..process theory has become a way for me to investigate the process of photography. I recently sold all my old Nikon kit and just about managed to be able to afford one screw in my new but used Leica M7 + Leitz 28mm Elmarit. I got bored of simply just pressing the shutter release and the Leica offers me a way to have a reconnection to to that wonderful world of manual photography where for me the art lies in the science.
The Nikon F5 was a good camera but it bored me, it was like having someone follow you around who you didn’t particularly want to be there, it’s not that you don’t like them it’s just you don’t really have anything to say that’s worth saying, you have no connection, yet for some reason you always feel to at least try and make a conversation, and in the case of the F5 it always cost me 8 AA batteries and a massive fucking overstated comment every time I took it out like ‘look at me, I’m a fucking pro’- I hated it. The Leica is more like ‘look man, ditch that attention seeking hussy, this is what I can do and to do it well you got to work with me, so re-learn your shit and we’ll get on just fine’.
Part of all this step back to the manual, do it yourself and do it better, ideology was to begin processing my own films again, investigating which films work in what way with what chemicals.I have to say that tri-x 400 in tetanel ultrafin is one of my favourites. You can’t mess around with ultrafin. The good thing is the fine quality of the grain it gives you, i don’t like using flash so tend to push films to gain that extra stop and tri-x allows this push in development-latitude, a forgiving film in an unforgiving developer in my experience, the grainier effect you get from pushing the film is then balanced out a little bit by the fine grain quality of the developer.
I like to see grain. To me it is an aesthetic quality that separates film from digital, but it is there because of the scientific workings of film- silver halides.. it is part of the science of film but can be refined as an aesthetic.. it makes me wonder why there is software-“chunky lens”- that can add this grainy effect to digital photos, I mean if you want grain, take the good with the fucking bad and shoot film!!
I began considering this idea more about balancing in the development process, grain from pushing film with fine grain developers. It’s an important thing to consider when using 35mm. Anything printed bigger than 10×8 can become unsharp or lose acutance through unrefined grain. This led me to the discovery of stainer chemicals such as WD2D, Rollo Pyro, PMK and Pyrocat-hd. There are variations of these chemicals, especially pyrocat- hd, mc, p and c. The pyrocat formular itself uses pyrocatechol instead of pyrogallol. Pyrocatechol or catechol or pyrocatechin is a more stable chemical and there have also been revisions to the original formular mixed in distilled water where the water is replaced by propylene glycol, which basically extends the life of the solution A from 6-12 months to several years.
Stainer chemicals work in a way where,
‘stain is produced in those areas of the negative where the silver is being reduced, and this stain is proportional to the amount of silver: least in the shadows where there are areas of low silver density, greatest in the highlights. Since the exposing light sees the stain as increased printing density, total negative density is equal to the combined silver and stain densities. The result is that the stain masks film grain by filling in between silver grains, resulting in both increased acutance and tonality in the final print’.
As someone who likes to shoot without flash and push film, use of red filter and IR in high contrast light , I feel that the possible benefits of these stainer developer/chemicals, and I say possible because it is theory I yet have to test. could help the process of printing larger than 10×8 from a 35mm neg, also because the pyro stain, which is always proportional to the silver density, functions as a continuous variable colour mask that reduces printing contrast when using VC papers. This means that I can shoot high contrast situations but when printing, the shadows and mid-tones will not compress or block the highlights, retaining detail in a high contrast image without burning and dodging.