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Well, yes . . . the thread was originally intended
to talk about the supply and demand of silver gelatin paper.
Few people seem to care that it's going to the ways
of oil paint . . . manufactured by a few highly specialized craftsmen thrilled
to make fine paper in many grades and types of paper.
Morely Baer found some exotic paper when in Spain,
and brought it home to print a portfolio on the California Adobe
structures. It was highly successful.
Ansel Adams would find one paper and use it to the
death.
Edward Weston would use whatever he had or got
free, or at a bargan price. Mostly he used Azo paper, or a standard he was
comfortable with in the technique.
I use whatever fits my need. I found some
cheap paper gave me better results than Agfa, so I did the whole portfolio with
that. I never get locked into one product.
I applaud the Bergger people and Elfke (?) and
Forte for simply takin gpride in making a fine product and it tells.
Oriental, made in Japan certainly isn't going away. I never got terribly
excited over Ilford, but it was certainly consistant.
My 8X10 and 5X7 contact prints on Azo are
terrifically gratifying. Brilliant paper is a consistantly easy paper to
render all gray tones and with dark shadow detail, too. I never got into
Kodak Polymax, but I like what I see printed on that.
I simply cannot see Kodak changing out of the black
and white photography supplies. That just 'ain't gonna'
happen.
S. Shapiro
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 12:09
AM
Subject: Re: Fate of Silver Gelatin
Paper
I agree Bob, this thread is starting to get argumentative...however, and
I'm not trying to be snitty, but your points (and they are good ones)
represent a level of opportunity and education that is accessible only to the
privileged few in these nations. Such markets only exist on a mail order
basis. Such activity requires, not only money, but literacy, facility,
and available time. Bob Talbot
<BobTalbot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
Film makes no sense in a poor village with no
> electricity. With
electricity being introduced recently, it's easy
to have
> a shop
with a Frontier and sell digital cameras to the locals.
Frankly Jeff
this whole line is getting very silly.
My first encounters with
film did not involve a single spark of
electricity: it was simply
developed with exposing paper via the sun.
Of course home development had
already become a minority sport by the
time Gran taught me how to do it.
In fact I don't remember her 50-y
of photography needing a single 13-amp
power point. Cameras really
were just boxes to hold film.
Even
when we went the more conventional route, taking the films to
"Boots" for
processing. It still didn't need any local processing.
In fact, you can
still just pop your films in an envelope and have
them back a few days
later for 5 dollars. No need computers and power
to view the "latent
images" anywhere near the point of use - it just
needs a postman (a man
on a bike with a bag) and a tiny amount of
patience.
Oh well,
those days are past worldwide it
seems.
Bob
"The optimist believes this is the best of all possible worlds.
The pessimist fears it's true" - J Robert Oppenheimer
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