New55 Film

Frequently asked questions

2012-01-29T05:49:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to Frequently Asked Questions about New55.

This has been well-received and some people have offered to help with the early development of this new 4x5 material now that they understand what is involved in R&D and bringing such a product to market. There are three things that need to be done:

1. The design must be shown to be feasible
We've done this up to a point, and feel it is well enough defined and demonstrated. Here are some examples.

2. The product must lead to or contribute to an ongoing business.
We think that is possible and have a variety of scenarios that could fulfill it.

3. There has to be an investment made to pay for labor, tooling, materials, infrastructure, and to support the steady rollout of the product that would be mass manufactured.
This is not in hand. Kickstarter would not provide this, because Kickstarter represents a preselling of a slug of materials or product, not an ongoing steady sales pattern needed to establish a going activity. Fortunately, the investment dollars are not very large and those with vision see how it may lead to other new products, technologies, and the ability to license or sell into new and growing fields.

Please read the FAQ

lively black and white

2012-01-28T17:16:00.001-08:00

Dmax will never be the same

2012-01-27T16:01:00.000-08:00

Just for fun, here is a link to my work on UBA tm, the Ultra Black Absorber. Its use is primarily in optics, in optical receivers, and for solar thermal systems.

it looks like this, from here

to here.

Too much goop or not enough seal

2012-01-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

Fine tuning amounts and how we put things together have unexpected results, witness this diptych by Nafis Azad, who wrestles with 20x24 camera by day, and even has his own 30x30 camera. The miniature format of mere 4x5 is no problem to Nafis.

A happy accident as some of the reagent pulled away from the face, or is there some visual intelligence within the DTR process itself?

We need to get some tools to seal the pods so they travel well. Right now the pods do open on their own too easily, but that could be corrected with a new heating and sealing tool. The many successful New55 FILM examples to date have all been hand-assembled by Jack Willard, so we know we are close to a good design, but once we scale up, (assuming we do) we will have to have some custom built machinery.

Too much solarization

2012-01-22T14:34:00.000-08:00

After one minute of processing, New55 produced this surreal headshot with surrounding reversal and other oddities. It is amazing, however, that the effect can be so selective and controllable. In fact this was the inspiration for the photograph of the model and camera showing the camera reversed, but the model nearly normal in presentation. That one is in the slide show. I have several of these "too weird" examples that in retrospect appear to be at least fun to see. On the left is the edge of goop, the limit of reagent spread. Just enough is used to cover the entire area or in this instance, not quite enough. But close.

Collodion tintype

2012-01-21T17:19:00.000-08:00

I've been looking through Youtube searching alternative photography and find there are hundreds of posts about tintypes, transfers, collodion, Daguerreotypes, and much more. This one caught my eye though, as it looks pretty easy to do and a lot of fun. I doubt you really have to make a mess like this one shows to be successful, but it may be inevitable. Here is a link to more on collodion, including some big ones. Another site, Scully and Osterman, I've pointed to in the past and is quite relevant here.

je ne parle pas bien francais...

2012-01-13T14:24:00.001-08:00

I greatly appreciate the enthusiasm for New55 in France

Les ventes ne peuvent pas commencer avant 8 mois après le financement est disponible. Le financement n'est pas ici aujourd'hui. Il pourrait être obtenu quelque temps dans l'avenir, et nous essayons de le faire. Mais, il faut savoir qu'il n'est pas encore fait, et donc les huit mois seulement après le financement, après l'argent est garanti.

New55 Examples

2012-01-05T12:37:00.000-08:00


10X enlargement of corner of New55

Here is a link to a slideshow of photographs taken with New55 FILM. There is some additional content that is available to Flickr accounts, so you may want to sign up. Also, the slide show can be slowed down, and the captions can be displayed as the show plays. I cannot set it to do that from here, but you can while it is playing.

Some of the photographs are from the scanned in New55 negative, and a few are the corresponding positive print. A couple of the examples show both the positive and the negative.

Here is the link click here

Gamma Settings and Happy New Year

2011-12-30T14:21:00.000-08:00

I see many visitors using iPads and iPhones with gammas set to 2.2. That is very contrasty. I have set the pictures on this blog to look "right" at a gamma of 1.8. Over half of the visitors to this blog use Macs, and three quarters use Firefox. You can see the stats yourself by clicking the little green button at the bottom of this page. We usually get about 150 visitors every day, and some stay a long while and come back again and again. Thanks for visiting, and welcome new visitors! Don't worry, we only see the numbers, and not your actual information. Site traffic is the only method we have to see what is of interest to you, and what is not. Please keep it coming by telling others.

2012 looks good, and we have seen a definite increase in business activity over the last two months, and good sales of our antenna products, along with a sudden increase in new technology development activities and inquiries. There is a sense in Massachusetts that the economy is picking up quite noticeably, with all the usual things that go along with it, like more traffic!

We have used the last two years well, with increased forward spend in R&D, and have amassed, (for us, a small company) a slew of new patents and patent applications, new product designs, know-how, customers, and suppliers, all ready to be cranked up with the application of working capital and increased manufacturing here. I hope it all doesn't come on too suddenly, but I think it might.

It is amazing that we sometimes have to explain to people that yes, we actually make physical products here in Ashland and ship them all over the world. If we are lucky, other companies and collaborators notice this and start sharing the benefits of the innovations with their customers, too.

A Happy New Year to all our current friends and collaborators, and sincere thanks for your contributions, time, and interest in New55.

Freezing, and updated mailing list

2011-12-28T16:13:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow we are going to freeze some New55. The general consensus is that it is alright to freeze old T55 as long as there is enough time afterward for the pod to warm up completely. I have never confirmed this so we will also freeze a couple of old T55 pods.

If you have any real life experience with frozen polaroids, now would be the time to tell us about it. Also if you have been a contributor to New55 and would like to update your mailing address, please do. Send an email with your address to bob at soundwaveresearch.com

Thanks

Are you a local?

2011-12-24T13:16:00.000-08:00

We are thinking about having a workshop in the near future about New55.

The location would probably be in Ashland MA or in Boston, likely some weekday evening, perhaps from 7 to 9, something like that. Talk/Demonstration, some hands on opportunities, refreshments, Q&A and that sort of thing.

It would be helpful to know about those who are interested in New55 and are nearby anyway. Let's hear from you.

Frequently Asked Questions about New55

2011-12-23T06:39:00.000-08:00

written by Bob Crowley

What is New55?

New55 is a new, instant positive-negative (PN) system that produces a high quality 4x5 black and white negative, and a positive print. It is a single shot system that incorporates a negative material, a processing pod, a special positive receiver sheet, and other components needed for a field-processable instant photograph to be produced by a photographer, without a darkroom. New55 is a trash-reduced design that produces less waste than old Type 55 did.

Why did you start New55?

One day on Twitter I noticed that The Impossible Project said they were not going to focus on 4x5 materials, so I said that I would try to do it.

Is the New55 Project associated with The Impossible Project?

Yes, in an informal and collaborative way, very much so. We strongly support The Impossible Project's efforts as they re-learn what took Polaroid decades to accomplish. Bob Crowley visited The Impossible Project factory in Enschede, and New55 has done fruitful, but still in-process experiments with various materials produced by The Impossible Project.

What is the connection between New55 and 20X24 Studio?

