me some. That didn't work out because the models on Thingiverse were wrong but I mentioned to Barney that what I really wanted to do was print a WillTravel camera. To this he responded that it might be cheaper for me to buy my own 3D printer than get him to do it. A few hours of YouTube and eBay later and I've bought a Xvico 3S for an amazing £94 delivered to my door. You can see how this is snowballing. My adventures in 16mm subminiature photography have become a side story and I'm now a 3D printer.

Because my Lomografloc Fujifilm Instax film back had recently arrived (I actually bought it a year ago) I thought it would be cool to dedicate a WillTravel body to instant photography. That would mean a slightly shorter body length. I wrote to Morten Kolve who creates the WillTravel cameras and of course he has already made this combination and kindly sends me the models. A few days later and a bit of fussing and I've done it. Printed my own camera and it works! Thanks to Morten and Barney for their help and support.

First light on the new camera was a brief wander around the tourist sites of Edinburgh followed by lunch at the museum.

The printer is basically an Ender 3 clone. I used Ender 3 as the default option in PrusaSlicer, slightly eco PolyTerra PLA and left everything on default. It worked remarkably well!

There is a small amount of gluing.

Matt the insides with blackboard paint and we are done!

What is left to do? Well the viewfinder is well off! I just used one I had lying around to centre the image but of course that didn't work because there is effectively a front rise (or side shift for portrait orientation) because of the format. I need to come up with something else. I also need to do some more focus calibration points. At the moment I have infinity, six feet and four feet but, to be honest, I probably don't need many more than that if the end result is only an Instax print.

Why "more in common" is wrong

2021-10-05T00:00:00Z

There is a movement in "Britain" that, in modern times, was kicked off by Gordon Brown with his 2006 speech on "British Values". I believe this threw fuel on the fire of the nationalist project that eventually lead to Brexit - which is another story. Recently an organisation called More in Common wrote a report entitled Britains Choice. It is three hundred pages long and is more of a market research document than a piece of research. It divides "Britain" into seven groups with different but overlapping values and uses this as an argument for the people of "Britain" to pull together.

I have to write "Britain" in scare quotes because its use is ambiguous. The report failed to get data from Northern Ireland because their partner didn't follow protocols or the data that was returned was totally out of whack with what was expected. But the report still claims to be about the UK as a whole. It purports to include NI on the basis anecdotal evidence. It uses the term "Britons" on 106 of the 291 pages and UK on 174 pages. NI is constitutionally not part of Britain but the people who live there are British. They are Britons. A report that claims to show how united the people of "Britain" (or is it the UK?) failing to include data on the part of the UK that is historically most divided, to the point of armed conflict, has to ring alarm bells. Just like Gordon Brown's speech in 2006 this is a piece of political propaganda. The subtext, the dog whistle if you like, is that we have more in common with the other people in "Britain" than we do with foreigners. That is why this is actually a nationalist enterprise.

You may think this is all irrelevant but Gordon Brown is still popping up quoting this stuff and being reported in the press. It is designed as ammunition for politicians and the media to use and they will use it and it will change people's behaviour.

It set me thinking about values and how stupid it is to justify national unity on the basis of it. The Britains Choice report is wrong because it doesn't include an out group. We need to compare values across nations to prevent this becoming an exercise in confirmation bias jingoism. Are these values our values or just human values?

Fortunately we have a set of questions that have been asked across European countries for a number of years and the data is made open by the European Social Study. Unfortunately I can download this data and waste my entire Sunday afternoon and evening analysing it.

"British" Values 2018

the rule of law
individual liberty
democracy
mutual respect, tolerance and understanding of different faiths and beliefs.

These are the CONTEST strategy values as reported on Wikipedia.

ESS Human Values Questions

Important to think new ideas and being creative
Important to be rich, have money and expensive things
Important that people are treated equally and have equal opportunities
Important to show abilities and be admired
Important to live in secure and safe surroundings
Important to try new and different things in life
Important to do what is told and follow rules
Important to understand different people
Important to be humble and modest, not draw attention
Important to have a good time
Important to make own decisions and be free
Important to help people and care for others well-being
Important to be successful and that people recognise achievements
Important that government is strong and ensures safety
Important to seek adventures and have an exciting life
Important to behave properly
Important to get respect from others
Important to be loyal to friends and devote to people close
Important to care for nature and environment
Important to follow traditions and customs
Important to seek fun and things that give pleasure

These seem to overlap enough to at least check if these kind of values bind us together beyond just on a human level.

Method 1

I downloaded the latest ESS human values data (release 9 version 3 for 2018). This is about 40k rows. Imported it into a MySQL database. Produced weighted means for nations (splitting the UK into constituent parts). Loaded this data into the R stats package and did a simple dist() similarity matrix (Euclidean distance) followed by a clustering using hclust() with default complete linking method. And the result is in the fan dendrogram below.

Clustering of nations by ESS human values.

On the basis of human values we should have a nation of Spain, Wales and NI. England, Ireland and the Netherlands would form another! It is like reading Tarot cards. The nations don't cluster by values. The notion of "British Values" or values that we share more in common is a dumb one - as if it needs stating let alone proving.

Method 2

I did another analysis averaging and then clustering by regions of nations as that is available in the data. There are 300 regions so this can't easily be displayed but here is a screen shot of how Britain comes out.

UK kind-of clustering together but Scotland is nearer The Netherlands and London is off the scale. I wouldn't use this to argue for Scottish independence even though I'm in favour of it as the data equally shows we should be run by the Netherlands not England!

London is way off the scale clustering with regions of Ireland, Spain, Poland etc

Method 2 appears to show that there is clustering by nation, many of the national regions clustered closely. France was very unified apart from including the Basque country. Some, like Spain, were spread all over the place.

Method 3

Ideally it would be better to see if individual people clustered by nation. I suspect this would be even more of a mess with more variation of values between individuals than between nations but at this point is was gone midnight so I went to bed.

Caveats

This is really, really crude back of an envelope hacking but I hope I have done enough to show that claiming nations are held together by values is both dangerous and factually wrong. My chief concern in the analysis is that the data for each nation is gathered by that nation and so the chances that clustering of nations is due to sampling errors or translation factors (these are all done in the local language after all) are really high. This should be a PhD's worth of work and I've spent a few hours on it.

Conclusion

Don't use values to define nations, it is dumb.
I should not waste my evenings doing this kind of thing but read a good book and go to bed instead.

Victorian book-form, whole-plate holder on Intrepid 8x10 camera

2021-05-16T00:00:00Z

I've got a routine going of pouring my own 4x5" gelatine silver plates and then scanning them and inkjet printing the results but I've felt unsettled because I would like to have a 100% analogue process, [AAA] in stead fo [ADD]. To address this I've been messing with salt printing some of my 4x5" plates. It works quite well because they are very contrasty. Simple silver emulsion plates are generally too contrasty to print on modern photographic papers. The downside of contact printing 4x5" plates is the resulting prints are so small. I've therefore been experimenting with different ways to work with larger glass plates and over the last couple of weeks have built myself an adapter back so I can shoot Whole-plate (6.5x8.5") Victorian book-form holders on my Intrepid 8x10.

I built the adapter to replace the whole back of the Intrepid by layering 3mm plywood sheets cut on a Dremel jigsaw at the kitchen table.

Key thing was to get magnets in my back to match the polarity of those in the Intrepid back. I did this by sticking them to the old back and marking them with nail polish.

I then araldited them in place and sanded off the mess when it had dried.

I bought a set of 3 immaculate plate holders from eBay for £65. (I also bought two others for £25 but they were slightly different design so I decided to match the back to just these holders). This is really cheap compared to contemporary large plate holders!

I made a plywood frame to hold the focus screen, which I ground myself. Distance to the "film" plane was 7mm which I matched with two sheets of 3mm ply and a little aluminium shim. Looking at the initial results the focus seems pretty much spot on.

With some sanding and messing about the holders fit snuggly and didn't appear to leak when I did my flashing light test on them. So yesterday it was out for first light at my usual test location in Edinburgh!

The plates looked great, although I need to work on my pouring technique for larger plates as they clearly hadn't set fully before I moved them to the drying rack. No light leaks though and in focus. I feel quite chuffed.

I'm quite pleased with the finish salt print, produced at a leisurely pace on the same day I took the photo. I do need to work on my salt printing technique though.

So now I need to take stock of where I go with this next. The Intrepid works well and has a wide range of movements but using it for whole-plate sizes does involve carrying a larger camera than necessary. This counts for a lot as three mahogany plate holders containing six sheets of 2mm glass weighs quite a lot on its own. A Victorian whole-plate camera may be a better way to work with this format but they have fewer movements and finding one in a useable condition may be a challenge.

Another thought that occurs is adding an expansion back to the Intrepid. I've always wanted to have a go on a 7x17" banquette camera. I could build a back and a couple of plate holders to fit the Intrepid using the same basic approach. The result wouldn't be particularly portable but the idea is crazy enough to be appealing and who knows, it might just work!

Trapped indoors doing still lives (that really should be lifes)

2021-03-07T00:00:00Z

I've been putting things on Instagram without blogging them - this is against my new social media policy. How sad I have one!

As we are still in lockdown with a "stay at home" order in effect I've been playing with my Sinar P studio camera. There is precious little room in the flat so have to I set up a still life in the same box room I use to develop the plates in. This means I can shoot and develop and learn about how the plates are responding all at the same time.

One of my main frustrations in working this way is that I have to have a large diffuse light source. This is because the only way to get enough actinic (Blue+UV) light is to use several compact florescent daylight bulbs plus a UV LED "disco" bulb. These are quite large and so act like a soft box. Any modifiers between the source and the subject block too much light. Needing f/numbers to be high to get enough depth of field means long exposures. Ideally it would be hours but I wimp out at about 30 minutes or it gets tedious.

Painters still life box

I tried making a painter's still life set up where the light could be more controlled but getting enough light into the box was near impossible.

Painter's lighting leads to very thin negs

Even without light modifiers and lots of movements depth of field is a challenge.

Subject have to be chosen as being flat but tones can be nice

I'm not particularly inspired by this still life work. This is possibly be cause I'm more interested in found objects and although our flat is full of interesting things they are just too familiar or too big for my wee studio or too small for 4x5 glass plates.

