written by: Tom PersingerOne obstacle faced by those working with historic photographic processes is how to quickly and easily create a reliable negative−a method that doesn’t involve complicated steps, calculations, graphs and all of the tedium that might cause one to fall into a glazed stupor. Another challenge is consistency of procedure. If you’re working in an inconsistent manner success will be rare. If you can control both the procedure and the negative, everything else will fall into place and success will be yours. Finding first black. Nearly all 19th Century prints were made using contact printing methods, which means that the negatives Read more »
written by: Tom PersingerIt’s important to remember that the pre-photographers, those wild experimenters and mad scientists who embarked on the magical quest to invent the medium never intended to pioneer a monochromatic art. From the start, they sought to create color imagery. In 1850 the Reverend Levi Hill made the (somewhat unsubstantiated) claim that he had “perfected” a process for creating full color daguerreotypes, though the process was unreliable and complex. Even Sir John Herschel was exploring ways to introduce color into photography. The exciting possibilities of color photography (finally) emerged in 1907. The Lumière brothers introduced the Autochrome, a color transparency coated Read more »
written by: Tom PersingerIn the past two articles we’ve explored the possibilities of a simple and straightforward DIY (do-it-yourself) large format camera system. We’ve considered optics and camera design, discussing the information necessary to build effective lenses and simple, one shot hyper-focal box cameras. In this article I’d like to introduce you to the use of orthochromatic lithography film in a large format camera as a unique and interesting alternative to conventional black and white sheet film. There are several reasons to try “lith” film for creating in-camera negatives. Chief among them might be cost. A quick comparison shows that a sheet of Read more »
written by: Tom PersingerThe origins of the modern camera predate the birth of photography by over a thousand years. It can be traced back to the Ancient Chinese and Greeks both of whom used the camera obscura to project images into large, dark chambers that people could enter. Once inside they were treated to a magical and fabulous display: the outside world projected upside down and backward on the wall opposing the aperture. A number of important historical thinkers have examined and written about the device: Aristotle, Alhazen, Freiberg, Descarte, Kepler and many others. Notably, in the 13th Century English philosopher and Franciscan Read more »
written by: Tom PersingerThis is a two-part article. Part One in this issue covers how to make a simple large format camera lens. Part Two (in November/ December 2012) explores how to make a large format camera and how to use the camera lens combo to make photographs. Early Lenses In 1839, Charles Louis Chevalier, an optician and instrument maker in France, created a simple one-element lens that was used in the first photographic cameras. This simple, achromatic meniscus lens was invented some years earlier by Charles’ father, Vincent Chevalier, for use in camera obscuras. Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce, an early photographic pioneer, used Chevalier’s Read more »
written by: Tom PersingerHow do you proceed if you enjoy creating photographs with your phone-camera, but are bored with inkjet output? While you’d like to try a historic process, you don’t want to sacrifice full color for monochrome. Luckily, more photographic possibilities are now available than at any other time in history. With over 150 years worth of various techniques to explore, it’s a wonderful time to be a photographer. A few months ago, I introduced the Hipstanotype, a fun combination of the digital and handmade, which merges the Hipstamatic photo app with the 19th Century cyanotype process. Here we will explore the Read more »
written by: Tom PersingerThe quest to create a lasting, permanent color photograph began around the same time as the mediums inception in the 1840s. But it wasn’t until 1907 that the Lumiére brothers introduced the Autochrome, the first commercially successful color photographic process. Expensive and burdensome, the Autochrome was replaced in 1936 by Kodak’s now extinct Kodachrome−the film that brought color pictures to the masses and filled our photographs and memories with stunning, vivid colors. Since the advent of Kodachrome, numerous types and styles of color film have been introduced: slide, print, fast, slow, saturated, neutral, tungsten and many others. Over the past Read more »
written by: Tom PersingerWhat do you do when you’re tired of the digital sterility of the cell phone photograph, but you find its convenience too tempting to leave behind? Download one of the many available photography apps! These offer a stunning variety of capabilities ranging from panorama to HDR. Many are even designed to remove an image’s sanitary perfection by inserting “process artifacts.” Among these you can find interesting applications that replicate a variety of different photographic looks ranging from the scratches and peeling of wet plate collodion and the creamy smoothness of Polaroid, to vintage black & white film grain and the Read more »
