Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/07/07

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Subject: [Leica] Mr. B. D. Colen speaks
From: kanner at acm.org (Herbert Kanner)
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2013 14:46:51 -0700
References: <CDFEF950.CE54%mark@rabinergroup.com>


Mark,

1. I'd have to work up the ambition to paw through boxes (many) of stored 
prints. 2. I'd have to see if the scanner in my cheap HP all-in-one printer 
is good enough. 

Will think about it.

Regards,

Herb

Herbert Kanner
kanner at acm.org
650-326-8204

Question authority and the authorities will question you.




On Jul 7, 2013, at 7:54 AM, Mark Rabiner <mark at rabinergroup.com> wrote:

> 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.
>>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Leica Users Group.
>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Mark William Rabiner
> Photography
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information



Replies: Reply from mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner) ([Leica] Mr. B. D. Colen speaks)
In reply to: Message from mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner) ([Leica] Mr. B. D. Colen speaks)