That old tree again

2021-03-07T00:00:00Z

There is an old wind blasted oak tree close to the North Esk River that I like to visit. It is just within the area we are allowed to visit under the current Covid restrictions. Doing the tree justice in a photograph is really hard. The best composition is from due South and the early and late light is cut off by the surrounding trees and hills.

Blasted Oak. My own dry glass dry plate Voigtländer Avus

This is perhaps my most successful attempt. I was walking with my lightweight dry plate kit which consists of five plate holders, a modified 1920's Voigtländer Avus and a small tripod. The combination of century old uncoated optics and crude glass plates, that lack an anti-halation backing, give it a ghostly air.

Lightweight dry plate

2021-03-07T00:00:00Z

We have a "stay at home" order in place in Scotland right now which means we can only go outside for essential reasons such as work (that can't be done from home), caring responsibilities or exercise. I've decided not to count using my full size pack, containing a large carbon fibre tripod and Wista 45 camera as an essential activity. It would be OK carrying it about for exercise but when I set up to make a photo it is like a small encampment and I don't want to set a bad example to others in the city/ But I have a pile of plates waiting to be exposed and itchy feet. I have therefore come up with a lightweight dry plate kit I feel comfortable using in public.

Minimalist dry plate gear

I have a Voigtländer Avus with an adapted 4x5 back that has been something of an objet d'art for too long. I dusted it off and made a new glass focussing screen. The previous version had been very crude acrylic. The new screen made it possible to calibrate the focus scale more precisely. A few tests with a laser measure showed it was quite accurate. I also added Manfrotto quick release plates so that the camera can be mounted in landscape or horizontal format quickly and reliably.

Two screws below distance scale give a wide range of movement

Once calibrated the camera slides to infinity when opened and the focus knob allows adjustments down to 1.2 metres. Parallax would make focussing any closer impractical.

And that is it! All I need is plates (I take 5x double dark slides but could take fewer), the camera and a small tripod. I don't need a focus cloth or loupe or even a cable release. I can set up, make an image or two and pack away in five minutes, ten minutes if I want to be artsy.

The results aren't bad if you like the 19th Century look. I took a picture of one of my favourite trees on one walk. Below are the results of a cycle trip with the family to picnic in Holyrood Park. It's a bit of fun anyway.

St Anthony's Chapel in Holyrood Park

St Anthony's Chapel with 1960's tower block and guy who looks like he is playing golf
(all very Scottish)

Yosemite Salisbury Crags in Holyrood Park

Fifty Six

2021-03-07T00:00:00Z

For my birthday the family humoured me by playing at making portraits in the garden. I broke out the Intrepid 8x10 - a special occasions camera - and we shot some very old Ilford Multigrade paper as negatives.

Me at 56 - Taken by Faith. Exposure of six little monkeys.

My daughter, Faith, is getting pretty good at doing the large format dance and did the whole exposure procedure on her own to make this image of me. It was a dull day and exposures were long.

I also found an old 8x10 glass plate I had coated so I made an exposure of the back of our building - about 10 minutes at f/16 - then popped it through the same developer and contact printed it. (We live in an Edinburgh tenement flat and share the garden.)

Direct scan of 8x10 plate

It is a pretty dull image but I enjoyed the process of working with the large plate. This is a way of working I have considered but not embraced because of the frustration with plate holders. I may look into making my own in the future.

Why do so many liberals not like foreigners?

2021-01-24T00:00:00Z

I'm not intending this blog to be too driven by politics but no longer venting my spleen on Twitter or Facebook means I occasionally have to write an opinion piece.

During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum campaigns people on the unionist side of the debate would occasionally let slip that independence would be a bad thing because it would turn their relations into foreigners. The most famous example is probably Alistair Darling (now Labour peer Lord Darling) claiming the SNP want to “turn family into foreigners”. Now as a racist trope you can't get better. Lord Darling clearly doesn't like foreigners and he was expressing a xenophobic point of view, something that rarely gets in the way of becoming a member of the House of Lords.

You would not hear this sentiment expressed by any but the most naive unionist politician North of the border these days but you do hear it from liberals South of the border. It is indicative of the parochialism that is the London based media.

I suggest you listen to this podcast where Nick Cohen helps James Hawes plug his book "The Shortest History of England". It is actually pretty entertaining and makes many good points although perpetuates some myths. Hawes, with agreement from Cohen, restates the myth that Labour couldn't win the UK without Scotland. This is numerically simply untrue as has been demonstrated by all but one Labour government since the war. The point that politically, even spiritually, they can't do it is probably true though. England is fundamentally a right of centre country, hence New Labour was needed for Blair's success.

They also make the assumption that the act of union of 1707 wasn't a hostile take over and that the British Empire was therefore not an English empire - or even a London empire. There is no doubt that Scotland was an active participant and beneficiary of empire and all that entails including slavery but if you actually look at the history of the period, notably the Alien Act of 1705, it is pretty obvious that it was a takeover against the will of the majority of Scots - not that either country was a democracy at the time. History from an independent Scottish perspective might paint a different picture to the one presented here. Just as we can consider Ireland a kind of former colony today only because it left the union in 1921.

The real reason you should listen is to hear Nick Cohen, arguably one of England/UKs leading political and cultural commentators, demonstrate a total lack of self awareness as regards his own ardent British nationalism.

I'm British, I see myself as British, partly because my mother is Scottish, my mother's family is Scottish, I find the idea of a border on the Tweed just horrific and, you know, my mother being a foreigner in England and me being a foreigner in Scotland.

Nick Cohen, 26 mins into podcast.

Now if someone at work said they would be horrified to think that their mother was a foreigner you might think they were a nationalist xenophobe who needed a diversity training course but this is a commonly expressed view among people who simultaneously express a hatred of nationalism.

I really don't like nationalists but ...

Nick Cohen, 27 mins into podcast

Just as a reminder the current Wikipedia definition of nationalism is:

"Nationalism is an idea and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland." Wikipedia (my emphasis)

And the definition of xenophobia

"Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an ingroup and an outgroup and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a desire to eliminate their presence, and fear of losing national, ethnic or racial identity." Wikipedia (my emphasis)

Nick Cohen was clearly expressing nationalistic and xenophobic sentiments. Does he know he is doing this or is he naive about his own views and where they come from? I'm sure if he was challenged he would say he has no issue with foreigners (he has a Jewish background!) but still he just doesn't want his mother to be a foreigner. Foreign is good just don't let it get too close.

There is nothing so dangerous as unmediated facts

2021-01-11T00:00:00Z

The trouble with open data is that you can find yourself wasting a weekend answering a question that is bugging you. I spent Saturday night and Sunday morning producing this.

Devolution: The invisible disaster

2020-11-30T00:00:00Z

Over the weekend I thought of starting a podcast in the style of Alistair Cooke's Letter from America - A Letter from Edinburgh. To explore the possibility I wrote a pilot episode. And the conclusion of that pilot? I won't do it. Producing a five minute recording each week would wipe me out and I'm not sure I'd be any good at it in the long run. But just for the record here is the text of that pilot episode.

Good evening.

I can’t remember actually casting my vote in the referendum on Scottish Devolution. At the time I was a relatively recent immigrant to Edinburgh - having arrived from England just three years earlier, in 1994.

I’m sure I did vote and, along with 75% of the electorate voted for the establishment of a Scottish Parliament. I recall sitting in my rented room reading the debates in the Scotsman - a newspaper that, even then, wasn’t what it used to be.

A lot has happened in the intervening decades. I found work and a wife, made a home and raised a family. I’m sure there are many Scots for whom the last two decades have been much tougher. The financial crash of 2008 being a major setback for many - but that had little to do with Scottish politics and a lot to do with financial regulation over which Scotland has little sway.

In this context UK PM Boris Johnson’s recent remark that “devolution North of the Border had been a disaster” was met with much bemusement not only by your correspondent but probably the majority of the Scots - if they were even paying attention.

That the leaked comments were a political gaff is not in contention. Both the PM and a phalanx of spokesmen sought to clarify his remarks saying he had meant the Scottish National Party administration was the actual disaster not the democratic principle of devolved powers.

There are Scottish Parliamentary elections in less than six months time and the Scottish Conservatives are very keen to prevent the SNP doing well yet again. Having their UK leader imply the very institution they are asking to be elected to is a disaster is a gift to their opponents in all parties.

The new leader of the Conservatives in Scotland, Douglas Ross, was interviewed by Garry Gibbon for Channel 4 News sitting on the banks of the Thames in London. From the Scottish perspective the symbolism of the setting is powerful. Although leader of the Conservatives IN Scotland Ross clearly is not in Scotland but in London. He’s London’s man. A neutral venue for the interview would have been wiser.

Being keen to distance himself from Johnson’s remarks whilst simultaneously not being disloyal to his party leader put Ross on a sticky wicket. His opening didn’t go well. He said that devolution was not the problem but the people who held the power at the moment were the problem.

This makes sense from an Westminster point of view where the government effectively holds all the power, but it is long held in Scotland that the parliament and people hold the power. This Claim of Right goes back to 1689 but was invoked as recently as September last year, 2019, to contest PM Johnson’s prorogation (or suspension) of parliament. In a more prosaic way for 17 of the last 21 years the Scottish government has been a minority in parliament and had to govern with the consent of other parties. A situation that is very different from Westminster. Ross’s interview won’t have won him any new voters in Scotland and it is more voters in Scotland that he needs.

Johnson’s disaster comments spawned many articles in the predominantly pro-union press largely agreeing that the succession of very popular SNP governments have been a disaster even if devolution has not.

One of the prime facts quoted is that in 2018 Scotland scored worse in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) than it did 20 years ago and most notably slightly worse than England.

Having put two children through the state education system during this precise time period and been left with the impression that education in Scotland was rather good I thought I’d look into those figures.

The PISA scores have dropped but Scotland is over all average for OECD countries. If education is a disaster in Scotland it is a disaster in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and other such countries.

England is chosen as a comparator because Wales and Northern Ireland fare about average too. Wales is run by a Labour administration whilst Northern Ireland is run by a mandatory coalition that is dominated by allies of the Conservatives in England.

The school system in Scotland is based on the “Curriculum for Excellence” framework that was introduced in 2010 with the support of all political parties and teaching unions as well as the majority of parent groups. It, and its results, are therefore very widely owned. An attack on it can be felt as an attack on educators in general rather than on the SNP.

