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Kodak To Stop Making Black and White Paper
Swirsky writes "For those of us who remember spending quality time in a dark room with Kodak Rapid RC paper and a bottle of Dektol, here's some bad news - Kodak will stop making black and white photographic paper. Black and white photo work (especially because you can use a safelight!) is a wonderful way of introducing someone to photography. I guess if we want to do it, we'll have to use home-made emulsions on paper. As a pro photographer, I'm bothered by this, though admittedly I haven't done b/w darkroom work in years."
Ilford is so much better, and Kodak relying on their band name is more expensive. I still use a few hundred sheets a year of black and white photographic paper and I hadn't even heard about this.
When Ilford stops making paper that will be a sad day. Kodak stoping isn't even newsworthy.
Most of digital camera uses a cheaper quality CCD with a shallow dwell depth, i.e., saturation occurs too quickly and hence only achieving low dynamic range. Spatial resolution isn't that great either, definitely not opimizing the quality of lenses available in some cases (Nikon D* series, etc).
And converting a color CCD image to B&W isn't the same, since the pixel filtering is likely involved (if it's a professional digital camera with multi-ccds and a beam splitter, it might be ok).
And obviously you never looked at mid-frame size camera. Digital media is approaching to 35mm camera, but nothing beyond that.
Kodak makes great film (T-MAX 3200P, Tri-X), but their Variable Contrast paper has never really been of Fine-Art quality. The images always seem muddy. I've never really gotten a good print out of Kodak paper, and only really use it for contact prints.
Ilford makes a lot better paper, especially their Fiber VC glossy. And Agfa makes an incredible Resin Coated (RC) VC glossy (MPC 310), with incredible tonal depth.
I just can't wait to burn through my remaining Kodak polycontrast paper.
Nobody serious about B&W printing will miss Kodak. And if anything it will just mean Ilford and Agfa (who are both struggling) will enjoy a larger market-share. Maybe even Oriental will make an American surge.
For those of you who are curious about what traditional photography has over digital in an age where digital is approaching (and soon exceeding) the resolution of film, it mostly has to do with art, and the feel of the print. For journalism, tourist shots, birthdays, and pr0n, you won't get much for the hassle of chemicals. But there's an organic quality that digitial is missing, which affects artistic expression.
It's kinda like this: a CD of Jazz music played over a solid-state stereo has a completely different feel than a staticy record of Jazz music played over vacuum tubes.
Which is better? Well, it's purely subjective.
-j
--
photos @ http://www.ghostmanonfirst.com/
No DSLR uses multiple CDDs (AFAIK). You'll get rather a good B&W by just taking the green channel.
Finally film resolution is always quoted for some tiny contrast ratio (20%? something like that). Digital resolution is at 100% contrast ratio so it can actually look sharper even when the lpi is lower.
If anyone's not seen it, this DSLR vs medium format shootout from a few years ago has some interesting stuff in. Has a film person made a rebuttal? I'd be interested to see.
We've got good consumer home equipment printing options and affordable big commercial labs (filled with automated equipment and button-monkey "technicians") and digital photo everything within easy grasp and price. Digital photography is cheaper all around and has many noteworthy advantages over traditional photography.
Also, even the most weenie digicams one step above the Wal-Mart toys has a B&W and Sepia setting, and the good digicams have tons to offer.
So why fuss or lament ??
Because the collective body of knowledge, experience and artistry in photography is formiddable, and black & white process is an inseperable part of that. Because printing photos (again, where the discontinued paper comes in) is a whole different world from actually taking the photos. Because artists use B&W and it's the most sensible place for newcomers to start learning since it's easier and cheaper than traditional color process.
I'm not sad that Kodak for business reasons decided to quit making B&W paper. That was a business decision from an old company that's confused about it's current and future place in an industry it helped define, and trying to survive. I AM concerned that some will view this as the demise of traditional photograhphy. I don't believe it is.
If traditional small format (8 and 16 mm) motion picture film can survive in a digital imaging world, then traditional photography certainly can.
Photography has a history of invention and evolution, this is just another step.
B&W process will move to the edge, the background. It will step away so that newer processes can rise, but it will not be lost, not for a very long time at least.
While digital process photography will take over the mainstream, B&W process will remain in the hands of the artists and those who wish to learn the craft of photography.
Bottom line, B&W is not dead, one important company's decision to get out of the business is not it's tombstone, and the value of having a significant body of knowledge + traditional options + modern innovation and evolution leading the way makes the craft all the more rich and strong.
- Marching Band: It's not just for breakfast anymore
As a photographer for 21 years, from 1957 to 1978, where lots of my work came out of a B&W darkroom (and where I did the work with my own little hands), Illford was popular but crap compared to the control one had with Kodak Polycontrast papers (although the Illford filters worked better with Pollycontrast).
I taught photography and darkroom technique as well as working in advertizing, technical and photojournalism photography. Perhaps your pictures were muddy on Kodak paper because you didn't know how to make a good negative. The extra gamma (contrast) of Illford papers was often a crutch for bad photographers.
And the only way to let your photo speak for itself instead of being pseudo art was to use a glossy paper (matte and semi-matte was for the photo clubs) although ferrotyping was silly.
So, now my dream of an exibit of my old work (including the first Woodstock Festival as well as the Vietnam anti-war protests in DC and NYC and Berkeley) in 16x20 and larger is dead?
Digital has thus far failed to meet one unavoidable reality.
We observe in analog...
the pixels in a digital image shouldn't be aligned.. they should be slightly random.. the frames in video/computer monitors should be a constant sequence of random photons. Digital audio should be Hi Def and slightly fuzzy and data storage should have a level of redundancy.
Until that is met, purists will continue to dislike the tech.
That said, HDR cameras (http://www.cybergrain.com/tech/hdr/) and HD cameras will revolutionise (even more so) the imaging world.
If I can see a scene, capture it with a single click and later frame it, adjust the colours display it on a high dynamic range monitor, or modify the image so the mountains are as visible as the sun setting behind them, then I say this overcomes a *massive* shortcoming of current and previous cameras.
I don't care for the "art" of technical photography. The real art is in seeing and capturing the images.. the technical side is a clumsy romanticised inconvenience.
Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic
The general shrinking of the market is worrying though - my digicam just doesn't do what I want it to (big enlargements, shallow depth of field, nice grain) but I can see film and processing getting a lot more expensive. I don't think it will ever disappear though; the lab I use have just bought a few millions' worth of new processing equipment and black-and-white was never completely killed off by colour. I don't think there'll be much R&D going into film any more, but Tri-X is decades old and people still like it :-)