New55 is located in Ashland, MA, not far from 20X24's Connecticut facility, and very close by to 20X24's Ted McClelland who has been working closely with us to bring New55 to life. Because New55 and 20x24 use PN systems and not integral systems for their films, we share some of the technology and materials, and have other things in common, such as suppliers, and collaborators.

When will New55 FILM be released for sale?

The current plan is 8 months after the final funding, which is not yet in place. It will take that long to tool up, get supply lines filled, and iron out the bugs from the system. We do have a working system today that is mostly hand assembled. It works well, but cannot be made in large production quantities until there is money available for scale up. R&D has been costly, but funded as a skunkworks project by Soundwave Research, which has paid for hired help, materials, air travel, equipment, and provides R&D space and infrastructure. Soundwave Research is a product development and manufacturing company that has invented and produced many new products. New55 is nearly production ready.

Can I get samples or be a film tester?

We do not have a test supply of New55.

What equipment is needed to use New55 FILM?

We use a standard Polaroid 545 single sheet back. There are many thousands of these well-made film holders available and they fit easily in nearly every 4x5 camera. Currently, we are using the metal 545 holder with the back cover removed, so we can more easily check and manipulate the clip finger. This is necessary because New55FILM is currently not made with lubricious paper.

Is a tub of sodium sulfite still needed?

No. The sodium sulfite is hard to get, so we use ordinary fixer for the final negative bath. Fixer is available easily, is cheap, clears better, and stays fresh for a very long time.

What will be the price of New55?

The target price is $6 US.

Can I pre-order New55?

We are not currently taking any pre-orders.

Do you have machinery to produce New55?

We have fixtures, templates, night vision systems and other things we need to produce the prototypes and continue the development. We share the pod machine owned by 20x24, and in our plan are specifications for full tooling of the product.

Does New55 use Panatomic X?

No. Old T55 used a material called SO139 which was similar to Pan-X and produced by Kodak. We have tested nearly every available negative emulsion in production and have chosen one that has slightly faster speed and allows us to get a positive print that is correctly processed with virtually the same exposure. Users of old T55 had to choose if they wanted the negative or the print to be properly exposed, but not both. New55 solves that problem.

Who is doing the development of New55?

Soundwave Research Labs, and collaborators Jack Willard, Des Fyler, John Reuter, Ted McLelland, Tobias Feltus and Bob Crowley have done most of the R&D. We've also had a great deal of assistance and encouragement from Ilford, The Impossible Project and Doc Kaps, who has been to the lab where New55 is being developed, and have had special support of materials from many other people. If I tried listing them I would leave someone out.

Are there any plans for an 8x10 version?

No plans, exactly, but it seems possible. An 8x10 system is an expensive item.

Do you have any plans for an instant 4x5 color negative product?

We'd like to see this happen and think we can after New55 is released.

Is New55 a copy of Polaroid Type 55?

No, it definitely is an all-new system that superficially resembles T55 and shares some of the fun characteristics like edge effects, solarization, and certainly has all the magic, maybe more. Perhaps more importantly, New55 produces a balanced positive and negative, something old T55 never did. This improves "the value proposition" considerably, in our view, since we get two useful photographs from one. The negative has extreme sharpness and a long scale, and the positive print can be display quality.

I see some of the New55 test photographs on Flickr and here on the New55 blog. Who did these?

Bob Crowley, with assistance of Jack Willard, Des Fyler and Keitaro Yoshioka.

How can I help the New55 Project?

Right now the best thing is to put our link wherever you can. Mention New55 online, tell everyone who might be interested about it, and grab links from this blog and send them all around in emails. on forums, on Twitter and Facebook, and everywhere else you can think of.

Mark Osterman of the 19th Century

2011-12-18T06:28:00.001-08:00

I had the great pleasure of attending an emulsion making class put on by Mark at the George Eastman House, with Kodak photo engineer Ron Mowry. Mark's enthusiasm for old photographic processes is very appealing to me as I am a process freak, having developed various exotic processes for producing the likes of acoustic nanofilm etc. Many alternative or traditional processes will be kept available through the efforts of Mark and others.

It is not hard to see that these are "real" photographs. Not still video images. The Nikon D700 that I rented produces a high quality still video image that resembles a photograph shared on the internet, which is what we do nowadays.

I disagree with Mark's assertion that we are at the end of film. Far from it, new photosensitive nanomaterials (all film is a nanotechnology) and optically enabled surfaces, and materials science in general, portend a continued use, and eventual regrowth, of light sensitive materials for a lot of purposes, including pictorial use.

Most people won't even be aware of it, except certain artists and scientists, maybe for a long while, but it is happening now.

We are in a transitional period, a digital age, to be superseded by another age. It will take some time. Meanwhile, there is no danger of the millions of Speed Graphics and other non-electronic cameras disappearing in 300 years. None. There are just too many of them. If they sit mute for a decade or more, that won't matter much.

More good things from Mark, here.
And even more, here, including a step by step guide to making your own dry plates!

Reminder

2011-12-17T05:37:00.000-08:00

Of where we were about a year ago. No DTR that day.

4X5 of 1936 Hadley Flood

2011-12-17T05:31:00.000-08:00

Among a collection of glass plate negatives that record the great Hadley Flood of 1936, was this sheet film negative. I was at first puzzled by the scene of apparently cheery and curious people being held off by armed soldiers until I read about the event, which severely damaged the bridge they are seen on.

Various portions of this previously unseen negative are sharp and as I zoomed around spotted these two girls among the crowd.

The photograph, the thing, survived 70+ years and we can still enjoy it simply by looking at it.

New R&D batches scheduled in January

2011-12-09T16:32:00.000-08:00

We expect to start a round of R&D batches of New55 this January and will be refining some of the problems we encountered with the first batch, which are:

Sticking slides. This was and still is a problem, as the assembly is thicker than old T55.

Uneven spread. The metering of the pod and positioning of the pod, and more consistent backing thickness, are needed.

Clips. We have been using reclaimed clips, but need to move to fabricated clips.

Peel tab. We have used scissors instead of a peel tab. This works fine but requires that we remember scissors. A precut peel tab and adhesive are needed.

Fingerprints. This is an expected problem with hand assembly, but we think we can at least reduce them.

Pod leakage. A better way to seal the pods is needed. A thermal sealer with a rounded blade and better temperature control would help a lot.

Opaque paper supply. We have to use thicker than desired paper to achieve opacity. A better quality paper with lower surface friction and fewer pinholes would be very much appreciated.

Other things. There are plenty, and obviously we need to keep the lights on at the lab which we do by making and selling other products.

8x10 Film Holder that doesn't have a light leak wanted

2011-11-24T06:03:00.000-08:00

It must be just bad luck, but so far I have not purchased an 8x10 sheet film holder off ebay that doesn't have some sort of defect such as a light leak caused by bowing where the darkslide is inserted. I'm using a very fast emulsion relative to what many people use (for a very interesting experiment) and trying to avoid as many defects up front as things progress.

Anyone know how to reshape a plastic film holder? I am tempted to glue tensioned steel rails on either side to counteract the bow.