The disaster the pro-union politicians are talking about is invisible to most people in Scotland and just feels like an attack on the way things are done here. If they are to change the direction of public opinion here they are going to have to talk about things people can actually see or they will become increasingly irrelevant. The perceived irrelevance of the UK in day to day life is the true force moving the country closer to independence.

Goodnight.

Camerabase

2020-11-21T00:00:00Z

Camerabase is an old fashioned camera shop just around the corner from me with Cameratiks repair department out the back. Both are endangered species these days.

1 minute exposure at f/16. If you look closely there is a ghost looking in the left window. Traffic didn't register.

Developer Test

2020-11-13T00:00:00Z

Work makes it hard to get outside while it is still light but I've been itching to test out using Ilford PQ Universal developer on my dry plates. Last night I set up a simple still life. I didn't really have the energy to do more than pick an object. I'm please with the image I made and a little surprised there was so little difference between developer concentrations.

Top Left: Well under exposed first shot in PQ @ 1:29
Top Right: Reframed and plus one stop. PQ @ 1:29 for 7 minutes
Bottom Left: PQ @ 1:19 for 6 minutes
Botton Right: PQ @ 1:9 for 6 minutes

All were developed until I didn't see any more detail coming in the shadows. I think I'm basically developing to completion on these. More exposure would have given denser results but not markedly higher contrast. They are still a bit thin overall. I thought there would be much more difference between 1:9 and 1:19. Ilford recommend 1:19 for pictorial work and 1:9 for more graphic stuff with sheet film but this emulsion is more like a paper emulsion. Overall tonality is really nice. I could scan to have details in the specular highlights if I wanted to.

Scan of bottom right plate.

Conclusion is I think I'll adopt Ilford PQ as my default developer.

My time machine is functioning well

2020-11-07T00:00:00Z

Using dry plate technology from the 1880s I feel drawn to anything from the Victorian era. Living in Edinburgh we are blessed with such subjects which is good because the current Covid-19 restrictions mean I can't leave the city. Today I photographed the Forth Rail Bridge (opened 1890) and the result is convincingly late 19th Century.

Forth Rail Bridge photographed November 2020 on simple bromide emulsion

Time for a brew during the 16 minute exposure. Looks so mundane on the phone.

A little way down the coast is a First World War coastal battery. It suits the medium very well.

Inner Hound Point WWI battery. 20 minute exposure on simple bromide emulsion

Seeing it for what it is

2020-11-04T00:00:00Z

My Emulsive "5 Frames" article is out

2020-11-02T00:00:00Z

I wrote an article for Emulsive magazine website back in August and it has just been published. You can see it here:

https://emulsive.org/articles/5-frames/5-frames-of-edinburgh-and-braemar-on-an-emulsion-i-rustled-up-at-the-weekend-4x5-format-ei

My first 8x10 dry plates

2020-10-21T00:00:00Z

I was back in Grange Cemetery in my lunch break this time with my 8x10 to see if I can do 8x10 dry plates or not. The first attempt was a disaster because I didn't push my DIY plate holder all the way home and there was a light leak. My second and third were better. This is using emulsion RH5.

https://youtu.be/Nyoz0G8Ftk8

A familiar tree. 20 minute exposure at f/22

The compulsory test shot from living room window. Activity during the 90 second exposure is evident.

Conclusion: 8x10 glass negs are wonderful things and the images do have a different feel even when scanning them.

Throwing out Emulsion #4 ... but #5 looks good!

2020-10-11T00:00:00Z

We learn by making mistakes. The third photographic emulsion I made was great. It was clean and contrasty and just worked. So I thought I'd jazz it up a bit for the fourth emulsion by adding ten drops of 1% Erythrosine (that's pink food colouring E127) to increase the green response. It didn't work. Right from the start the fog test looked terrible and the images were muddy. When you get thrown the only solution is to get back on the horse. I immediately made emulsion #5 with no additions at all. It looks as good as #3 barring some "pepper fog" - a specking of black dots on the negative or white dots on the print.

Emulsion #4 - Random test shot with artificial light. This actually has some emotional meaning to me because the vase and elephant are from my childhood. But it is accidental not deliberate muddiness.

Side by side comparison of emulsions #3 and #4

I think I'm going to stick to simple bromo-iodide emulsion till I can do it repeatedly. These emulsion have just four ingredients:

Gelatine (preferably photo grade)
Silver Nitrate
Potassium Bromide
Potassium Iodide
Distilled/deionised Water - that makes five ingredients.

All you have to do is combine these in the right way and you can make high resolution UV/Blue sensitive emulsions.

Very quick and (literally) dirty test plate of emulsion #5. No toning in Lightroom. We're back in business!

Much image making to be done to perfect the bromo-iodide emulsion.

Another abandoned trip North

2020-10-03T00:00:00Z

Glen Tanar

Last week I headed off to explore Deeside some more and photograph with my freshly made glass plates. I got about ten miles before the brakes on the van started playing up and I had to abandon the trip. This week I tried again and made it all the way to Marr Lodge and Glen Tanar but the first day was a wash out. I had a nice walk but it rained pretty much continually. The light was bad for either dry plate or digital photography. The next day the sun came out but not in a nice way. There was hardly a cloud in the sky resulting in glaring highlights and harsh shadows. For the third day the met office issued a weather warning for heavy rain! I came home early.

Of my four trips in 2020 only one has come off as planned. I've had snow, mechanical failure and rain stop the other three. But I'm not too disheartened. I have some images and I've learned some lessons. For example I've just ordered a cheap mountain bike so I can get further along the glens without tiring myself out.

Self portrait with old pine at Glen Tanar - A 20 minute exposure.

Emulsion #3 - Graveyard test

2020-09-23T00:00:00Z

Third successful test. This is 10 minutes at f11. Overcast + under trees + 4pm in September at 56° North.

A week off the day job has given me time to work on my silver gelatine glass plate negatives. I've learnt a big lesson and results are much improved.

1st out the window test.

For emulsions #1 & #2 I had downsized a larger recipe and got to a Potassium Iodide content of about 0.2g. My scales really don't go that low so I put in about 0.5g. In hindsight suspect it was more than that. The resulting plates didn't clear when fixed and were grainy. This time I calculated I actually needed about 0.15g iodide (to go with 4g bromide and 5g silver nitrate). To add that I made up 10% iodide solution and added 15ml (reducing other volumes appropriately). It turns out if you get the ratios nearer correct the emulsion works better! I need to do some research on the "correct" ratio of bromide to iodide for future emulsions.

Now I have 17 plates coated with #3 and am off to the Deeside pine woods for a couple of days to see what I can get.

My first dry plate emulsion

2020-08-25T00:00:00Z

I realised I had all the chemistry, apart from gelatin, to make dry plates. So I bought some cooks gelatin from Waitrose and gave it a go. This is the first attempt.

I think I am hooked!

Is analogue photography worth it?

2020-08-06T00:00:00Z

The combined image above shows three photographs I made over the course of an afternoon and evening. I had my wet-plate collodion set up running and wanted to refine how I made glass plate negatives specifically for scanning. Once I had what I felt was a successful wet-plate negative it occured to me that I could easily make a film negative for comparison. And of course once I had both negatives scanned I thought I should add a digitally captured version into the mix.

I did very little digital processing of the wet-plate neg although I confess to removing handful of badly placed comets. For the film neg I upped the texture and clarity in Lightroom so it resembled the wet-plate image a little more although I wasn't aiming to make it identical. Likewise I tweaked the digital version but looking to get it to feel a bit like the wet-plate image rather than make it identical. I could have gone much further in either emulating the wet-plate version or improving on it.

Moving from left to right the amount of effort involved reduces by about an order of magnitude between each image. Processing and scanning a 4x5 film negative is probably ten times less work than making a collodion negative especially if you cut and prepare the glass yourself, salt your own collodion, make up your own developer etc. Compared to the film negative making the digital image is almost trivial.

The result is a set of images that become progressively "clinical" in appearance although none are displeasing.

Wet-plate Collodion

A really skilled wet-plate practitioner should be able to make plates that resemble orthochromatic film so this image's rustic, artisanal appearance is somewhat artificial. If I upped my game it would be slicker. Or I could just by some Ilford Ortho Plus film and save a lot of effort! Coming from the other direction roughing up a digital image to make it look like film or wet-plate is the worst form of pastiche. Why use one medium to emulate another when it has its own qualities to bring out?

Film Negative HP5+

So is analogue photography worth it? This question is unanswerable. Firstly it depends what analogue means. Conventional film is a lot easier than wet-plate collodion. Working in a hybrid form, where we scan the negatives into the computer, is very different from producing your own darkroom or alternative prints. More importantly it depends what we mean by "it". Do we mean the time, effort and money? If our reward is actually in the expending of time and effort doing something that pleases us then the more convoluted and difficult a technique is the more it is worth doing. We make pictures because we like making pictures after all.

Digital Lumix S1R

What I have learned from this somewhat accidental experiment is that film might be enough for outdoor work. I've been trying to compress my wet-plate process into a rucksack but I should consider more carefully if this is worth "it". I'm not saying it isn't and I won't work that way. I'm just mulling.

Voigtländer Avus wet plate again

2020-06-06T00:00:00Z

Scanned collodion negative. Five minute exposure.

Fun this afternoon playing with my adapted Voigtländer Avus and three month old Poe Boy collodion. I'm using quarter plate glass from some old glass plate negatives I found in a junk shop. I scrub the plates down and re-using them when the fail. I intensify successful ones for a couple of minutes with Ilford Selenium toner at 1+3. I'm using this camera enough now to warrant making a proper focussing screen for it.

View of the makeshift acrylic focusing screen

Voigtländer Avus with 4x5 adapter back in which quarter plates were used.

BBC micro:bit Shutter Timer

2020-06-03T00:00:00Z

https://youtu.be/XODxLiduKVg

The mechanical shutters found in many analogue cameras, especially those before the 1980s, are amazing pieces of engineering. Many still work accurately but alas many others do not. One solution is to pay to have them professionally serviced but often the camera simply isn't worth the expense. Also a shutter will sometimes be inaccurate but reliably and therefore totally useable.

