Grey is all the light! All the colours!

I know technically grey is not a colour per se, but I hate to ear it is only a shade of black and white, no it’s not, it’s all the colours. And this is also technically sound (*): grey is actually all the colours brought together singing in unison the perfect harmony of light.

Kodak Tri-X, EI 200, HC110 dil.B 5min 30, Zeiss Ikon

What I like about grey is that it’s all about the idea of light all about the idea of texture, that one could almost touch, feeling the smoothness or the rawness of the grains building a tone, making a scar.

It is such a feast for the eye that a nerve impulse enters in resonance, back and forth from your eyes to the your fingertips. The eyes asking your fingers how to touch, and your fingers asking your eyes how to see those ever evanescent artefacts of light: all these touching greys…

(*) All the wave lengths of visible light shape one by one the colours we see. When they are all mixed equally they produce what is called white light i.e. without any colour cast, from black to white, all along the “colours of grey”, all along that scale of shades, depending on the intensity of the light.

Now let us be honest, on a more technical level it is far most difficult to get a more realistic harmonious colour palette than it is of a more completely crazy one.So crazy colours could appear as a good smoke screen to hide insufficiently sound technical skills. That is all the more true because it is indeed quite difficult in practice to get realistic harmonious colours. No debate here.

However crazy colours bend colour photography towards a more obvious typical black and white photography statement where the image is more obviously perceived as just a certain (hopefully choosen) representation of reality, and only that: just one representation among many other possibilities.

Therefore installing a more obvious distance between the perception of a faithful representation of reality and what the photograph itself might convey: “the idea of the scene” entrenched, it is true, in some real life scenery and perception experienced by the photographer.  But anyways we are more easily captivated by that: “the idea of the scene”.

That is the power of unrealistic colours in my humble opinion.

Rubylith is a trademark name. It’s a masking film invented by Ulano Corporation, it’s mainly used in the graphic arts industry (silk screen, lithography etc…), where orthochromatic materials are used (sensitive to light apart from the red spectrum side).

a piece of Rubylith masking film in front of a window

In photography we usually don’t use this inactinic masking property in order to create an image. But the Rubylith masking film happens to be a very handy tool to light a darkroom with inactinic natural light.

window blacked out or rather “reded out” by a piece Rubylith film

One can easily create a darkroom out of any room by blacking out all openings apart one that will be “reded out” with such a translucent masking film, in order to obtain an inactinic natural light source for the darkroom.

It’s also used in the making of “darkboxes”, which are nothing more than small foldable and portable darkrooms. These are mainly used in old/historical photographic processes at least those requiring immediate development procedures needed to be carried out on location.

Needless to mention what’s keeping me busy these days…

A single use camera? Why?

For a lot of reasons! Among which this one: single use cameras are a good way to take a break and put your brain at rest when feeling too annoyed by the technical side of image making. With these little boxes photography is reduced to its bare bones: framing followed by the ever so infamous glorious act of: the push of a button!

Well it’s all good, but to relax one’s mind on a black and white drift it’s not so simple as all (well most) single use cameras use color film. Fortunately Ilford had a thought for us black and white aficonados. They produced two models one loeaded with HP5 and the other  with XP2, a chromogenic black and white film i.e. a film that can be developed using standard color processing(*).

Apart from thick and black thunderstorm skies as for light source the negatives are well exposed and very usable, a real pleasure. The framing is not the most accurate but it’s enough for exploriong framing ideas. Ideal to have fun!

Obviously, as expected with such a basic lens in back light situations the light drools or creeps in the shadows very easily. It does “flare” as we say, but it doesn’t take away anything from the image really (trees and trousers on the right frame). And Even if one must keep his distances for portraits (2 meters) to avoid the “(f)artistic blur”, nothing prevents giving it a try. That said it would certainly be preferable to go for an environmental portrait (unlike the left hand frame herebelow).

On the other hand one can have a lot more fun with action shots as the shutter speed of ~1/100 sec. is ideal to retain some movement without making it unreadable (right hand frame hereabove).