Then I can get this rig operating. What you see is a Speed Graphic with its focal plane shutter grafted onto some 8x10 camera, all mounted on a Saltzman tripod. The shutter arrangement works just fine with all kinds of barrel lenses, even the Aero Ektar for close ups, which easily covers 8x10 when extended a bit. The camera shown is notoriously wiggly, and so is the tripod head it is mounted upon. One would think this might be a rigid setup, but no it is not, as it oscillates quite wildly and in fact if one intended to design it to oscillate, this is a good way to accomplish it. Nevertheless it is possible to get a sharp photograph by waiting for things to settle down. The focal plane shutter hardly jiggles the camera and is fine for short exposures. Longer exposures like 1/4 or greater are also possible with care.

John D. de Vries, the Speed Graphic, and the Aero Ektar

2011-11-19T18:48:00.000-08:00

You should know about the brilliant John D. de Vries, author, of the website called The Master Site for the Larger Camera. John has written extensively about his passion for the Speed Graphic and Aero Ektar combination, so expensively in fact, that it may take you hours to look at all the information, and even then you cannot be sure, as the navigation of John's site is patterned after the controls of the Speed Graphic, and his own unusual sense of order.

According to Mr. de Vries, "Never before in photographic history has been written so much about one lens to so few !" and he may be right.

The fitting of maximally-apertured lenses onto large and medium format cameras and tilting them about seems to have reached beyond cult and into the new, or renewed art of real cameras producing real photographs.

If you have not visited John's site before and have even a slight interest in the Speed Graphic and Aero Ektar lenses, and the science and art of large format photography, go here, to this link, and bookmark it immediately, because you will be back again.

If for some reason you are asked for a password, follow the instructions and ask for one, as it is well worth it.

SHOP New55

2011-11-16T06:13:00.000-08:00

This page is a placeholder for things in our shop, starting with camera and film equipment and culminating in unique new products for photography, artistic expression, and exploration.

Revenue from SHOP New55 purchases materials, capital equipment, tools, and services aimed at the commercialization of New55 FILM.

If I can figure out how to do it, I will put a paypal button on this page and keep adding stuff to it, and link to this page like we did with the very popular Fuji FP100C negative tutorial.

chester holdings llc wifi

Set Your Gamma

2011-11-12T12:29:00.000-08:00

If you have a new iPhone, iPad or Apple appliance, your gamma, which is how grays are shown, is probably set to 2.2. Snow Leopard changes your gamma from 1.8 to 2.2 without asking you.

Apple used to ship Macbooks with the gamma set to 1.8, but recently cranked up the contrast so things will look snappier on the shiny, glare-prone screens.

The images on this blog are scanned or adjusted to look right on a display set to a gamma of 1.8. I use a shiny screened (annoyingly glare-inducing) Macbook Pro, which is great except for the gloss, and I have set it to 1.8.

You will miss much of the tonality of the New55 photographs unless you lower your gamma. You can change it by going to display properties and working your way through the menus.

Rob Fraboni and no solarization

2011-11-12T04:45:00.000-08:00

New55 scan from negative

Last week Rob was in to discuss various things having to do with analog backlash and what to do about them. After the discussion I got him over into the studio for a minute and grabbed a quick New55 shot of him. As I pulled the sleeve, it seemed to me that I had not exposed the negative for some reason, so I just left it on the bench as I shot another one.

The processing time was 3 minutes, and as could be expected, the reaction has run to completion or near to it, leaving little to no undeveloped silver and therefore no areas that are solarized when the PN is peeled and open to the light.

Post number 303

2011-11-08T15:13:00.000-08:00

This is the three-hundred and third post on New55.blogspot.com, an epic blog, the second that I have done with over 300 posts but nowhere near the 650 posts of microphonium, which served as a model for New55. A lot has happened over the last year and a half, much more than I ever imagined could happen, and several new discoveries have been made, including what we think is the basis for an all-new instant system, should we decide to go that far.

The PN material, called New55 PN Film by us, has been demonstrated on still life and live model subjects with some promising results, not the least of which is the ability to get both a good positive and a good negative from one PN sheet. This is something that old T55 never did - one had to choose between having a properly exposed positive or a correct negative. That means our "value proposition" for New55 is a good one.

Meanwhile, a perfectly performing monobath called R3 was adapted or swiped from the very ingenious Donals Qualls and shown to work with excellent results on Ilford Pan F, Tmax, old outdated films of various types, Efke 25, and virtually any other black and white negative sheet or roll film, and the results are all within the first 300 posts. If you haven't tried it, you are missing out.

Behind-the-scenes work involved traveling to exotic places such as Enschede Netherlands to The Impossible Project to see firsthand the machines and facility where integral film was reborn, then to Mobberly UK, where Ilford produces the finest black and white materials and runs a very important manufacturing facility. Also the trip to the George Eastman House was pivotal to understanding the basics of emulsion-making, something we needed to know.

In the past 18 months we established a base of collaborators and built a consensus for action that is continuing, and kept anyone and everyone interested in the loop by weekly posts of whatever was happening at that time, some of it research, some sidetracks, and others having to do with discussions about price and products, and there were a few criticisms too.

Next we are codifying the results-to-date, carefully recording dimensions, times, temperatures, thicknesses, materials, vendors, and much more, for the day when business conditions are right for production of New55 to start. It can start, 8 months from funding, and a fairly detailed plan was posted about 100 articles ago that is still accurate.

All the while the now familiar FP100C negative reclamation page on the right has been drawing in newbies to the blog thanks to many, many links scattered in four continents. About a quarter of them look around, and some have stayed.

Perhaps the most important thing I have discovered for myself is photography, and what a photograph is. The line has been blurred in the past decade: My digi gets used a lot, much as I used to use the Nikon F. But the line has never been clearer about what is a photograph, and what is a high quality still video image. I will leave it to you to think about and possibly debate, but I am sure that instant photography onto paper or film that you process on the spot is the most real and most relevant photography there is, and that is, to me, a new discovery brought on by this investigation.

Positive Calotypes, Daguerreotypes, and more

2011-11-06T15:32:00.000-08:00

A good number of New55 visitors have expressed interest in early and so-called alternative photographic processes. Here is a link and excerpt from The History and Practice of the Art of Photography Henry Snelling first published in 1849.

At a meeting of the British Association, Professor Grove described a process by which positive calotype pictures could be directly obtained; and thus the necessity to transfer by which the imperfections of the paper are shown, and which is moreover a troublesome and tedious process, is avoided. As light favors most chemical actions, Mr. Grove was led to believe that a paper darkened by the sun (which darkening is supposed to result from the precipitation of silver) might be bleached by using a solvent which would not attack the silver in the dark, but would do so in the light. The plan found to be the most successful is as follows: More here

New55 Core Team

2011-10-31T10:16:00.000-07:00


10X crop from a corner of a New55 negative? Very curious!

Because I write this blog and am the voice of the project people have the impression that I am doing this alone, which would not be possible. In addition to the work of Jack Willard, John Chervinsky and Des Fyler, we also have Ted McClelland and John Reuter of 20X24 engaged with the making and management of New55, and Tobias Feltus, located in Edinburgh. I'm the instigator but not really the person doing much of it, or at least not all of it. There are some well-known companies such as Ilford, who should be recognized, and Soundwave Research Laboratories, Inc, which works in ultrasound and makes various products and donates space and time to New55. Other contributors are Keitaro Yoshioka at Mass Art, Doc Kaps and Andre Bosman of The Impossible Project, and a bunch of others who have sent in clips, well wishes, good vibes and notes of encouragement. Since one of these categories probably includes you, now is a good time to say "thanks" and let's keep going.