To discover the actual exposures your shutter is giving you you need some kind of timer. There are a few alternatives. In the past I have used the slow motion video on my phone to film the shutter opening and closing. It is a chore to do but works for slower shutter speeds. You can record the sound of the shutter opening and closing and use audio software like Audacity to measure the time between the clicks of the shutter blades. Again this is doable but tricky. There is an app available to help you do it on your phone. You can also use a simple circuit to turn changes in light into audio clicks.

All these approaches are quite labour intensive so I thought I'd see if I could make a stand alone device that would measure shutter speeds based on the BBC micro:bit. If you haven't come across a micro:bit they are little, embedded systems created to encourage school children to learn to program. You can buy them for about £13 or you could steal one from a passing pupil. They have a simple display, a couple of buttons, some sensors and some I/O pins. You can program them using a graphical block language or Python.

I took a micro:bit and added a BPW43 photodiode, a 10 kΩ resistor and a 330 Ω resistor in a simple circuit that reverse biased the photodiode so it acts like a switch. This maxed out my electronics knowledge but works. I then wrote a simple Python program to measure the duration the diode was on for and convert that into something useful for a photographer. I'm more comfortable with the programming than the wiring. The result is demonstrated in the video above. The whole project cost me less than £25 which included a MI:power board so the micro:bit ran off a little battery rather than needing USB power.

Design skills! I'm not sure I have the diode the right way round. If it doesn't work just switch it. The 330Ω resistor may not be needed and the 10kΩ just needs to be big. These are just the ones I had to hand.

Check out my soldering skills!

This is the Python code to run on the micro:bit

The way I turn microseconds into photographic time is as follows.

If the microseconds are within 10% of a standard time (like 1/30th of a second) I count that as being correct.
If the microsecond time is greater than the standard time by more than 10% but less than half way to the next stop I add a + to the time e.g. 1/30+
If the microsecond time is less the standard time by more than 10% but greater than half way to the next stop I add a - to the time e.g. 1/30-

This is the way I think when I'm looking at a light meter and gets to within a third of a stop. i.e. "A bit more than 30th or a bit less than 60th". If you want timing closer than a third of a stop you really need to use electronic shutters. For print film it really doesn't matter once you are this close. If you can afford reversal film you can pay to have your shutter serviced!

Where next?

I have this working as well as I need it to for my purposes but I'd love it if someone else wanted to make one or maybe take it to the next level. For starters it would be good to have it working reliably for speeds up to 1/1000th. If people want to collaborate we could put the code in Github. I can't guarantee I'll be able to put too much time in as I'm back to the day job from tomorrow.

Everest in the woods

2020-05-31T00:00:00Z

Twenty minutes walk from home the Hermitage of Braid is a wooded valley beside the volcanic plug that is Blackford Hill. Scattered across the whole area are these lumps of igneous rock that withstood the retreat of the glacier fifteen thousand years ago. This is one of my favourites. I'm enjoying photographing digitally for the first time in a while.

Backpack Collodion: Expedition to the end of the ... garden

2020-05-30T00:00:00Z

My three month old iodising collodion finally got to me. Today I mounted an expedition to the bottom of the garden to make some collodion negatives. I've often wondered whether it would be feasible to do backpack collodion - to head for the hills with all that I need to make a few plates and return having left nothing but footprints. When I started making ambrotypes this seemed totally feasible. When I learned a little more it became totally farcical. Now it feels like a doable thing again. Perhaps the past ten weeks of lockdown are getting to me.

The picnic blanket is essential.

I used my Voigtländer Avus as it is the smallest but maybe not lightest 4x5 I own. It was an rag bag collection of bits that wouldn't fit in a backpack today but with some ingenuity maybe one day.

The collodion is very slow so I found I was making quite acceptable ambrotypes but had to give it really long exposures to approach something like a negative. I used my regular positive vinegar & sugar developer. There was little fogging even with thirty seconds of development.

This is before toning.

The results were not thick enough for alternative printing processes but my plan was to only get them good enough to scan. Rather than redevelop as is traditionally done I gave each a minute or so in Ilford Selenium Toner (1+3) which boosted the density and contrast somewhat. I've never heard of this done with collodion negatives before.

I scanned them in black and white on an Epson 800 resting on rubber tags a la Ben Horne. In Lightroom I gave them minimal tweaking and added a split tone. Overall I'm pleased. It was a pleasant way to spend the day. I discovered that making some 1/4 plate or 4x5 acrylic plates in the field and then scan them to produce reasonable size exhibition prints might be a feasible way of working.

Four of the six plates were worth scanning

How big can you print?

2020-05-25T00:00:00Z

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Abraham Lincoln (attributed to at least)

Even if being in lockdown doesn't enable too much creative photography it allows for some axe sharpening ready for when we are free again.

Today I took a picture of the shed in the garden with my Fujifilm X-Pro 2 camera. It has a 24 megapixel ASP-C sensor. The composition is almost random but I was very careful to lock it down on a sturdy tripod and focus and expose manually, releasing the shutter with the self timer to avoid movement. It is a very "correct" picture of a shed.

I did this because I had been lusting after a Fujifilm GFX 50R camera which has 50 megapixels on a sensor that is twice the size. It costs a lot. The lenses cost a lot. Both the camera and the lenses are heavier and bulkier than the Fujifilm X series I own. It would allow for bigger, higher resolution prints though. But just how big can I print now? This is a question I've thought about for a while and lockdown gives me a chance to find out the answer.

Standard wisdom (i.e. the internet) tends to say you need to send 300dpi (dots per inch) files to the printer. This isn't true. It is a rule of thumb from the days where 150 lines per inch were used in halftone reproduction. But still many people adhere to the 300dpi rule. At 300dpi the maximum I could print from my 6,000x4,000 pixel camera would be 20" x 13". I know from experience I can send lower resolutions to the printer and get good results and so could print bigger but I have never done real practical tests to check out how low - and therefore how big a print we can make.

I took the shed shot and, without editing at all, loaded it (via Lightroom) into Photoshop. There I sent it direct to the printer at A4 size.

This gives a ppi (a.k.a. dpi) to the printer of 524 - over kill. I used Epson Archival Matt and SuperPhoto resolution.

I then reduced the image size so it would be 300dpi (actually 299 because of rounding) and sent it again. Then again till I had done seven prints with different combinations of settings. These are the notes on my results.

524dpi - Overkill maximum from camera for an A4 print.
300dpi - Indistinguishable from 524dpi with reading glasses or close focus glasses.
200dpi - Indistinguishable from 300dpi with reading glasses or close focus glasses.
150dpi - Indistinguishable from 300dpi with reading glasses but looks softer with close focus glasses.
100dpi - Definitely soft with reading glasses. Pixelated with close focus glasses.
100dpi resized back up to 300dpi in photoshop. Horrible, over sharpened and artifacts.
Enhance Details in Lightroom then export to photoshop and print at 100dpi just the lock in the centre of the image. Looks a bit soft but would probably be OK with sharpening. This would be a 60x40 inch print.

How does this translate into print sizes?

DPI	Width	Height	Notes
300dpi	20"	13"	Easily good enough
200dpi	30"	20"	Easily good enough.
150dpi	40"	26"	Probably OK
100dpi	60"	40"	Possible with tweaking

So practical testing shows I could do 30x20 inch prints of the full image or even maybe with a little cropping. What about if I were using the GFX 50R? Then I could do 41x30 inch prints at 200dpi - which doesn't seem much bigger in the great scheme of things. It is twice the area but not twice the dimensions and a different, possibly preferable, aspect ration. We go from maximum 30" prints to maximum 40" prints for a lot of cost and effort. But the killer blow is that my printer only goes up to A4+ which is 19x13 inches! If I want to go any bigger I have to outsource my printing.

All this is not dismissing the GFX. I still have the old techno lust for it. I'm sure the image quality would be "better" but maybe in a few years when one can be had for a fraction of the current price.

Marchmont from 2 metres

2020-04-26T00:00:00Z

Are you bored during lockdown? Are you speaking to neighbours more than you did before? Would you like to be part of an art project capturing a little piece of this unique time?

In January my very special 8x10 inch Intrepid view camera arrived. It is new but of a kind that has been used for well over a century. I had planned to take it to the Highlands but I've found something as wonderful to photograph nearby - my neighbours in Marchmont.

I develop the film in the bathroom. At first I made cyanotypes prints (blue prints) because that process doesn't need a darkroom.

Hyam family: Cyanotype print

After a move around I've been able to start making darkroom prints in our box room.

Hyam family: Darkroom work print.

I like to keep the computer out of the loop as much as possible. We are all dragged into the interweb and zoom meetings so much at this time. These are scans of the 8x10 inch contact prints I make.

William and Caroline: Darkroom work print.

Dylan, Susan and Fiona: Darkroom work print.

Chris and Cara: Darkroom work print.

Jess & Caitlin: Darkroom work print.

Angus & family: Darkroom work print.

Lisa, Toni, Rachel: Darkroom work print

I'd like to photograph more of the people of Marchmont and nearby. Would you like to be involved? Do you know someone who would? I offer nothing but a few minutes distraction from the lockdown and a print. This is old style, analogue photography and the chance that the image won't "come out" adds a frisson of excitement! Perhaps we'll end up with a collection that captures a little piece of this historic time.

Unfortunately I don't feel I can visit people as leaving the house for an art project isn't currently permitted. But if you are interested please contact me by email: roger@hyam.net and we can try and work something out when the lockdown loosens a bit. I'm also thinking of doing some walk past sessions from our front door!

Sitter's eye view

Argyrotype: First tests

2020-04-11T00:00:00Z

The Argyrotype print process is a "modern" nineteeth century way of making silver prints on paper. It was created by Mike Ware in the early 1990's [British Journal of Photography, 139, (6824), 17-19 (13 June 1991)].

Back in 1842, right at the start of photography, Sir John Herschel created a process based on iron and silver called Argentotype. Later in the 19th century a whole bunch of variations on iron-silver printing were developed including Kallitype, Van Dyke, Sepiaprint and Brownprint. All these 19th century iron-silver processes suffered from the problem of clearing residual iron salts from the paper. Any iron salts that remain react with the tiny silver particles that make up the image and eventually the print will fade.