For darker situations the camera built it flash will come in handy. Personally I don’t use much, if not at all, direct flash lighting…

(*) Very convenient for commercial labs that use an automated color/C41 process. This then is cheaper than a black and white processing in most of the labs. But here (XP2) dyes are forming the negative image. Whereas for classic black and white film (HP5) metallic silver is what forms the image.

All right, ok, I know, another gear post, but wait there’s a good reason! (not)

My Makina 670 has been under repair with Plaubel Germany for quite a while now and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get it back before long, so there’s that…

Also quite unfortunately for the wallet: as I was strolling around photo gear boutiques, mainly to look for darkroom supplies, I stumbled upon this rare piece: a Fuji GW670III in perfect condition, like new as they say, in this case the saying could not be more adequate.

Look its frame counter: it is at 5! Which translates into 50 shutter actuations! Indeed a roll of 120 film gives 10 frames in this format.

For those who don’t know this Medium Format wonder from Fuji it is one of the rare cameras that allows you to check directly how much terrain it has travelled, shutter actuation-wise that is. The counter sits on the sole of the camera body near the tripod mount hole, it counts the rolls that have gone through it, not each shutter actuation per se.

These cameras are quite common in the 6×9 format they’re called GW690 (with the same lens), they’re much less common in the 6×7 format let alone in this version III pristine condition. The camera came with the box and all its content as if brand new. Apparently the owner won it from some contest and never used it apart from from these 5 rolls …

These cameras trade easily in the second hand market due to their ruggedness, lens quality (although not Fuji’s best), relatively affordable price, and frame counter which makes for an easy shutter history check. Also the 90mm focal length is rather normal (not long nor wide) plus the maximum aperture of F/3.5 makes it quite versatile for this format.

Now, on the flipside, they’re very noisy cameras, the leaf shutter, an known silent design, must have had in this case an agricultural release mecanism design treatment, because it produces the loudest shutter sound I’ve experienced to this day (and yes I’ve crossed path with Hasselblad and Mamiya SLRs).

The other point gathering critics is the rangefinder patch, percieved to be too small. Given the camera dinosauresque dimensions you’d indeed expect a bigger rangefinder patch. A good point though is the well sized breathing space between the frame lines and viewfinder window frame.

Its round shape increases this feeling whereas most rangefinder patches are of square or rectangular shape. Also the smaller it is precieved to be, the dimmer it appears to be, and you have here all the bad publicity this camera line gets.

Regarding frame lines, yes they’re cut, but a point (white dot above lens cap in picture below) allows for a good corner reference.

Also know as the Texas Leica, due its bigger than life size, although not heavy one might find it a bit bulky to lug around all day. And this is where the Makina 670 claims back its dominant position for a 6×7 Medium Format travel camera.

To all these issues I say the following: having previously owned a Fuji GW690II I know very well what I’m talking about. First, a range finder is a camera mainly designed to be zone focused, second this camera was designed for the landscape photographer, and in that respect it is very well suited to the task.

It can be used for reportage work or the like, but in that case its main drawback is not the range finder patch, but the way the shutter speeds (white numbers in the picture below) have to be adjusted. As for the aperture (yellow numbers in the picture below) it all takes place on the lens barrel near the lens hood (see picture below), so it’s not the best design for rapid adjustments. As with everything it takes practice and I’m sure some are able to change their shutter speeds on the fly in the blink of and eye.

Regarding pure portrait work (not including the surrounding environment), well, my opinion is done on this one: range finders are not photographic portrait tools, in that I mean they’re not the best tool for this job, SLR/TLR are made for that.

Unless as Dean Winters you can turn dead centered composed portaits into a branch of your signature style…

Now what can I say? yes this is a range finder intended for landscape work, yes the lens creeps in the viewfinder lower right corner, and yes its closest focusing distance is 1 meter.

But this baby can be put to work in so many situations, even not ideal ones (from the top of my head a certain A. Leibovitz used it during the war in Sarajevo for reportage work because it could work without batteries…), its lens makes it a unique tool, and its vertical framing handling is pleasure due to a very cleverly placed second shutter trigger.