Enjoyed reading those 'way back machine' replys.
I remember the 70's. I don't think much changed in basic
photography between the late 60's and in the middle 70's when I got
educated about such matters. We were always reading articles in
Pop. Photog. about pushing the 'ol TriX. I think someone got it up
+5 stops once using nuclear fission in one of those articles. My
theory was that those stories were just recycled every couple years
when 80% of the subscriptions turned over so nobody would really
notice.
I also remember:
...squegeeing (word?) the strips of negatives,
...bulk film canister reloading,
...stop bath stains on white t-shirts,
...pricing but never buying a temperature control system,
...using Graylab enlarger timers for practical jokes,
...Ektol, D76 and D11,
...photograms,
...making my own dodging tools,
...pennying someone into a film loading room,
...being accused of stealing the lenses (all 10 of them) off the
enlargers at college, and later told that they got the 'real' thief
(almost didn't get the diploma over that one),
...my beloved Canon AT-1 manual. Simple elegance.
...using the colleges 4 x 5 view camera for a couple weeks. That
was magic.
Panatomic X ??? There was another one that was slower mostly came in > 120 rolls..damn I can't recall it either
PanX. Best ever at ASA32. Yes, I used that one almost exclusively.
Hardly any grain. The other pop. was PlusX at ASA125.
Slow? ASA32? Nah ! One of my photo teachers made his own
emulsions and coated his own sheet film. He demonstrated what SLOW
was once. 5 x 7 sheet in a view camera at f45 (not 4.5... 45!)
with an effective ASA of 0.8. Took 45 minutes to expose the inside
of a cathedral in Chicago in the daytime. It was a stunning amount
of resolution, and still can't be beat today. We didn't challenge
his claim that a resulting print, if it could be made life-size,
would show hardly any grain. That was 25 years ago.
Oh, and BTW, Kodak still makes TriX, in 35 and 120. My guess is
people are STILL trying to push it 5 stops.
MikeF wrote:
Remember when we all used TriX at 1600 asa and dev'd in Rodinal.
Printed 16x20's on grade 4 or higher, mixed our own Hypo, wore long
hair and a brace of Nikon F's were slung around the neck along with
the chunky silver pendant.... probably not
but I thought I'd
head back there.
MikeF