Mike Ware, who is a chemist as well as photographer and has consulted on archiving of older prints, created the Argyrotype process based on the rarer silver sulphamate rather than silver nitrate. This avoids the deposition of iron salts and partially sulphide tones the silver resulting in, we hope, longer lasting prints. More importantly from my point of view the process is very simple. It is almost as straight forward as cyanotypes. There is a single bottle of sensitiser that is coated on the paper, exposed under UV, cleared in water for 2 minutes (with a pinch of citric acid), fixed/toned in Hypo for 2 minutes and washed. When dry I then wax with Renaissance Wax. The sensitiser can be bought off the shelf (actually off the web from somewhere like Silverprint). The sensitiser has a shelf life of a year.

One of my first attempts at Argyrotype. A random high contrast 4x5 negative pulled from the file. Terrible composition!

I had kind of given up on plain paper based printing and was going to concentrate on making conventional silver gelatine darkroom prints but when Covid-19 arrived I lost access to my darkroom and had to look for alternatives. I ordered some Fotospeed Argyrotype sensitiser from Silverprint and have started playing. I love it. I have wanted to get the feel of salt prints for a while but that process can be messy to do in limited space, especially if you do floating paper method of sensitising, and takes a lot of tweaking.

The Fotospeed instructions say the contrast is about equivalent to Grade 0 on conventional photographic papers so you need really high contrast negatives. Here are my four 4x5 test negatives printed in a similar way to the way I printed them for cyanotype the other day.

Four test negative at different contrasts

It definitely benefits from the higher contrast negs, although you can see my coating isn't perfect.!Prints #3 & #4 were given the same exposure (90s) but I could have cut it half a stop for #3. I'm not sure where the uneven colour comes from. I thought it was drying marks at first.

Much to learn and do. I feel this may be "the one" process I want to work with for a while. The sensitiser isn't cheap but that is only in comparison to cyanotype which is practically free. The 50ml of Fotospeed sensitiser cost me £30 and according to the instructions would cover 28 prints at 8x10 - although I suspect that varies enormously by paper. If I really get into it I think I could make up my own sensitiser for less than half the cost if I had to. Doing this would also allow me to have batches of different contrast. I have a stack of archival paper/board from work that was going to be pulped that I can use so things are looking good. Next I'll maybe try an 8x10 Fomapan 100 neg.

Elementary Blueprint

2020-04-10T00:00:00Z

Stills Gallery and photography centre in Edinburgh was planning to run a project called Elementary Blueprint where they sent out cyanotype papers for people to expose to the elements around Edinburgh and sent them back to make a single exhibit - like a blueprint of the city I guess. Then Covid-19 happened which put a stop to a physical exhibit. It has now become a virtual project and expanded to cover the whole UK. A nice idea for lockdown Britain. People can still write in and get cyanotype papers but then they send back scans/photos of what they have done and a virtual combined work will be created.

I heard about this just as I crack open the cyanotyping solutions again because of the lockdown. So I've had an excuse to take some of the papers I'm using into the garden and expose them in different ways.

Crocosmia. Sunny Day. 8/4/2020

Stills invite participants to be loose with what they do and maybe not even bother to develop the prints. I can't quite bring myself to do that. I guess I'm too square or want to control the process too much.

I have been pinning papers to plants with bulldog clips and forgetting about them for a while.

Under the geraniums. Sunny Day.

Or wedging them in the foliage.

Raspberry bush. Dull evening. (1)

Raspberry bush. Dull evening (2).

The results I'm getting are fun. I'll submit these but not make anymore just yet. It would be interesting to see what rain would look like but that would be very dependent on when it came and how heavy it was. There would be a competition between the forming of Prussian Blue by the ambient UV light and the washing away of the sensitiser. I suppose that light rain on a very dull day would make the most diverse images especially if the paper was lightly covered with foliage.

You can take part too! Details are on the Stills website.

Negatives for alternative processes

2020-04-09T00:00:00Z

During the Covid-19 lock down I'm messing with cyanotypes and want to have a go at Argyrotypes. These processes use contact negatives the same size as the finished print. The negatives need to have a long tonal range - be very contrasty. Many people produce such negatives using an inkjet printer and transparency film. This allows for precise control of the tonal range and size. To me this seems redundant. By the time you are firing up the computer and inkjet printer you may as well make the final print that way too. And the easiest way to get the image into the computer in the first place is to make it with a digital camera. Resistance is futile. You have been assimilated. So I am looking at making high contrast, conventional, large format negatives for printing through an entirely analogue process - old school.

Window light and my 4x5 Intrepid to make the exposures.

The longer you soak a negative in developer the darker it gets. The effect is the same across the negative but the result is a change in overall contrast. If the shadow areas (thin on the negative) get 20% more silver developed and the highlight areas (dark on the negative) also get 20% more silver developed then the difference between the shadow and highlight areas increases. This is because 20% of almost nothing hardly changes the shadows but 20% of a lot changes the highlights markedly. Hence the old adage "Expose for the shadow and develop for the highlights". You need to get enough detail in the shadows first then development will change the density of the highlights and control the contrast of the negative. (It is obviously a little more complex than this with film base plus fog levels at the bottom and DMAX at the top and a bunch of other chemical niceties but the basic principle holds. Also remember for slide film and digital the rule is the other way around. "Don't blow the highlights because you can always pull back the shadows")

The subject taken with my phone. Why don't I just stop here?

So I set up a scene with a range of tones and photographed it four times then developed the negatives three different ways to generate a test set of negatives I could play with.

Negative	Exposure	Development
1	as per grey card	6m 30sec (as recommended)
2	+ 1 stop	6m 30sec
3	+1 stop	+ 50% = 9m 45sec
4	+ 1 stop	+100% = 13m

The four different negatives

For the record I was using Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec LC29 at 1:19 at 20ºC. There were about 5.5 stops difference from the black background and white petals. I compensated for bellows extension (250mm on a 150mm lens) by rating the ISO 400 film at ISO 120. Processing was in my Stearman Press tank in the bath as usual.

The four negatives on the light box

Looking at the results we can see that the black background is denser on 2,3&4 compared to 1 because of the increased exposure. It does get darker from 2 to 4 with increased development but not dramatically. The white flowers on the other hand change dramatically as we increase the development creating much more contrasty negatives.

A crude inversion of the light box image. I'll scan the negatives properly another time.

The first thing I tried with my new test set was some cyanotypes. I had to adjust the exposure for each negative ranging from 1m 30s all the way to 6m for the negative #4. The results are difficult to interpret because I haven't got my cyanotype coating technique standardised enough. I need to get the same amount of sensitiser on every sheet. But I do feel neg #3 is produces the nicest result although just a regularly exposed developed negative like #1 doesn't produce bad results.

Initial cyanotypes of the four negatives

This is just the start. I need to work on my cyanotype coating technique. I'd like to see if I can make as satisfactory digital scans of the high contrast negatives as the lower contrast one. This would give me the confidence to stew my negs for a long time to make alternative prints in the knowledge I can always scan and make inkjet prints if I want to. I also want to try them as Argyrotype.

Cyanotype: A lockdown friendly print process.

2020-04-03T00:00:00Z

Photogram of petals from Hellebores in the garden

With the family at home for the Covid-19 lock down there is no space to set up the darkroom and so little hope of analogue photography beyond developing film in the bath - but fortunately we still have cyanotype printing! Coating papers can be done on the kitchen table and developing in plain water in the sink. The exposure can be outdoors or with UV bulbs in the corner of the room.

An old 4x5 negative of Joscelyn

I have an analogue way to make prints from objects or sheet film negatives. I may even try, horror of horrors, making digital negatives. As soon as I perfect this we'll be set free again.

Honesty is good. The number of valves effect the exposure of course!

Possibly my favourite. I need to get coating right.

Wet Plate Party 2020

2020-03-29T00:00:00Z

18 Plates in under 24 hours

I turned 55 on 28th February and we used that as an excuse to invite friends around on Sunday 1st March for an open house. This is something we only do once every five years or so. This time I set up what is basically a Victorian photo booth. I really wanted to practice making my ambrotypes. I made sixteen plates between mid day and about nine at night. It was tough going but fun and I think people enjoyed seeing how the process worked and what the looked like. Here are some of the images.

I use compact fluorescent light bulbs augmented with LED UV black lights. We also used the yoghurt pot on the wall technique to keep people still. Exposures were around 3 seconds.

I use a Kodak Specialist 1/2 plate camera with a process lens. This is a really nice camera to use once it is on the tripod.

Faith: Taken as a test shot the night before. A bit bright but works.

Demetra: Checking my backup developer made from white wine vinegar. Not a good idea but worked slower.

Henry

Ainsley

Karen

Colin

Kenneth

For wet plate collodion buffs - I used Poe Boy mixed four weeks beforehand and decanted after two weeks. I use Hypo as a fixer warmed in a baby warmer to about 30C. I restricted my self to half plate size black Perspex to keep things simple. I don't varnish but use two layers Renaissance Wax. My whole process has to be low toxic and low impact as it is all done in our two bedroom flat.

Virus Stops Play

2020-03-29T00:00:00Z

Working with the wet plate collodion technique is something of a "lifestyle choice" in that it isn't an activity you can just choose to do when you fancy it. For starters acquiring the equipment and minimal skills to get the process going can take months. Once you are up and running the chemistry starts to age so you need to be continually maintaining it and planning ahead for when you might like to make some images. You also get rusty if you don't do it regularly. It's like making pancakes. If you make them every day then every pancake will be nearly perfect. If you only make pancakes on Shrove Tuesday each year then they won't be so good, certainly the first few will be disasters. In effect there is a part of you that needs to always be thinking about making collodion images if you are to do it successfully.

One part of the chemistry that ages visibly is salted collodion itself. Once the bromides and iodides have been added to the raw collodion it begins a process of iodisation. At first this is a good thing. The Poe Boy recipe I use needs two weeks to settle and become good. After six weeks it becomes less sensitive to light. After several months it is very slow. It may still be OK to make images of some kind but no good for portraits unless your subject can remain motionless for twenty minutes!

