Black and White Photography Blog, Vol. I

[From today’s New York Times]

New rules being considered by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and insurance.

The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment.

Photo Regulations - Proposal (PDF)

I think this is worth coming back from my so-called vacation to post.

New rules being considered by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and insurance…

THE DECISIVE MONTH

Ms. Cho said the office expected to publish a final version of the rules at the end of July. They would go into effect a month later.

The permits would be free and applications could be obtained online, Ms. Cho said. The draft rules say the office could take up to 30 days to issue a permit, but Ms. Cho said she expected that most would be issued within 24 hours.

Four large prints from WCI (West Coast Imaging) should arrive by Monday. This will clinch for me whether this setup with them will work for my larger commercial work. As I mentioned, the first print I did with them on silver rag (which is what I use) was an 11 x 14 and it turned out perfect.

These are for 16 x 24s and 20 x 24s. Makes me sort of wonder how large I could go with one of my 4×5 negatives. I’ll know that soon as well as I’m working on a file from a 4×5 neg. to go up to 30 x 40 inches.

I have one confirmed client, and one potential client - both involve about 20 large prints. So they’re waiting to see these. It’s still part of testing for me. The four prints are from: 35mm hp5, 35mm T-Max 100, medium format tmy, and large format (4×5) tmy.

In the meantime, I’m pretty busy filling orders for regular web customers.

* * *

So far I haven’t been rezzing up. A 35mm neg. scanned at 5400, and output at 300 dpi is a little larger than 16 x 24 inches.

And medium and large format will go up to these sizes easily.

But I’m going to have to do some rezzing up on this next project where the 35mm negative needs to go to 30 x 40 inches at 300 dpi. I don’t know the best way to do this. I know there are photoshop plug-ins for this but haven’t researched it at all yet.

* * *

I bought Power Zoom 2 about two hours ago based on your recommendations and after testing the trial version. Great so far. So far, I’ve gone up to 30 x 40 from 16 x 20, and 30 x 45 inches from 16 x 24. I printed sample pieces since I can’t print the entire image. And I can’t see any difference between them and the smaller prints (other than that some dust that was on the negatives was magnified, and needs retouching!)

Thank you all! This will do the trick for me.

I know that we are all against getting old and that we do everything possible to prevent it. But there are great pleasures to be had in getting old. One of them happened to me the other day. I was standing in line in the convenience store waiting to pay for toothpaste and watching the checkout girl mumbling to herself. As I approached her the mumbling continued. I began to think that my hearing was going since I could only make out every other word. I figured she was on a cell phone but I didn’t see any. And so, she continued to talk into the air and punch up my toothpaste. Handed the package to me. I walked about five steps and then turned to her and said, are you talking on the phone?

She laughed, still mumbling, and pulled her hair back from her right ear. Now I understood her when she said, bluetooth! And giggled.

But where’s the microphone, I asked.

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and said, Bluetooth, again.

I know what bluetooth is, I said. But - I don’t understand. What are you talking into?

She laughed again and said she didn’t know. Bluetooth was doing it all somehow.

I walked out feeling - ah - this next generation is in for it. I’m glad that when I was growing up we just had the transistor radio. That plastic made-in-japan radio with the earphone seems downright ancient now. But at the time - the grownups were predicting dire results for us - as I’m doing now. But growing old has an upside. You don’t care as much about looking foolish. When I was her age - I might have felt uncool asking how that worked. Or what it was. Now it doesn’t matter.  I don’t want anything to do with it.  I’m sure it is causing future ADD cases.  It’s the un-zen.

And I love the idea of watching this new technology and for a change not understanding how it works at all. I hope there is more like it so that I can have these little surprises during the day. I hope that tomorrow I’ll see someone walking around with their eyes shut, and find out that they’re watching the world through video inputs. Or that someone has finally figured out a way to zap gravity, and I’ll leave the house and find people with bluetooth floating by. Frankly - I think being able to see this stuff and imagine where it’s going - and yet still remember the ancient transistor - or in my case the rotary phone - is just a great pleasure of aging.

