COBBLER'S PAGE

Now we have extended the CRC Newsletter to cover black and white photography it might be useful to know how many club members are interested and do B & W in any form. 

The processing of monochrome reversal has been well covered in the newsletter. I know of a handful who have enlargers as I occasionally get a response to what I write I assume darkrooms are in use. A recent survey quoted in the'DARKROOM USER' magazine reported "a drop from 750,000 units (enlargers) to 50.000 sold worldwide over a ten year period".

 Does this mean that 90% of printers are well satisfied with their enlargers or that a similar percentage have given up the darkroom?

From my own narrow experience I would think most enlargers are bought as a one off item. I have only had two over a span of fifty years. They are not items you need to replace as the design is static functional and they don't wear out. A friend works in a shop handling second hand photographic gear and he reports that they get enlargers in regularly, about two a month,and these are sold within a couple of weeks. Does this mean that the newcomer is buying secondhand because the new is too expensive? and the enlargers coming in are from people packing up? The answer is probably a bit of both. 

Along with the traded-in enlargers there comes some times photographic papers. I was given a batch the other day which contained packets of opened 12"x 16" Gaevart K44, grade 1 & 2 and a packet of Kodak Bromesko IFL 10"x 8", grade 3. A rough guess puts them both at thirty years old. With a drop of 142 added to the developer I gave them a try. The Gaevart paper was in excellent condition and showed no sign of base fog. The Kodak had slowed down considerably but again no sign of fog. 

These old papers were easy to manipulate with extended range in highlights and shadows compared with papers today which I find harder to work with,(with the exception of Kentmere Art Classic). What has been done to modern papers to make them an inferior product? Papers now don't keep as long, colour paper in particular seem to 'go off'. Resin coating is cracking according to a report in 'DARKROOM TECHNIQUES', "prints on display are deteriorating, with surface cracks appearing even on those that have been toned". 

Colour prints are on resin coated material, so as well as fading dyes we can expect the surface to break down. Has anyone had experience of this with their own prints? 

I have had colour slides go red all over on prolonged exposure to light, yet I have slides forty years old seemingly still accurate in colour and in excellent condition when stored properly. Some of the old Ferrania slides compare very well to modern emulsions. We know now or have been told in promotion material that the old films did not record certain colours correctly, reds were not really red and skin tone (whatever that is) did not record well. It is certainly hard to see any difference. All this could be put down to the mistaken belief that things were better in the past and that things are not as good now is a sign of growing old; however, I do like the results and ease of processing the RA colour papers. It has brought colour printing time down so much that there is no difference to producing a print in colour or monochrome. 

Incidentally, do be careful as the EP and RA processes are not interchangeable. It is not always clear on the Fuji papers which process should be used. They are one of the firms still producing both types of paper. There is also a lot of EP paper being sold off. If this is processed in the Rapid Access chemicals it comes out yellow and no amount of filteration change makes any difference, it also ruins your chemicals. Agfa have always been a bit confusing in their packaging, using the pre-fix TYPE 5,7,9 etc. and they have changed from their own system to adopt the EP process, and now the RA too. Their own system was better in that you could assess the colour balance while wet unlike todays papers (another look back). 

So, while it can be interesting to see what results old b&w papers may give, do not waste your time with old colour papers just bin them.