When I ran my Victorian photo booth at our wet plate party I made a couple of batches of collodion in advance so I would have different levels of maturity available. I also knew spring was coming and I'd get to use up anything left over in the coming weeks. Unfortunately what arrived in the coming weeks was Covid-19 and a nation wide lock down. I can't get close enough to other people to photograph them. My daughter has returned from university to wait out the passing storm with us and I've lost the spare room I need to do the process. I can't even prepare my mobile kit to make still life images in the garden.

Covid-19 has probably put an end to my wet plate collodion photography for much of the year. If things get back to normal in September I may be able to get up and running again but then the light will be drawing. Mean time I can get my ageing collodion out every now and again and watch it turn red. Ho hum.

Mark: Taken during the wet plat party. Things were getting flakey at this stage.

Marathon Monk: To 23rd March 2020 – 441 days & 2,646 mindful miles & into Covid-19 Lockdown

2020-03-26T00:00:00Z

Oaks at Dalkeith Country Park

The winter months have been tough in terms of colds and flu-like illness that have kept me from walking all the days I'd wanted. Nothing particularly bad but enough that I've had to take care of my body and get the bus one way or the other across town. I continue to walk in the gardens at lunchtime though.

Then Covid-19 arrives. On 18th March I was told to work at home. On 23rd the country went into lockdown and I'm asked not to leave the house at all. It looks like this will go on for at least a month maybe several months.

Could this be what ends the marathon monk project? We all have the wonderful opportunity of a few weeks to reflect. This an official pause of the project. Over two and half thousand miles so something to be proud of.

Snow Stops Play

2020-03-12T00:00:00Z

I attempted to make it to Braemar today to photograph the pinewoods - possibly in the snow. It was forecast to rain later but the rain came sooner and as snow. After two attempts I had to turn back. Ho hum. Try again another time.

Inspiration: Nobuyuki Kobayashi - Myriads of Gods

2020-01-31T00:00:00Z

Very inspiring. Shintoism/animism is important to me but so lost in our Scottish culture where gods of nature seem to have been shrunk to faery folk.

Somewhat disappointed by Nobuyuki's desire for posterity. For me the power of the analogue image today is that it is potentially ephemeral. Also the fact that he has a digital step in his workflow freaks me a little bit - but that is just of where I am in developing my work process.

https://vimeo.com/91495217

https://youtu.be/3BINQy1qM5Q

Official Website
Sway Gallery 2017
Sway Gallery 2019
THE GUARDIAN
PETAPIXEL
GRAINE DE PHOTOGRAPHE
LNE.ES
LOST YOUR MERRY WAY
LOMOGRAPHY
ELCUADERNO DIGITAL
WEBSITE: https://www.zenne-inc.com/
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/nobu8x10/
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Nobuyuki.Kobayashi.Works/
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/nobuyuki.kobayashi.75

Stearman SP-810: First Impressions

2020-01-27T00:00:00Z

This is a really quick post about the new Stearman SP-810 developing tank because someone asked me my opinion. I must be one of the first to own it. I'm not going to talk through the tank as you can see what it is and what it does in this video.

https://youtu.be/0WdzqOWl4h8

Tim Clien of Stearman Press gives his overview

I've been using the excellent SP-45 tank for my 4x5 work for a while but wanted to try 8x10. Whilst I waited for my Intrepid 8x10 camera to be made I assembled a bunch of associated equipment including an old junk shop jobo colour print drum that I intended to develop film in. In the end Stearman released this light tight tray and I thought I'd splash out even more cash on one.

The tray arrived before my camera so I ran four sheets of 4x5 through it instead of using my SP-45 tank and it worked very well although I don't think I would do this routinely. The SP-45 is a much simpler (smaller) experience for developing 4x5 if both tanks are available.

Anyone seen Hitchcock "Rear Window" recently?

Last week my Intrepid 8x10 arrived and the first chance I got to use it was Sunday. It was raining and windy so I made a series of test exposures out of the window. I still have to establish that the battered old film holders I've acquired are light tight and, of course, test the tank and developing process.

Cheaper option for light tent is a little large but works well

I don't trust the room I use to print to be light tight for film so I used a light tent for loading holders and tray.

The SP-810 is "just" a tray with a lid on. If I had a dedicated darkroom I'd be tempted to just use regular print trays to develop film. Having said that using one shot developer for consistency means longer development times and standing in total darkness for ten minutes for each sheet would make the SP-810 attractive even then. But, as you can see, my wet bench is the bath so the SP-810 is just perfect. (I practice yoga on the floor between agitations).

If you prop up the spout end of the tray it makes a good running water washer. I don't usually wash film this way but follow the Ilford method of a series of changes of water. It is better for the environment and probably more thorough.

One thing that concerned me was the speed with which the tray could be reused. With a conventional spiral tank or a tank with frames like the SP-45 you need to dry everything before reloading. If you are only doing one exposure at a time this could be a pain. It turned out however that it is quite quick to wipe down the SP-810 with a dedicated towel and get it dry enough to do another sheet in a few moments. So the neg can be transferred to a separate tray for washing whilst you get on with the next sheet. The same could be done for fixing but I'm reluctant to do this for purely superstitious reasons - I'm sure it would work fine.

It is quite a thrill to make your first 8x10 negs

I'm using Fomapan 100 and looking at getting negs suitable for alternative processes like cyanotype and salt prints.

I had time by the evening to do a basic cyanotype proof. My desire is to keep a totally analogue process from subject to print.

A verdict? On first usage the SP-810 is great. It seems robust and does the job very well. Nothing is perfect and I'm sure there will be some gotchas somewhere but they haven't jumped out at me yet. It feels expensive in both senses; you have to pay quite a lot (especially outside of USA) for it but then it feels like a quality product when you use it. If you are considering doing large format, especially bigger than 4x5, you need to be prepared for some cost. Doing large format in this day and age is just crazy - embrace your insanity :)

Addendum 5th May 2020

I've just done a series of film tests on 4x5, exposing and developing each of a dozen sheets individually, each for a different time. The SP-810 was invaluable for this. I just popped the sheet in (without the dividers) developed and stopped then opened the tank and moved it to the fixer. A quick rinse and wipe down of the tank and I was ready to do the next sheet. This tilts me more in favour of using it for doing 4x5. I still love my SP-45 but in critical situations where you want to see the results of the last sheet before you develop the next one the SP-810 is great.

First Salt Print

2019-12-21T00:00:00Z

My first Salt Print (a la Fox Talbot). As usually I took the "bull at a gate" approach to something new.

Google some
Watch some YouTube
Book from library and only read relevant bits
Substitute what comes to hand for what is required.
Go for it.

Because I already do wet plate collodion I had silver nitrate solution (9% not 12%) and some citric acid. I used paper from an old water colour pad I had lying around. The HP5+ negative made in my Intrepid Mk3+ is good for conventional printing but not contrasty enough really.

I'm really pleased with the result. Trying something entirely new and get and image - any image - is just incredibly rewarding.

What now? Will look at increasing contrast and smoother paper.

Marathon Monk: September-November 2019 – 399 days & 2,394 mindful miles

2019-12-01T00:00:00Z

It's been a patching three months. Been on a work trip for a week, a retreat and been ill but when I can I've still be doing the walk. Craving solitude just now. Not feeling like writing.

From Zombies to Tattoos

2019-11-23T00:00:00Z

I went to a lecture on The Walking Dead (a TV series about zombie apocalypse living) and photography at Stills by David Grinly last week. It was heavy post modern, French philosopher type stuff but also entertaining. David expounded in a semi random fashion. When I left after two hours the discussion was still going strong. They may still be there. He touched on something that acted as "a provocation" for this piece. Modern life is characterised by a loss of subject-object relations. This rings true but conflicts with my core assumptions based on the Buddha Dharma and overlaps with my previous thoughts on traditional photographic processes.

Buddhist philosophy, ethics and path can be summed up by the Three (or Four) Dharma Seals which are the same as the Three Marks of Existence.

Everything is empty of a separate self (sunyata). There are no essences or souls. Things are just composed of other things. They still exist. An empty cup doesn't mean a non-existent cup but no matter how far you dismantle the cup you won't find its soul, just clay and energy and thought.
Everything is impermanent (anitya). Because everything is composed of everything else if one thing changes everything changes. Impermanence is emptiness through time and emptiness is impermanence through space.
Nirvana - realisation/peace - is the celebration/embracing of emptiness and impermanence. Suffering is caused by rejecting this fundamental nature of existence. Sometimes suffering is considered a fourth mark of existence but it is really the flip side of the third. It is also where the false assumption that Buddhist say "everything is suffering" comes from. It is equally true to say "everything is enlightenment". The difference is purely on whether you embrace true nature or reject it.

So taking this world view I should be over the moon that modernity is characterised by a loss of our relationship with objects, after all those objects are empty anyway. But I'm not over the moon. It feels disturbing and precisely for the reasons zombies feel disturbing.

David demonstrated it very well. Holding up his keys he said "This keyring is very important to me. I bought it in the Cotswolds. But when anyone can go online and order three identical ones delivered tomorrow the specialness disappears." I'd sum it up as the combination of mass production and ubiquitous distribution destroying the intrinsic value of objects. They tend to only have an extrinsic value. This is amplified with digital objects.

We see this in the development of photography. Daguerreotypes along with tintypes and ambrotypes were one-off objects but the adoption of the positive/negative process and the possibility of multiple replacement prints devalued the photograph as object. Still during the analogue years producing identical prints, especially at different time points, was difficult. Negatives were often lost, degraded or guarded by a professional who wanted payment. This assured that photographs that weren't reproduced in books and magazines continued to be largely considered objects in themselves. And of course the negative was always the root object from which prints were derived.

Come the digital age photographs lost all meaning as objects. My digital camera simultaneously writes to two memory cards in both JPEG and RAW formats so there are four "originals" and none of them are tangible objects. As soon as I plug it into the computer the "images" (or is it the files or data?) are sucked into the cloud where they are distributed amongst multiple servers so as to be immortal. If I make an image with my phone this can happen almost in real time.

Pre-digital, when photographs were objects they could be experienced as impermanent and empty and therefore a source of nirvana, or at least happiness. In the digital age photographs are no longer living things that can give me the experience of emptiness and impermanence and so are not a source of true happiness. They are neither living things nor dead. They are zombies.