Bob Crowley

Sharpness, resolution and grain of New55

2011-10-22T06:02:00.000-07:00

A close crop of a fairly recent New55 PN negative processed for two minutes and cleared in ordinary hypo. The Xenotar 150mm f2.8 is capable of very high resolution wide open, as it is designed to be used. I measure about 120 lp/mm on the negative, just an estimate, which is somewhat less sharp than the 180 lp/mm claimed for old T55. You can just see some of the grain coming up in the brass end of a little steam engine that was the subject of the day.

Around the periphery of the image, where there was a black background, some reversal occurred, but not in the center. The spread of the reagent, and the exposure, determine how much development is left over after peeling. It seems that no harm is caused by a longer development time, but we are going to use 2 minutes as the standard of comparison so we can detect changes as the design evolves.

Solarization of New55

2011-10-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have asked me about the solarization of New55. Some want it, others don't. Can we control it? Yes, and here is a good example of controlled solarization. Notice the skin values are not affected yet the entire Byron camera is apparently reversed! How is this possible?

Actually it is quite easy to control. Meter and light the exposure of the reversed area one to two stops below the lowest value of the non-solarized image. Process for 2 minutes and peel in a bright light. This is the result. All kinds of fun artistic effects can be achieved, and they are startling sometimes, as the effect appears to have delineated itself, almost like magic. Maybe it is.

For a high resolution image click here.

This is the negative side of New55 PN. The positive side, or receiver side, does not solarize.

New55 Early Results

2011-09-23T05:40:00.000-07:00

Our subject from last week's session is shown very tightly cropped and greatly enlarged. This is the negative side of a New55 shot taken with the trusty Speed Graphic and Xenotar 150mm f2.8, work performed over at Mass Art with the assistance of Keitaro Yoshioka and other collaborators. To see the entire image you can go to our slide show on flickr. You may have to change your access settings.

Or you can see them here in higher resolution.

The results we can now get appear to exceed the performance of old T55 in an important way: Both positive and negative are properly exposed and processed in one operation, something Polaroid never achieved.

Every day I get requests and questions from people, some asking "what can I do to help?"
Right now, one thing you can do is tell others, put the link to New55 in other forums, mention it and link it in your posts, and keep doing it. Copy and paste the URL everywhere you can. This helps build traffic and consensus that further investment is worthwhile. Places to go include APUG, LF forums, and also general photo forums, certain fashion and modeling sites, the popular press (comments sections) and on Twitter and Facebook and places I am not aware of. Please do this as the opportunity presents itself, and don't be afraid to grab this or other images from here to post with the link back to http://new55project.blogspot.com

Thanks!

Blogger has changed the way you click images

2011-09-17T18:07:00.000-07:00

Yet another unexpected change here to blogger: When you click on an image to enlarge it, you first get a framed, somewhat enlarged image. THEN, if you want to see the full sized image, you have to right click it, select "image" then click that. THEN, when the image comes up with a little + sign on the cursor, you can then click it again, this time (finally) for the full sized screen filling detailed rich image that was the whole point in a 1 MB upload.

All this clicking is making me weary, but it is actually easy to do. Try it on an image here and let me know what you find. Here is a test image.

PX 70 Color Shade, realistically scanned

2011-09-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

You see a few overly saturated scans of some of The Impossible Project's new films online, which is unnecessary in my view! Here is a quick shot of my friend Herb Singleton from my Jordan Marsh SX70 out near the loading dock.

Not bad I say, not bad. The colors are actually quite accurate - our building has that blue, Herb's shirt was that orange, and there was a lot of blue sky above. I will buy and use this regularly, and I expect others will too.

Any Monday

2011-09-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

And another day of playing with obsolete cameras, film, and chemicals. Relics of the past carry unknown futures without our care, we consider their potential for what we might still do, or leave behind. The choice is uncertain: the world changes faster than us or familiar places. Occasionally, something happens to make them appear new, and more interesting.

Click on the images for a close-up view. The top one is a scan of the negative. The two below are PN positives from the same session.

Tobias Feltus on SHOTS

2011-09-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

In this month's issue of SHOTS we are delighted to see fellow New55 Developer and cover photographer Tobias Feltus (L) featured on the cover in this self portrait with brother Joseph Feltus.

The New Gypsies - Iain McKell

2011-08-28T07:10:00.000-07:00

It is hard not to enjoy McKell's photo essays, as they are so generously displayed in reasonable detail, online at this website.

The often perfect formalism and refined but not contrived makeup of McKell's images would already be enough if not for the added depth of McKell's subjects, who penetrate many of the images in a most successful way. If you are astonished you are not alone, as this much-appreciated artist continues to influence nearly everyone.

Good subject

2011-08-27T19:47:00.000-07:00

I dislike the "dead yet?" titles we see, but anyway, this is a good production. Nicely written, a bit nostalgic with the Satie theme, but anyway...

Ilford's Steven Brierley audio interview

2011-08-26T05:28:00.000-07:00

Tobias Feltus and I visited with Steven Brierley and several others at Ilford in Manchester UK back in May. Since that time New55 has made substantial, even unexpected progress with a true PN design, but we still look to Ilford to supply certain materials. Ilford supplies some of TIP's sensitive materials and of course has a lot of silver on hand, which is now worth double what it was a year ago or so.

The portion of this podcast with Steven's remarks is on the site "filmwasters" which I know little about, and starts about 15 minutes in. I think it is worth a listen, here.

From Ilford's site:

"The demand for traditional monochrome films and papers remains strong. With Agfa no longer in the black and white photographic market, and Kodak pulling out of manufacturing black and white papers the future of ILFORD PHOTO products looks good for years to come. "

Silver of a certain size

2011-08-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

I had not heard of Carey Lea, or his silver, but now find the term refers to a fine 500nm or so silver or reduced silver complex with this peculiar and recognizable red/yellow tint to it.

But nanoparticles and rods, and their effect on lightwaves and color are something that I have studied and even built nano antenna arrays described here.

In this image are two FP-100B negatives, and Fuji's low silver negative, cheaper to produce, is apparently filled with silver halide grains that are quite tiny, and probably much smaller than a micron, maybe half or even a quarter that. Mie scattering and nanoparticle size analysis with spectrometers show that in general there is a direct relationship between size of a scatterer (or the average sizes of scatterers) and the average wavelength reflected and transmitted. If this is the case here, we can say there is some distribution around yellow, and it looks a lot like the same hue we achieved with our recent DTR, below, and monochrome images from TIP, below that. It also looks like the color of iodine.

447C - Jack Willard

2011-08-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

New55 PN
August 23, 2011

A word on comment spam

2011-08-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

Blogger is better than some at detecting and preventing comment spam - unwanted or random ads, messages and other "junk" that is directed to the comments sections of blogs and other groups. Normally there is no spam, as google has done a good job with blogger's spam detection system. It is one reason I prefer blogger, but it isn't perfect, so occasionally (like when I am doing another project or taking time off) I switch off "allow anonymous comments". That's what it is set at now, and an anonymous comment may go through, or be directed to the filter - it is hard to tell.

Most of the comments are not anonymous and so should not be a problem. If you are an anonymous commenter, I still welcome your comment, but please give yourself a name of some sort (there are several ways to do this, including gmail, flickr, etc.) and use it so it can clear the settings and be published as fast as possible.