I’m importing the old entries into this blog - came across this entry:

March 3, 2001

I’ve really given up on the digital black and white printing. I guess I experimented with it for about six months. The results weren’t bad, but not the same tonal range as the darkroom stuff I’m doing. Also, the equipment, seems more finicky. The printer was working fine for a month or so, and then I started getting banding. I spent a lot of money on cleaning, using different inks etc. but for sure the results when you are doing a large print were not as good. This, does not seem to be the case for color.

Today I’ve been printing for a few hours, and I’m really banging them out. The secret, at least for me, is to keep very good notes, which is not really in my character, but I’ve learned the necessity the hard way.

And the Zone VI enlarger, which I’ve been using for ten years or so, has never failed. I guess the bulb will eventually need to be replaced, but that’s about it.

[Never say ‘never.’]

The two students came up with the next big thing: a new search engine that would work with distributed computing and would be able to rank pages based on relevance and popularity. The computer instructions would be tamper proof. You couldn’t buy your way to the top.

Now in the history of the mankind - absolute power has always corrupted - absolutely. However, how would a set of computer instructions set into robotic crawlers withstand this edict.

The f++ company quickly became larger and more powerful than any other software company. f++ was the web.

The f++ robots encircled the world at the speed of light, indexing physical books, blogs, movies, emails, desktops - and just about anything that could be used to display ads.

One day, the founders shocked the world when they retired and went off to do charitable work. The next didn’t have the high moral goals of the founders.

It’s true, the second generation had been picked by the founders - but here the founders made a bad mistake and were fooled by the seconds.

And so - suddenly the world found itself depending on an entity that knew everything about everybody - high and low. The founders had discovered that they could become even more powerful if they used the knowledge which the robot crawlers had attained…

Perfect. The print (an 11 x 14) which I had them do on Silver Rag - arrived a few minutes ago.

I figured since they were printing in the same color space as me on the same paper with the same ink, and since they weren’t making any changes to the file, odds are that the print should come back from the 9800 looking close to what I get with the 4800 if not identical - and it is identical.

And — the packaging is bulletproof. And reusable. In fact, they seem to be using the same packaging that I use!

So I’m thrilled. They’re doing full-bleeds - which I don’t need. I need to ask them about specifying borders. But that was the only hiccup.

Next step, I’m going to send off two 20 x 24’s. Those will be used to show a potential client. Thanks to all who recommended them.

And that means that I can put off buying the 7800. I’ll do everything up to 16 x 24 on the 4800, and the rest I’ll send off to WCI. If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you know I’ve tried lots of labs - and this is the first good experience I’ve had. Not just with the print quality, but with the process. For example, when the print was shipped, I got a nice Fedex tracking number so I could keep an eye on it.

Let’s see how it goes uploading a larger file. My roadrunner upload speed isn’t that great. Might be easier to send off a CD or DVD.

Phew.

I’ve been using a piece of cardboard to cover the Epson 4800.

I splurged today ($105) for a Tumi Printer Cover. Nylon.

UPDATE: Cover arrived. Well made. Only thing is - if you’re using 220 ml cartridges, it doesn’t exactly fit. It can be used, and I’ll keep it, but it doesn’t fit properly over these larger cartridges.

* * *

Basically, I have about as much work as I can handle these days. Not a lot of time or energy to shoot though I managed to do a roll at the 2nd avenue fair yesterday (right outside my door and nice overcast weather).

I remember sitting on a plane returning from the west coast (eight years ago) and telling the guy sitting next to me that I was going to sell photographs on the web. He was one of these guys in technology that knows everything. So his response was that I would never be able to make a go of it on my own and that I should hook up with a larger photography site and sell from there. My argument was that I’d be lost at a larger site, and that I wanted the site to reflect my own personality. You’ll never be able to get traffic, he insisted. Never.

Frankly - I figured he was probably right - but went ahead with my own site anyway. I’m 0ften impressed by people who are very certain about things - not that they have sway over me - but I wish that I could be as certain about things. But I go on my merry way - it all being a test of ideas against reality I suppose.

