[Leica] Mr. Johnston's infallible judgement

["Erwin Puts" <imxputs@knoware.nl>]

The last 15 years I have developed more than 5000 BW films and made  at
least 50.000 prints. I have used all kinds of film/developer and print
paper/developer combinations. Hundreds of test films were handled in all
kinds of dilution, over and underdevelopment, and matched with scores of
paper types and print developers. My darkroom has two enlargers, (condensor
and diffusor) and  I use a Macbeth densitometer to measure all densities of
prints and negatives. I have a very large Excell database with all figures
and I have drawn numerous socalled Jones diagrams to match print curves to
film curves. I have published more than 20 articles about BW darkroom
technique in the last 5 years and continue to publish in several magazines.
I gave numerous courses in Zone System Technique and my library is full of
books about sensitometry, chemistry and BW processing. I have been teaching
BW techniques at several professional oriented education centers and most of
my lectures and articles get a positive response.
I have studied Mr Davis'books incidentally and found a number of
shortcomings in his approach, wchich I will not document here.
I was one of the first to use Xtol and my research findings did not
correspond with the ones of Kodak. So I had a full two hour meeting with Mrs
Silvia Zawadski, inventor of Xtol and senior engineer product development of
BW products and Mr Dick Dickerson, worldwide manager product and development
BW.
They agreed after a lengthy exchange and analysis of my results that my
conclusions were valid and that their published data were based on some
assumptions that could not be reproduced consistently.
Based on this track record I was under the impression that my knowledge and
experience of BW processing had some substance.
Today I am proven wrong! Mr Johnston, after  his customary  lenghty and
indepth study of my accomplishments has judged that I "don't know beans
about sensitometry, or about black-and-white materials and how they behave."
How could I dare to disagree with his solid fact findings and stern
judgement!
So today I am picking up the telephone and try to reach Mrs Zawadski to tell
her I know nothing about BW processing and she has misjudged my
capabilities. I am also withdrawing all my articles about BW that are in the
pipeline and I will inform the editors that I have mislead them the last 10
years, pretending that I had some figment of experience with BW materials.
Mr Johnston has uncovered the truth, which I have been able to disguise the
last decade for an audience of tens of thousands of readers and hundreds of
students.


Erwin