If you have commented and got lost in the spam filter, try again. Sometimes the spam filter thinks real comments are spam. I'll try this for a while and see how it works out. About a year ago I had to do the same thing and made various remarks here, then spam settled down (or blogger changed something) and I reopened anonymous comments.

Trade school students adjusting spam filters at St. George's, Mobberly

Clip Cleaning

2011-08-15T09:09:00.000-07:00

All those old clips you have sent in have been used at least once, and possibly several times now that a recycling method has been developed.

Shown is New55 assembly tech and music producer Jack Willard, out of New York and here for the Summer, in an FP3000 shot.

Listen to Santa Clara by Jack Willard

New55 of the day

2011-08-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

Under the bicycle seat and seeming like a puddle in front of our inscribed box, lurks reagent spread artifact, invisible in the black sky, only seen in the deepest shadows.

Significant for being our first DTR and negative set (this is a scan of the negative above) using nothing from old Pol, but materials from China, India, and Connecticut, the positive, below it, is like a relic, sepia-toned, and contrasty, a flea market find.

And there is evidence of another experiment, painted as a curve on the receiver. Jack and I expected to see a dark area there and little image elsewhere, so we are surprised.

Old product shots

2011-08-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

I was asked recently if I did product photography. Well, I used to, when I was designing and developing microphones and manufacturing them here in Ashland MA. Realizing I had not saved many of the sell sheets and other microphonography generated over the course of a couple of years of production. Fortunately, Archive.org had saved some for me.

Here is the link Click

R3 (and other monobaths) are so easy, cheap, and virtually instant

2011-08-02T05:53:00.000-07:00

I was just playing with a Pentax 67 and the 105mm f2.4 lens the other day with some KODAK 400TX and tossed it in the R3 monobath for 10 minutes. Afterward it got washed in too-hot water, so it reticulated a bit.

What could be easier, and cheaper, than this? A digi? You get a 6X7 negative that takes 10 minutes (and costs about 50 cents). I would like those who are concerned about costs to show me their results with this process.

Impossible Project Integral 4X5

2011-07-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

We've had a difficult time with our under development 4X5 version of The Impossible Project's integral monochrome material, but some progress has been made. We did many, many tests of rails, spacers, pod configurations, sleeves, how to position the negative and more to try to get it to work with the 545 holder. While this result is not spectacular, it does show good promise. Especially interesting to me is the high apparent sharpness in the details, such as the book spine.

Shot with the Speed Graphic, of course, and scanned and flipped so the image reads the right way around. Like a Daguerreotype, integral images are reversed unless shot through a mirror.

Silver prices expected to continue up

2011-07-24T05:08:00.000-07:00

Since the times when the Hunt brothers cornered the silver market near 1980, sending silver briefly to $50 an ounce, metals buyers have watched silver descend to nearly $5 an ounce at times, and now today up into the $35+ range. Much of the silver speculation has to do with gold. Gold is very high and tends to pull up other precious metals such as silver, platinum, palladium etc. but these metals have their own demand-side pressures. Palladium and platinum are used as catalysts and are in high demand. Silver solder is in greater demand now that the RoHS so-called "lead free" initiative is law. This draconian ruling attempts to bureaucratically eliminate lead and a few other materials in certain consumer products - reason, to keep them out of landfills mainly - and yet mostly fails to encourage innovative, safe and responsible use of the many other toxic elements that also end up in the trash. RoHS could have long term consequences that are unforeseen.

Silver is highly biotoxic (it is antibiotic, used to prevent infections in bandages and catheters) and though not very dangerous to humans as we use it, changes the land around any silver mine, where nothing will grow. Silver is an excellent, if not expensive, weed killer. Silver is not the only ground-toxic metal: Copper mines are usually surrounded by large areas of sterile terrain, and there are many others.

Even if the lead free manufacturing world was the reason for silver's high price, wouldn't the descent of silver used in photographic manufacturing offset that demand? You would think so. Kodak owned their own silver mines at one time, and brought in tons of silver daily for their production needs.

Last month Shanghai film doubled the price of their product. This 2X increase, which will be followed by other film makers eventually, brings the cost of their 4x5 material from about 23 cents per sheet wholesale to 45 cents a sheet. That means a retail price of about a dollar per sheet is the lowest price you will soon find for even this cheapest sheet film. There may be older stock on ebay you can get for less, for a while. Shanghai is a state-owned enterprise and being state-owned may have internally inelastic pricing that fluctuates rapidly with material costs.

Companies such as Ilford depend on a lot of silver and at any day when the price is high may be worth more in silver than anything else, and they may also buy silver contracts as a hedge against price fluctuations. Many businesses, such as oil dealers, do this to even out the price as it fluctuates. The trouble comes when prices spike, then it is too tempting to sell the material and take the sometimes big profit, and then go do something else. Such a scenario played out with certain larger oil dealers who sold their oil contracts right after hurricane Katrina, making huge profits, though we do not expect this in the smaller, less intensely greedy photo industry.

Silver and all material prices affect what we do here of course. The Impossible Project is also affected by silver's price, and so is 20X24. Mitigating the cost of silver can be done by using less, which is what Fuji does in their FP series of instant films that make use of the amplification of the DTR process, or by buying low and warehousing, which is what some film makers do today.

When silver spiked three decades ago, a lot of new silver mines opened. The prospect of high profits faded when the price of silver, then a bubble, fell and kept falling. This is still within memory of silver mining companies. Is the current metal price spike a bubble? I doubt it. The value of the dollar, much less than before, is a big factor. As long as world trading of precious metals continues in US dollars, I think we can expect prices to climb, or seem to.

Recent Results: New55 PN materials

2011-07-22T18:18:00.001-07:00

Collection of some quick test shots done at our Ashland lab over the last several weeks using a Speed Graphic, a 150mm f2.8 Xenotar, and a 545 back. All shots (except one with hand lettering on it and another integral shot just uploaded) were processed in the sleeve and the negative cleared in ordinary fixer, and washed. Expect the content of this post to change as more images are uploaded.

The Frog Tongue

2011-07-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

What is the right length of a frog's tongue? It depends on the film if you ask The Impossible Project. Their opacifier - the built in mask that protects the image while it is being developed - is made of earth friendlier materials these days, and needs a little extra time "under the tongue" so to speak, to work.

FROG TONGUE from Impossible Project on Vimeo.

Some users simply slide a sleeve into their SX70s or SLR680 cameras,but not everyone finds this convenient, so, intrepid engineers at The Impossible Project have now made a new tongue kit, that you can install yourself!

It is great to see The Impossible Project evolving into a model of innovation in both films and camera technology. Lots of small steps add up to breakthroughs. The world has changed and is a tougher place for art sometimes - music is free now, for example - so it is encouraging to see a willingness to adopt practical solutions, even if they are just a little tongue of frog.

275 Posts

2011-07-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

It still isn't the 680 posts of the other epic blog called Microphonium, but hey, in between experiments and ebay, 275 posts are a good amount. About 70 posts are about monobaths, three are about reclaiming negatives, and the rest are generally about Polaroid, film manufacturing, history, and diffusion transfer reversal.

The most visited post is about reclaiming a fuji negative.

'roid week on Flickr

2011-07-15T14:49:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you were aware, but today is the conclusion of the much-anticipated "roid week" on Flickr, where 'roid aficionados get two post two new images to the group on each of 5 weekdays in what has become a contest of sorts. Any instant film can be used but this year a lot of the entries look like The Impossible Project film, which is a very good sign.