* * *

Will let you know how the print I did at WCI (West Coast Imaging) on silver rag turns out when I get it back - hopefully tomorrow. Plan being to hold off on the 7800 for a while if I can get good results from WCI. Also thinking that I can re-use their packaging for the larger prints. Anyway - quite a bit of things in the hopper, including photographs to be used in a book on photography technique that should be out soon.

* * *

This blog is fine as is - but I don’t think that it will ever be a good home page for a store. Not unless it’s a static page (which you can do with Wordpress) though at that point… Also fascinating is that I really couldn’t find a good plug-in for using paypal shopping cart with wordpress. It may be out there, but I haven’t found it. Yes, a couple of things are floating around but they aren’t very robust. I would think there’d be a good market for that and that it wouldn’t be all that difficult to write.

January 16 (Post) and January 17 (News) 1995.

UPDATE:

I saw that it doesn’t overwrite anything so I installed it.

First problem - when I entered the key - it didn’t allow copy and paste so I had to write the key down and enter it manually.  It was rejected.  Then I realized it wanted the dashes to be input manually between the 5-digit clumps.  That worked.

Then I started Media Expression and opened one of my old iView Media Pro catalogs.  It immediately crashed…  XP still stable, but Media Expression wanted to know whether I wanted to send this to MS or not…

However, as I say - my old version of iView still works fine.

* * *

Last year, iView Media Pro was bought by Microsoft. Today I received an email with a free* upgrade to Microsoft Media Expression. There are now many flavors of what used to be iView. Here is a link to Microsoft Expression Menu.

You’ve got your Expression Blend, your Expression Web, Expression Design, and what I’m entitled to - Expression Media. Oh that’s right - there’s one more: Expression Studio which includes all of the above.

Yikes.

Since I hardly know what each one is supposed to do, I’m not going to yell, bloated software. But I did need an antacid after navigating to their FAQ page.

The real question - should I bite the bullet and do the upgrade from iView Media Pro to Media Expression? I guess I will - after doing a good backup of the current setup.

As a note - the iView catalog and templates are the basis for my current shopping cart - and all web galleries.

* Free (no extra money, but how much time? and am I losing or gaining functionality?)

The Pina Zangaro portfolio (metalic, landscape, letter-size, with adhesive strips) arrived today. It is beautiful. And a piece of cake to put together. (see previous post about where I got it etc.)

What I like is that I can use my own paper of choice - the Museo Silver Rag sheets - there is no “show through” - and the thing is nice and sturdy.

I actually think that the 6 x 9 image size is a little bit too big and I’m sticking with 5 x 7. I’m going to do the first one as a sort of overall sample with no particular theme. Just a sampler.

After that - anything goes.

I had been working with the flex-hinges, where the print is attached to the hinge which then goes into the screwmount. But I had wanted to see how the paper looked in the polypropylene sheet protectors. And they arrived today. Very impressive. You get protection, and that slight look of being under glass; and now it is practical to do front and back (i.e. you get facing pages). So that’s how I’m going with the portfolio. And you can hand it around without worrying about people drooling on the prints.

Here’s what the production costs:

Landscape Machina Kit (which includes a nylon cover, extender screwposts so you can go to 20 or more sheets), comes with 10 sheets (each holds two prints), landscape, letter size:

$87.75 (kit)

Paper and ink (silver rag) comes to about $2.00 per sheet. So for forty prints thats:

$ 80.00

You need 10 extra protectors:

$18.00

Total: $185.75

If you want to produce a portfolio with only 20 prints, then say $105.

And if you want to use cheaper paper - then you can bring the cost down by another $40 or so.

The intriguing part of all this is that when you move up in size the portfolio covers etc. aren’t the real expense - it’s the paper and ink.

Anyway - it’s a nice system - and I’m setup with inDesign so that I can print out one portfolio at a time. But it is time consuming - and stuff happens. Now I’m off to the darkroom (I mean bathroom) to develop stuff from yesterday.