[Leica] Mr. B. D. Colen speaks

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

Herbert naturally it would be good to actually see some of your black and
white prints vs. Kodachrome vs. digital  so we can agree with your or not
agree with you on their relative merits and how you dealt with them. As in
if you can print. Words about pictures kind of only go so far. Give us a
url.


On 7/7/13 4:43 AM, "Herbert Kanner" <kanner at acm.org> wrote:

> Since Jayanand got auto-biographical, I thought I'd do the same.
> 
> I started developing film and making contact prints at high-school age if 
> not
> before. I think my first exposure to Kodachrome was around 1948 when my 
> wife,
> a friend, and I made a trip from Chicago to a series of national parks. The
> friend had a borrowed Leica (F, I think) and 50, 90, and 135 mm lenses. I 
> was
> hooked. He and I alternated possession of the slides every six months, and
> projecting those incredible slides repeatedly brought back vivid memories 
> of
> the trip. 
> 
> Eventually, I bought an Omega enlarger and started getting serious about 
> B&W.
> Never was particularly pleased with any of my prints, and the majority of 
> my
> shots were still Kodachrome. Around 1971, temporary unemployment which in a
> recession promised to possibly last a year, caused me to accept a job,
> relocation expenses provided, with ICL in England. To my annoyance, I found
> that Kodak UK was on strike, that a million rolls of Kodachrome was in 
> their
> premises waiting to be processed, and that the nearest place to get the 
> stuff
> processed was in France. I decided then and there that this was a good
> opportunity to try to develop some skill at B&W.
> 
> I had not brought my enlarger to England, so I joined a camera club in 
> order
> to use their darkroom. It turned out that the hours of availability did not
> suit me and I bought an inexpensive Opemus enlarger. But I stayed with the
> club, which had monthly competitions, sometimes prints, sometimes slides. 
> In
> time, I even wound up with prints that I was proud of. An interesting aside
> comment is that they expected 16 x 20 prints but I managed to get by with 
> 11 x
> 14. 8 x 10 would have been totally unacceptable except for one time when 
> the
> had a competition expressly for "small" prints. What amused me was that in
> this country, where people had little money, big prints were expected; 
> when I
> got back this relatively richer country, I saw competitions just full of 8 
> x
> 10 prints an smaller.
> 
> One day, I decided it would be neat to prints some of my slides, so I 
> bought a
> color head for my Omega. I first tried the Ilford process because it was
> reputed to be the most archival. I ultimately came to grief with it when I
> tried to print a picture of my Abyssinian cat, a mountain lion colored
> critter. He'd come out greenish or reddish; no way could I get his true 
> color.
> I switched to a Kodak reversal paper and got a perfect print on the first 
> try.
> 
> In time, I realized that if prints were my objective, color negs were
> obviously the way to go, and I switched my operation to developing color 
> negs
> and printing them. For color balance, I just used very crude tools: the 
> Kodak
> viewing filters, and usually got a good print on at worst my second try. 
> Very
> rarely did it take three tries.
> 
> Alas, a few years after acquiring my pride and joy, an M6 TTL which I've 
> got
> to get around to selling one of these days, I just burned out on darkroom
> work, and several rolls of film are still sitting around unprocessed. I 
> might
> in time have gone back to the darkroom, but my wife decided that we needed 
> a
> second bathroom, and there went the darkroom. I gave away the equipment.
> 
> Having spent too many hours of my life in front of a computer, both
> professionally and for entertainment, I was very reluctant to get into 
> digital
> photography. Ultimately, I decided I had to find out if I could live with 
> it,
> so I bought a cheap Nikon point-and-shoot and Lightroom 2 and played around
> for a while. Having decided that I could live with it, I then thought 
> about a
> camera with a full-frame sensor. I was pondering Nikon or Canon but kept
> wistfully remembering how much I enjoyed using the M6 and finally decided 
> that
> at my age you can't take it with you and sprung for an M9 which I just 
> love. I
> use the two lenses, 35 an 90 chrons that I bought when I got the 
> second-hand
> M6. They both were made in Canada, some time in the '70s. The 35 came from 
> a
> dealer, the 90 was bought from Henning Wolfe.
> 
> Herbert Kanner
> kanner at acm.org
> 650-326-8204
> 
> Question authority and the authorities will question you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Jul 6, 2013, at 11:25 PM, Jay Burleson <leica at jayburleson.com> wrote:
> 
>> With Dr. Ted's famous quote used to sum it all up...
>> http://www.the.me/b-d-colen-on-the-distraction-of-color-the-subject-is-black-
>> and-white/#ixzz2YKfnZYo6
>> -- 
>> Jay,
>> 
>> Jay Burleson Gallery <http://jayburleson.com/leica/gallery/index.php/>
>> "A photographer is simply someone who is
>> looking for something that can't be found.
>> The photograph is the record of that attempt."
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Leica Users Group.
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> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Mark William Rabiner
Photography
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/