Not to miss out, I grabbed a Flickr account and tossed up some of this week's images that I concocted from whatever was lying around, some that you may not have seen. Here is the link.

Don't forget about R3

2011-07-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

All of the attention on NEW55 is good, but what about Ilford PanF+ processed in a nice warm R3 monobath? Or what about R4? It's easy to do, and about the lowest cost high quality field processable negative result you can get. Photo credit DF.

Meeting of Positive, and Negative

2011-07-13T11:32:00.000-07:00

A still life shown as a Diffusion Transfer Reversal print (with a reagent streak) above its companion, a scanned and reversed negative. Two-minute processing time, ISO 100, shot on a Speed Graphic fitted with a Xenotar 150mm f2.8 set to about f11.

This image was made with a NEW55 single PN assembly having a target retail of $6-7 exposed and processed in a Polaroid 545 holder. After exposure, the assembly is pulled normally through the rollers and timed, after which it is opened and peeled apart, revealing the positive print, above.

The negative is separated from the assembly and dropped in ordinary hypo for a few minutes, which makes the spread reagent curl away, and separate from the surface of the emulsion, and also clears any uncleared, unexposed edges where the reagent may have missed. Normally, the reagent covers the entire negative. The negative is then washed and dried in ordinary water.

This process is quite similar to that of T55 except no sodium sulfite bath is required, and easy to get hypo (fixer) is used. We used Ilford Rapid Fixer, but any solution of sodium thiosulfate will work fine.

Two aspects are apparent and important: The first, both positive and negative have the same effective speed, though the scanned appearance and dynamic range of positive and negative are different, as expected. The other is that after the two minute process, there is still some residual development activity available on the negative side. This does not affect the positive but results in some solarization of the negative if exposed to room light. We expect to reduce this by optimizing the processing time and the balance of chemicals in the reagent, so they will be essentially self terminating, while still allowing artistic control of the negative, especially the prized delicate edge effects, if the user wants.

We do not know what the archival properties will be from this process but expect with reasonable washing, the negative will last as long as any other conventional negative.

Frank Ockenfels

2011-07-13T08:17:00.001-07:00

Nice quality video, very well produced. Visit at http://www.fwo3.com

On the Edge

2011-07-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

If you have been reading along you know that one of the magical things about old T55 was its tendency to produce light solarization and edge effects that were sometimes a lot of fun. Well in this case we messed up on the timer and pulled this New55 at only 30 seconds, and here is what resulted.

Not shopped, not tweaked in the slightest.

Byron 4x5 Camera

2011-07-04T05:58:00.000-07:00

I am fortunate to own one Byron 4x5 folding camera and use it with a 90mm Symmar and the stock Rodenstock lens very frequently. Unlike other Polaroid model 110 modifications that use an adapter, Byron holds various 4x5 film holders such as double dark slide, Horseman, Fuji PA-45 etc. natively, and closer to the original focal plane, without an adapter, making use of wide angle lenses like the Symmar and some even wider, possible. It is also lighter and more compact.

Click here for an excellent blog about Byron cameras, with lots of technical information. Of the several other 4x5 conversions of the 110s, this one is singularly special, and truly innovative. Next to the Speed Graphic, it's my favorite camera.

Yellow Dot Sale for Aero Ektar Owners

2011-07-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

In order to raise some money we have a sale going on and we are offering a special price on Yellow Dots for Aero Ektar lenses at only $100 each.

These are genuine Yellow Dots, not reproductions, and can be applied to the rim of Aero Ektar lenses and other lenses if you choose.

Strict limit of one per customer please. These are scarce and we only have a few. If you live in Massachusetts, we have to charge sales tax of 6.3%.

Acoustic Nanofilm

2011-07-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

Amazing what can be done with new materials plugged into old fields, in this case, the field of ribbon microphones. We developed this material that made "foils" obsolete, and today this type of film is in mass production, being sold to a new market that appreciates the dose of analog this material puts back into the digital workflow.

Graflok back conversion for a Super D

2011-07-01T15:41:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to an old post from 1995 describing a procedure that allows a trimmed graflok back to drop into a revolving Series D or Super D frame, preserving the rotating feature.

Daylab SX-70 film processor with Impossible film

2011-07-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

New55 Pricing

2011-06-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people who are new to the site who may have not looked at the comments on production costs and potential sales prices of a possible New55 PN product. We estimate a best case retail price of $6 per sheet.

Just thought you needed to know. That's the reality of it.

The Black Hat

2011-06-28T05:36:00.000-07:00

Can P/N balance be achieved?

Not satisfied with mere negatives any longer, researchers at New55 have been intrigued that we might for the first time control the DTR positive, shown here, and the negative, below it, without having to choose between them.

Click on the images, especially the negative, as that is just a thumbnail, until you select it for a closer view.

A virtual display print from the negative can be seen by clicking here.

We need more clips

2011-06-26T05:55:00.000-07:00

Kodak, Fuji or Polaroid - doesn't matter. The clips are all the same and we now find we need more, please! You can leave the paper on them. In fact if you leave an inch or so it makes it easy for us to reclaim them.

Thanks!

New55
72 Nickerson Rd
Ashland MA 01721
USA

Projection Plane Photography Challenged

2011-06-22T09:46:00.000-07:00

Digital and film are the same, at least as we know them today, and differ only in one small detail - the image capture device. Both use a lens to project an image on a planar surface and then that image is captured as a charge. In film, the charge is a precursor to a chemical reaction. In digital, the charge is a precursor to generating an electrical signal. Otherwise it's pretty much the same process, and very lens-dependent, which is why lens prices continue to climb.

And while this new technology still uses a lot of the language and technique, including lenses, that look like our familiar projection plane photography, it really has more in common with holography, or optical coherence domain reflectometry, confocal imaging, phased array imaging, synthetic aperture, and lenticular array imaging techniques brought together in a more conventional format so you can take "a picture" that is a file that can be read and reprocessed in many different ways, sometimes simultaneously.

Do not overlook this innovation, which will impact displays as well as capture devices on all of our appliances, and eventually back onto planes, such as paper. It's cool and frightening at the same time, as we enter a period of highly accelerated change, unprecedented in human history.

Rachel Rayns' Magi Trak E6 processor

2011-06-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

I like magnetic drives, and Rachel Rayns has this new video showing her Magi Trak E6 processor that apparently uses magnets to propel the mechanism, probably to keep the dry parts dry and wet parts wet, once and for all. Watch this wonder object of photo-robotic geekdom of the highest kind get baptized, and make a nice noise while doing so. Some of Rachel's work can be found at http://rachelrayns.com. If that isn't working, try this instead. Well worth a look!

Solarized, or not, it's a matter of time and balance

2011-06-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

Pulling a negative - stopping short of complete development - is a common way to control density and contrast, at least in regular darkroom technique. Things were different in a P/N situation such as old T55, and also New55, of which two examples are shown.

The top negative was pulled before the reagent had a chance to run to completion, leaving as-yet undeveloped and fixed silver halide a chance to see the light as we pulled the negative from the positive in room light, providing enough exposure to seriously solarize it. It's kind of fun to see both ends of the gray scale show as black here!