After my father died I went through a batch of his photographs, colour prints in folders with the negatives. Most were of historical sites he visited on trips in his retirement. They were of meaning to him but would have no meaning to anyone now. I threw them out. It was painful. I felt the passing and impermanence. I felt human and ultimately wiser. My children will have a very different experience with my digital photographs. They may not have access to my online accounts but if they do they could quite easily choose to keep everything. The image recognition algorithms would pull out any family photos that may be of interest. There is no need to discard or to experience loss. Many of the images will live forever without the meaning which was only derived from my presence. They become undead, life without meaning.

Perhaps this is our current fascination with zombies. We are surrounded by things that simply won't die even when they no longer have meaning and just bring trouble. We subscribe to newspapers online so we never have the experience of finishing one. We never spill our tea on a broadsheet or take cuttings that brown and curl. We read books on a Kindle so they never fill our house. Music can flow but our cupboards never fill and our virtual cassettes and records never wear out. We can consume as much as we like without ever having to poop. And yet we are never satisfied. Depression and anxiety increase. As with junk food we continue consuming pleasant experiences in a vain attempt to obtain sufficient nutrition but always fail.

The instruction in Buddhism, and other contemplative practices, is to engage with the physical first, to come back to the sensations of breathing and embrace our changing bodies and the world around us. The more digital that world is the harder it is to learn from it. A digital "object" has no possibility of expressing wabi-sabi, (it never ages) and its identity is prescribed. Contrary to the advice of some pundits, purchasing experiences can never satisfy us the way physical objects can. Exotic holidays ("travel") can be consumed multiple times a year without ever growing old or needing to be discarded. The photos from the trip can be stored forever without fading and the carbon emissions from the flights are soon forgotten, if they were even noticed. Other than the brief discomfort of returning to work the opportunities for growth may be smaller than from buying a new TV. Purchasing an object, whether it is a photograph, house plant or dog, involves disposal of the old one and watching the new one age into obsolescence and die right in front of us - making us feel more human in the process.

So what do you do if you feel hollow because you no longer connect with the physical world but are immersed in an undead digital one? Maybe you would watch zombie movies and vicariously engage in the pleasure of bashing the brains out of the undead. Maybe you would seek to possess something real, a one off, linked to you, that will age with you and die with you. Maybe you'd get a tattoo. There are hell of a lot of people with tattoos these days.

How to be more radical and effective than XR.

2019-10-19T00:00:00Z

Three little questions everyone can answer

How many flights have you taken in the last year?
How many days in the last week have you travelled by car?
How many days in the last week have you eaten meat?

Add the three numbers together. What was your total score? What will it be tomorrow?

The difficult bit

Tell someone else your score and ask them what theirs is. Maybe start with someone sympathetic to the cause then move on to your boss or the ubiquitous Brexit/Trump supporting uncle.

I've been thinking about these three questions for years and I simply don't have the nerve to talk about them to my friends and colleagues even though I work in an environmental organisation. And that fear is the fear that is destroying the planet. We comfort friends who are teary eyed about planetary destruction but don't have the nerve to talk to them about skiing/city/beach/eco holidays. We pretend it is complicated when it isn't. There is a simple way to keep score for all of us in industrialised countries, cut through the crap, and have real conversations about how we need to change society. But we never do it.

What would we need to change about our culture and society so that everyone can reduce their scores on these three questions? These are personal and political decisions but they start with just these three questions.

Imagine if journalists and politicians were asked these questions on the TV. If discussion programmes started by everyone laying their cards on the table. But they won't. Because we are scared.

In more detail

The logic is very simple. Per capita global CO2 emissions are around 5t (that is Metric Tonnes or 5,000kg). This isn't evenly distributed. People in least developed nations emit well under 1t per capita and people in most developed nations (as well as the privilege in many developing countries) emit more. In the UK/EU it is about 6.5t and USA 16.5t! (Source). So at the very least we should be looking to personally emit less than 5t today and reduce that very rapidly if we are interested in climate justice. If we can point to three big things in our lives that push use to over 5t then we should address those publicly. 80% of the problem is caused by 20% of the activity. This avoids the dead cat distractions of arguing about plastic straws (should be banned) or paper towels vs hot air hand dryers (who cares).

Flying is very very bad

Compared to anything else you do getting on a plane for a short or long haul flight is out and out the worst thing you can do to the planet. You should do it as little as possible or not at all. It is also the thing that is very often discretionary. People choose how often they travel for vacations. People who have jobs where they have to fly are the same people who have sway over how their jobs are organised. Too often foreign meetings are used as perks in a complicit game played between employer and employee. This is why you should count work flights as part of your total. Your job is your choice and the amount you flying in your job can be influenced by you. Own it. If it is justified you will have no problem touting a high score (see below). The only exception to the flights rule is air crew who are actually driving the planes! They can just count their discretionary flights.

Rule of thumb is 0.25t of CO2 for each hour flying [Source]. So ten hours flying is your total CO2 emissions for the year. i.e. nothing left for food, heating or ground transport.

Driving is very bad

Carbon emissions from cars are bad but they also facilitate emissions from the vast infrastructure needed to support them. This is why you should include travel by electric and hybrid cars. Remember they are just CO2 free at the exhaust pipe unless you already have totally renewable electricity. For conventional vehicles think of between 4.5 and 5 metric tonnes of Carbon dioxide per car per year on average 404 grams of CO2 per mile in the USA [Source] from the exhaust alone. The EU has mandated 95g/km (that's 162g/mile) by 2021 [Source]. So that is about 30,000 mile per tonne from the exhaust pipe. But this does not allow for infrastructure implications. The roads need to be built and maintained. When you drive you participate in a conspiracy called traffic that requires wider roads and larger parking areas for people to congregate. If you live somewhere you have to have a car then all the services you depend on will be car dependent. Your clients and friends and deliveries will all come by car. Car use per day is a good estimate of lifestyle.

Meat is far worse than you think

For years nobody mentioned meat. Recently it has become more mainstream to point out the impact to the climate on eating meat in particular. As an example if globally we switched to a plant based diet it would be the same as switching all fossil fuel generators to nuclear [Source]. Even sceptical people will now agree that the more they fly and the more they drive the more damage they do to the environment. The penny is just beginning to drop that the more meat you eat the more damage you do. Some argue that it is only South American cattle ranchers that are the problem and that grass fed beef from temperate areas is good because that is all you can do with the land. This is wrong. The conversion of vast tracts of land to improved or semi-improved pasture was as much part of the industrial revolution as James Watt's steam engine. That land needs to be returned to arable or rewilded.

There is very little research on the actual amount of CO2 and methane emitted from meat production in temperate, grassy areas but there was a really good discussion on BBC More Or Less that, in debunking a larger claim by George Monbiot concluded a leg of grass fed lamb was like a short haul flight.

20190927-BBC_more_or_less_leg_of_lamb

If your family of four only eats meat as the Sunday roast it is the equivalent of each member taking six return flights from London to Zurich each year. And that is the lower estimate from this fact checking programme where the presenters obviously enjoy eating lamb. Which is incredible. The thing is we don't know exactly but treating meat consumption, even grass fed meat, as being equivalent to car and air travel appears very reasonable. This applies as much to organic meat production as non-organic. There are likely to be better ways of producing meat but they aren't orders or magnitude less damaging.

A word of caution regarding the media coverage of the effects of meat production. Journalists will invariably interview a farmer or someone from the meat production industry for expert opinion. This is like asking a coal miner for his opinion on whether we could do away with coal fired power stations. In the last few years the media have more or less stopped doing that and they should also stop asking lamb farmers if lamb farming is a good thing.

Yes vegan would be better. Milk is meat but for simplicity and trying to hit a ball park figure just talking about meat at this stage is simpler. If you really care perhaps produce a second score for entirely animal free days.

Justice

Should we all have the same score? No way. If you are disabled and need to a car to participate in society then you may have a base level of six before you start. Nobody can criticise that. On the other hand if you would simply die without two foreign breaks a year maybe you should look into why that is.

Rich, privileged people will score far higher than poorer people. They are also the ones with the power to effect change.

My Score

As I type this my score is 5. I took four flights in June to go to a work conference in Germany. I've been vegetarian for nearly thirty years so the meat one is easy. I have a camper van that I drive at the weekends on out of town trips. I'm just about to drive it now so my score will go to six or so which is my average just now. I can't get below four till next June.

What is your score? Maybe share how you feel about it below.

Update 25/10/2019

I looked at the fine print on the World Bank estimate of 6t per capita and it says: "Estimates exclude fuels supplied to ships and aircraft in international transport because of the difficulty of apportioning the fuels among benefiting countries.” Neither does the World Bank estimates account for oils or methane from animals "They include carbon dioxide produced during consumption of solid, liquid, and gas fuels and gas flaring.” Therefore we should think of meat consumption and flying as additional to our 6t per year. We actually emit more than we think. Possibly double.

Marathon Monk: August 2019 – 358 days & 2,148 mindful miles

2019-09-10T00:00:00Z

My walk at the Botanics with my 100 year old Voigtländer camera

Not much to say this month. Very crowded with the festival. Such a relief when the posters come down.

Accidental Collodion Negative

2019-09-01T00:00:00Z

I made a disappointing ambrotype by pointing my half-plate, wet-plate camera out of the window. I was just doing a test shot to see how the collodion behaved. After two exposures it was still way over exposed/developed.

Disappointing Ambrotype

But then this evening I held it up to the light and realised I'd made quite a nice negative. It certainly looked like something that would print on normal paper. So I photographed it and inverted it digitally.

Digital conversion

I've not been that impressed when people have talked about how high resolution wet-plate is but this seems amazing.

As close as I can get with a macro lens on the digital camera.

I had thought that producing negatives for printing on modern paper would be hard and involve multiple steps but it seems that it is quite straight forward. You just need to expose them more! I'll have to have a go at doing some contact prints and enlargements.

Vintage Lens Coverage Graphic

2019-08-16T00:00:00Z

When you're shopping for a large format lens one of the first things you want to know is what the coverage is. Will it cover the format I'm working with and by how much? Having salvaged the Schneider Kreuznach Vintage Lens Data I found myself with a piece of A4 paper and a compass trying to work out whether a particular lens will allow for movements on 4x5 or stretch to 5x7 etc. Getting frustrated I wrote the rough and ready Javascript+SVG application below to do this job automatically. Simply pick a lens from one of the drop downs and it will draw the image circle for you. Don't go spending money on the basis of this application alone. Check out the spec sheets and do some tests if you are serious. Your lens coverage may vary!