A more conventional result occurs when the reagent has time to complete the development to the point where a little room light has little effect. Actually, under the bill of the cap, there is that one very unexposed portion of the negative that still had a bit of development to go, and it did, as you can see if you look closely. Both of these negative are denser than we might want in a finished product, but we think we can fix that.

None of that has much bearing on the tonality of the DTR image, except of course the scales slide up and down, but the tones don't completely reverse.

In designing a P/N product, one has to consider the need for a negative vs a positive and try to achieve a balance. Polaroid never did, as the correctly exposed and processed negative produced a print that was a stop, at least, lighter than it ought to have been. Today we have a chance to correct that, and produce both positive and negative with the right characteristics, if that matters much. I think the negative is far more important and would be content with a positive that was lighter or darker, same as before, but it is tantalizing to think we might solve the longstanding balance problem that T55 had.

Yellow Dot Clue for Aero Ektar Aficionados

2011-06-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

Put this post in the arcane category: You have to be one of the possessed people who have latched onto the Kodak Aero Ektar and other big eyes to appreciate the meaning of this. Here is a plate for a very large aero lens, a giant 48 inch f6.3 mass of glass too heavy to even lift.

But the label with its dot is interesting. If you read it normally, left to right, it almost looks like you could read it as "48 inch f/6.3 for 9 inch X 18 inch camera telephoto type I-class B DAY NIGHT temperature compensated USAF spec No..."

Notice that the dark dot is violet or purple. The two in this context seem to me to indicate the use of the lens, in this case day and night. Sunny/Cloudy? I don't think so, and cannot come up with another plausible interpretation of the dots.

Therefore, the famous yellow dot, so cherished by those who pay extra for it in their Aero Ektar hoods, might indicate "Daylight Use". What would be different from night use? In darkness, the Aero Ektar was used with flash bombs to illuminate the scene of night bombings.

Do we now know that the yellow dot means? Comments please.

I grabbed this image and cropped it, taken from some other online post that I cannot find, to provide a proper attribution, at the moment. Here is another Aero Ektar and some earlier speculations about the meaning of the dot.

How It's Made - Instant Film

2011-06-17T05:24:00.000-07:00

Great deal on FP100C45 on Amazon

2011-06-15T17:38:00.000-07:00

I don't know how long this will last, but Amazon has FP100C45 for only $18 a pack. That's the cheapest I have ever seen it. Even if it is short dated, it will produce a good negative I think.

Here is the link. We don't get anything for this.

Price tag is biggest obstacle to New55 commercialization

2011-06-12T11:40:00.000-07:00

While many of the technical hurdles for a new P/N material using an available emulsion have been overcome, the nagging problem of per-sheet price continues to be an obstacle to commercialization. We planned to introduce first a field processable negative material called DN-1, and a field processable direct positive material known as DP-1. If you have been following along you already know these are intended for rapid processing using monobaths and daylight tanks that accept a readyload format film. In the past, a readyload sheet cost about $3 each and today we expect it to be about $4, but with the added utility of insertion into a tank.

The price doubles with a P/N material. Plenty of pros insist this isn't really too much and is much less than one would pay to have a 4x5 negative developed and then contact printed.

Recent discontinuation of Fuji's FP100B material, which is (was) superb, was due to poor sales. That was only $3 a shot or less. Of course Fuji did a terrible job telling the potential market about their packfilms and then getting them into the hands of users in the US and Europe. Technical success does not mean market success and this is a perfect example. By the way, FP100B in the smaller size is still in stock just about everywhere but not moving. So go out and buy it! Want to see what it looks like? Click here.

Night Vision Assembly Station

2011-06-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

Over in one corner of the lab, the night vision station sits, eerily dark and shrouded in black drape, its cascading arm sleeves falling lazily, and one blue eye peers back.

an experiment in perspective

2011-06-09T14:49:00.000-07:00

John Chervinsky's an experiment in perspective is guaranteed to interest anyone attuned to the power of the singular point of view presented by lens and film, all the more fascinating in its use of Type 55 on technical but whimsical subjects that challenge the eye.

John has been a great supporter of New55 and provided us with critical scanning electron microscope images of vintage materials that added to our understanding of the Diffusion Transfer Reversal technology we expect to continue to apply to imaging and elsewhere. John's website is here.

Here is a link to a pdf - but not an ordinary pdf! This one fills your screen with the images from an experiment in perspective, and you must look at it.

An aside: The images presented in an experiment in perspective are highly characteristic of certain qualities we admire in Type 55, and in some ways John's images provide a benchmark for New55.

Fine Arts in Maynard, MA

2011-06-05T17:04:00.000-07:00

A nice little art theater in nearby Maynard, MA thrives because it has focused on a narrower audience.

Chemical focal plane photography is thriving by directing its resources toward those with the desire to create and not just document using lenses and capture media.

Along the way new techniques, tools and ways of working are being adopted. Like the music production field of the last decade, there are winners and losers, with many large studios (maybe all) failed, and closed, meanwhile, millions of "amateur" musicians can now afford their own studios that have sound quality as good as any large studio of the 20th Century. All they need is a PC and a converter to manipulate sounds. But to generate sounds, they still needed microphones and then preamps. Companies with names like "Front End Audio" (they were one of our best microphone dealers when we made ribbon microphones) arose to fill the new market demand for that portion of the creative flow.The democratization of music-making obliterated the old mainstream and sent incumbents searching for new enterprises, and more, not less, music is being produced and delivered at an even greater rate by anyone with the inclination to do so.

A decade later we are witnessing the analogous replaying of that crash and rise in imaging, not just songs.The ubiquitous continuous instant connectivity-with-pictures we enjoy is a given even though it did not exist at all ten years ago. The document picture taking is done to fill Facebook and soon Twitter and of course those serious enough to consider the images as art go to Flickr to share and discuss them. One can expect this frenzy to accelerate since it is so easy to look at a picture, much easier than listening to a whole song, something we hardly do. Meanwhile, sub groups have discovered the "Front End" makes all the difference, and variations are everywhere: Dianas, Aero Ektars, Lensbaby, and The Impossible Project's products, weird films, Lomography, and even the serious traditionalists with finely crafted mahogany boxes and little holes. All seem destined to be delivered to the Epson, or the Canon scanner, then on to whatever and whoever suits us.

Making KODAK Film

2011-06-01T17:07:00.000-07:00

Just got my copy (barely, as the mailmauler folded it in half) of this very interesting book straight from the author, Robert L Shanebrook, and you can read it too, if you order it here.

After just touring two European photo film making plants I now have a greater appreciation of the immensity of the KODAK plant, and the pioneering process development that went on there over the course of a century. Much of the equipment reminds me of milk and cheese processing equipment. There is a certain agricultural quality to KODAK that I never noticed, but it is not surprising, as upstate NY is dairy rich, too.

Last week we heard that KODAK was mothballing its largest factory. Being over capacity isn't good for business and right-sizing is a necessary step to continued operation. It seems that there are other processes that might be well suited to the big Kodak coaters, such as making next generation high efficiency solar cells. Wouldn't that be appropriate! Let's hope business leaders and not bean counters make the decisions to retain some knowledge base and capability in the US. Apparently, Mr. Shanebrook isn't so confident so he has carefully documented the process equipment and flow charts for key components used to make photographic film.