By lens:

By coverage:

Schneider Kreuznach Vintage Lens Data

2019-08-16T00:00:00Z

If, like me, you spend too much time and money on old large format lenses you may be frustrated that the data that used to be hosted on the Schneider Optics site has disappeared. The URL now redirects to https://schneiderkreuznach.com/ I've looked around but can only find the data on the Internet Archives Wayback Machine where it is slower and trickier to access.

For your convenience and mind I therefore wrote a script and did some data knitting to create this single web page with all the old data on it. I expect someone will tell me this data is available somewhere else and I've wasted my time but it was only a couple of hours and is done now. Just search this page for the lens you are looking for.

Update: You may be interested in my lens coverage app based on this data.

I don't believe it is possible to copyright specifications within the EU so I am free to do this. I also don't believe Scheinder would mind - but guys if you do please let me know and I'll take it down.

Angulon

Introduced in 1930, the Angulon is the original Schneider wide-angle lens. It is a 6-element, 2-group, symmetric design. Compared to many modern wide angles, these lenses are quite compact, although the angle of coverage is only 80°. They are well color-corrected and the symmetrical design results in excellent close up performance.

Lens elements, Groups	6, 2
Shutter Size	00
Flange Focal Distance	63.5mm
Filter Mounting Thread	M 30.5 X 0.5
Weight (with shutter)	80g
Overall Length	21mm

Recommended Format (negative) Size	65 X 90 mm
Image Circle Diameter at f/16	109mm
Angle of View at f/16	81 degrees
Lens Displacement at f/16 (vertical/horizontal)	_
56 X 72 mm ; 56 X 72 mm	13/11mm
65 X 90 mm ; 58.2 X 81 mm	8/6mm

Effective Focal Length (F')	64.5mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	60.3mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	2.0mm

Lens elements, Groups	6, 2
Shutter Size	0
Flange Focal Distance	90mm
Filter Mounting Thread	M 40.5 X 0.5
Weight (with shutter)	130g
Overall Length	25mm

Recommended Format (negative) Size	90 X 120 mm
Image Circle Diameter at f/16	154mm
Angle of View at f/16	81 degrees
Lens Displacement at f/16 (vertical/horizontal)	_
56 X 72 mm ; 56 X 72 mm	40/35mm
65 X 90 mm ; 58.2 X 81 mm	36/30mm
90 X 120 mm ; 83.5 X 114 mm	10/8mm

Effective Focal Length (F')	90.4mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	84.7mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	2.7mm

Lens elements, Groups	6, 2
Shutter Size	I
Flange Focal Distance	121mm
Filter Mounting Thread	M 49 X 0.75
Weight (with shutter)	225g
Overall Length	30mm

Recommended Format (negative) Size	130 X 180 mm
Image Circle Diameter at f/16	211mm
Angle of View at f/16	83 degrees
Lens Displacement at f/16 (vertical/horizontal)	_
65 X 90 mm ; 58.2 X 81 mm	68/61mm
90 X 120 mm ; 83.5 X 114 mm	47/40mm
4 X 5" ; 94.4 X 120.3 mm	34/28mm
5 X 7" ; 118.8 X 167 mm	5/4mm
130 X 180 mm ; 122 X 172 mm	_

Effective Focal Length (F')	119mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	112mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	3.6mm

Lens elements, Groups	6, 2
Shutter Size	II 5/2
Flange Focal Distance	166mm
Filter Mounting Thread	M 58 X 0.75
Weight (with shutter)	310g
Overall Length	35mm

Lens	65 x 90	90 x 120	130 x 180
M-Componon 28mm/4.0	3.6x	5.1x	7.4x
M-Componon 50mm/4.0	1.8x	2.3x	3.5x
M-Componon 80mm/4.0	1.0x	1.2x	1.9x

Engraved Aperture	Relative Aperture
1	f/4.0
2	f/5.6
4	f/8
8	f/11
16	f/16
32	f/32

Reproduction Ratio	Engraved Apertures
1	2	4	8	16	32
1:1	1.6	2.2	3.2	4.4	6.4	8.8
1.5:1	0.9	1.2	1.8	2.4	3.6	4.9
2:1	0.6	0.8	1.2	1.7	2.4	3.3
2.5:1	0.4	0.6	0.9	1.2	1.8	2.5
3:1	0.4	0.5	0.7	1.0	1.4	2.0
4:1	0.3	0.4	0.5	0.7	1.0	1.4
5:1	0.2	0.3	0.4	0.5	0.8	1.1
6:1	0.2	0.2	0.3	0.4	0.6	-
7:1	0.1	0.2	0.3	0.4	0.5	-
8:1	0.1	0.2	0.2	0.3	0.5	-
10:1	0.1	0.1	0.2	0.2	-	-
12:1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.2	-	-
16:1	0.1	0.1	0.1	-	-	-
20:1	0.0	0.1	-	-	-	-

					Object field for negative size
Reproduction Ratio	Flange Focal Distance	Subject to Film Distance	Working Distance	Multiplying factor for exposure time	65x90	90x120	130x180
4:1	140	181	21.3	25	14.5x20.3	-	-
6:1	199	238	18.8	50	9.7x13.5	13.8x19.0	-
8:1	258	295	17.6	80	7.2x10.1	10.4x14.3	15.2x21.4
10:1	317	354	16.9	120	5.8x8.1	8.3x11.4	12.2x17.1
12:1	378	412	16.4	170	4.8x6.7	6.9x9.5	10.2x14.2
16:1	494	530	15.7	300	3.6x5.1	5.2x7.1	7.6x10.7
20:1	612	647	15.4	440	2.9x4.0	4.2x5.7	6.1x8.5

Recommended Format (negative) Size	180 X 240 mm
Image Circle Diameter at f/16	300mm
Angle of View at f/16	84 degrees
Lens Displacement at f/16 (vertical/horizontal)	_
90 X 120 mm ; 83.5 X 114 mm	97/87mm
4 X 5" ; 94.4 X 120.3 mm	82/70mm
5 X 7" ; 118.8 X 167 mm	65/55mm
130 X 180 mm ; 122 X 172 mm	62/51mm
180 X 240 mm ; 172 X 232 mm	9/7mm

Lens elements, Groups	6, 2
Shutter Size	III 7
Flange Focal Distance	213mm
Filter Mounting Thread	M 67 X 0.75
Weight (with shutter)	475g
Overall Length	48mm

Recommended Format (negative) Size	240 X 300 mm
Image Circle Diameter at f/16	382mm
Angle of View at f/16	85 degrees
Lens Displacement at f/16 (vertical/horizontal)	_
180 X 240 mm ; 172 X 232 mm	65/54mm
8 X 10" ; 194.7 X 243.2 mm	60/49mm

Effective Focal Length (F')	208mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	196mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	6.2mm

Lens elements, Groups	8, 4
Shutter Size	0
Flange Focal Distance	70.2mm
Filter Mounting Thread	M 67 X 0.75
Weight (with shutter)	465g
Overall Length	104mm

Recommended Format (negative) Size	56 X 72 mm
Image Circle Diameter at f/16	115mm
Angle of View at f/16	95 degrees
Lens Displacement at f/16 (vertical/horizontal)	_
56 X 72 mm ; 56 X 72 mm	16.8/14.2mm
65 X 90 mm ; 58.2 X 81 mm	11.7/9.1mm

Effective Focal Length (F')	52.7mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	24.2mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	47.7mm

	Coated	MC
Lens elements, Groups	8, 4	8, 4
Shutter Size	00*	0
Flange Focal Distance	51.6mm	52.2mm
Filter Mounting Thread	M 49 X 0.75	M 49 X 0.75
Weight (with shutter)	165g	235g
Overall Length	51.3mm	54.7mm
##### *Compur 00

	Coated	MC
Effective Focal Length (F')	47.2mm	47.5mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	32mm	30.8mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	18.3mm	20.8mm

	Coated	MC
Effective Focal Length (F')	65.3mm	65.3mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	44.3mm	43.4mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	25.2mm	26.9mm

	Coated	MC
Effective Focal Length (F')	76mm	75.7mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	51.2mm	50.7mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	29.1mm	29.6mm

	Coated	MC
Lens elements, Groups	6, 4	6, 4
Shutter Size	0+1	0
Flange Focal Distance	99.0mm	98.8mm
Filter Mounting Thread	M 67 X 0.75	M 67 X 0.75
Weight (with shutter)	363g	390g
Overall Length	78mm	74.9mm

	Coated	MC
Effective Focal Length (F')	90.7mm	90.4mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	66.3mm	67.0mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	30mm	26.9mm

	MC
Recommended Format (negative) Size	180 X 240 mm
Image Circle Diameter at f/22	288mm
Angle of View at f/22	100 degrees
Lens Displacement at f/22 (vertical/horizontal)	_
90 X 120 mm ; 83.5 X 114 mm	91/81mm
4 X 5" ; 94.4 X 120.3 mm	83/76mm

	MC
Effective Focal Length (F')	121.4mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	90.2mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	35.1mm

	Coated
Effective Focal Length (F')	121.6mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	88.5mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	40mm

	Coated	MC
Effective Focal Length (F')	165mm	165.7mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	120.4mm	123.2mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	55mm	47.8mm

	Coated	MC
Recommended Format (negative) Size	300 X 400 mm	300 X 400 mm
Image Circle Diameter at f/22	500mm	500mm
Angle of View at f/22	100 degrees	100 degrees
Lens Displacement at f/22 (vertical/horizontal)	_	_
180 X 240 mm ; 172 X 232 mm	141/121mm	136/120mm
8 X 10" ; 194.7 X 243.2 mm	121/109mm	121/108mm

	Coated	MC
Effective Focal Length (F')	210mm	210.2mm
Back Focal Length (S'F')	153mm	156.6mm
Principal Point Separation (HH')	70mm	60.5mm

Recommended Format (negative) Size	56 X 72 mm
Image Circle Diameter at f/16	110.6mm
Angle of View at f/16	70 degrees
Lens Displacement at f/16 (vertical/horizontal)	_
56 X 72 mm ; 56 X 72 mm	14.0/11.7mm