Industrial archaeology will some day be a distinct profession as technology intensive industries come and go through inevitable growth and obsolescence cycles. Only when it is too late to salvage will other investors do what they can to dig up the past and look for any gems of knowledge they might newly employ.

Get this book!

British Journal of Photography online

2011-05-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

It is nice to see such a well done website by a magazine publisher, with good content. As paper magazines make the difficult transition to electronic transmission format, there are inevitable conflicts in presentation and subject matter caused by the economic and technical upsets to traditional print. You can find BJP Online here.

Even more upsetting is the apparent severe loss of freedom being experienced by photographers in the UK. Private and public resources are being spent to prevent photographers, amateur and professional, from shooting images in public places. It seems surreal that in London, of all places, it is effectively illegal to take snapshots of Tower Bridge, while dozens of video cameras planted on the sides of buildings, and on posts and parapets, watch those below. One could say the predictions of Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner, have become reality in England. Or has BBC simply broadcast MI6 too many times, and frightened an entire country with artistic fiction? We do admire British television here, but prefer Doc Martin, and Top Gear.

To attempt to address that problem, a group of photographers are protesting, and here is a story about it in the recent issue of the BJP.

R4 with Tobias Feltus

2011-05-16T18:01:00.000-07:00

Tobias wasn't too happy breathing ammonia fumes so he concocted his own monobath for our project, here called R4, and has been using it to good effect.

Here, Tobias' mother artist Lani Irwin, well worth seeing her paintings.

Tobias writes more about his R4 work here, at this link, which is essential reading for the project, which is accelerating.

First Spectrometer on a Chip - OSA Poster

2011-05-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

This is a bit academic, but I thought I would post a link to my poster at the Optical Society of America from the last century on the subject of a Spectrometer on a Chip. This was the very first in vivo spectrometer that was small enough to go inside the human body to measure the intensity and color of light reflection, fluorescence, and absorption.

Here is a link to a pdf of the poster.

A lot of other companies have claimed to have invented the "Spectrometer on a Chip" but we did it long before any of them.

Suspended!

2011-05-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

This is odd: I went to log on (after a long while) to my free Polaroid Studio account and read that I have been suspended. "This account has been suspended because it is NOT in Good Standing." Indeed!

It looks like I have a choice to "restore" my album for free, but I am hesitant to do so.

Anybody know what's up with this? I haven't been suspended since high school.

Ilford Direct Positive Paper and Pinhole Camera Video

2011-05-08T18:34:00.001-07:00

Ilford's Steven Brierley was one of several who very cordially extended their welcome to us at Harman Technology last week to discuss the New55 Project and other areas of interest. Here Steven is showing a good-looking pinhole camera for use with their direct positive papers.

Tobias Feltus and Bob Crowley have pints at Mr. Thomas's in Manchester England

2011-05-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

After a superb visit to the impressive Harman Technology/Ilford film plant nearby, Tobias Feltus and I wandered randomly to a pub named Mr. Thomas's Chop House in Manchester, which by lucky coincidence was the place where photographer Jonathan Oakes (link here) was having a first night showing and gathering of his photographs right there. How handy was that? So we proceeded to ask Mr. Oakes to shoot our picture, seen above, and chatted with him and Sandra Oakes, and his many friends and photographic associates who showed up over the course of the evening.

Most did not know that Ilford was still in Manchester!

Mr. Thomas's Chop House - highly recommended. Wonderful food and ambiance within a stagger of the Midland Hotel.

The Impossible Project - Enschede NL

2011-05-04T00:20:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting aspects of the revitalization of instant photography is occurring in Enschede Holland, where The Impossible Project has succeeded in restarting the production of integral instant films. The team of entrepreneurs, ex-Polaroid managers and scientists, and other experts and suppliers have done an amazing thing in my view, especially after the year-plus we have spent here at New55 to simply find sources for some of the exotic materials for our experiments. To have actually started production again, and have achieved wide distribution of the films is one that I hope everyone appreciates and supports. We certainly do - by buying the film and using it! The results, sometimes unexpected, are for those of us who are willing to see what might happen next!

The Impossible Project has an "about" page that gives an especially good glimpse into the workings of their Enschede plant that is worth visiting here at this link.

The image here was shot with an old SX-70 I bought in the 70s at Jordan Marsh at Shopper's World in Framingham, MA using The Impossible Project film. What a view of my messy bench, and several derelict cameras being converted for other purposes, such as the 110a on the right, and parts and pieces. The close-SLR focusing of the SX-70 camera use to make this image is still a joy to use. Click on it for a close-up view of the interesting texture.

added later on: If you've read this far you might be interested to know how impressive the plant is, and Enschede in general. I'm not impressed easily - free, fast wifi on the clean, on-time train to Schipol, and nice clear and sunny weather over a quite beautiful Dutch countryside are also a big plus!

Andre Bosman of The Impossible Project modestly but heroically stands next to some 20X24 examples of integral images and told me the story how they got the old plant started again. Like Burt Lancaster in The Train, Andre, then plant general manager, took his orders to dismantle and scrap the enormous production machines in a "measured" fashion, meanwhile, the large three city block long property, which had been slated for in-city condos, was waylaid by the mortgage crisis, and so stands today, with much running equipment!

This tale of industrial rescue genius has even more details and wonderful accounts of important things being reclaimed from scrapyards by other highly motivated ex-pols such as Renee, and should be recorded by some historian. As a process and manufacturing person, I am especially in awe of the accomplishments to-date.

Schneider Gaussoptik Software Available

2011-04-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

In case you need to design a lens or two, Schneider offers what appears to be a free download of its Gaussoptik software here.http://www.schneiderkreuznach.com/software/gaussoptics_registriation.htm

Elsewhere on Schneider's unusually informative website, you can see their newer tilt shift lenses for Nikon, Mamiya and Canon at the understandable prices of about $4500 each.

And speaking of Gauss, possibly the most important scientist and mathematician ever for among other things his elucidation of the theory of distribution which applies to virtually everything, we are coming up on Chladni Day at Soundwave Research Laboratories, sponsor of this project. I'll alert you to more on Chladni as the day approaches.

KODAK: How film is made Part 1

2011-04-26T18:16:00.001-07:00

KODAK: How film is made Part 2

2011-04-26T18:04:00.001-07:00

Look at all the Graphics!

2011-04-23T18:30:00.001-07:00

Freestyle's new catalog is a fun wish book

2011-04-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

Just today I got this Freestyle catalog, printed on actual paper and filled with various films, papers and chemicals from around the world. What fun!

We have no connection to Freestyle but what they are doing, which appears to be a concentration of analog/photochemical photographic tools and materials, looks like it is good for business. Right next to enlargers is the Epson V700 at a pretty good price, I noticed.

Here is a link to their site.

Lake 128

2011-04-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

Surprise again, this unexpected lake, or vernal pool, where the Polaroid Cafeteria was, on Route 128 in Waltham, seen on Marathon Day.

DTR and a great negative too

2011-04-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

Although the spread is imperfect, that isn't important. Today we achieved our first true P/N on the Efke 25 negative, fully developed and cleared, sharp and artifact free except where we lacked reagent, AND, a real diffusion transfer reversal onto a receiver sheet that was prepared here out of in-production materials that were never intended for instant photography, or DTR.

It was wonderful to see those little nucleating molecules where they should be, and get a great negative, too.

This is an important result that came a little faster than I expected: The Efke looks like it got about a 1 stop boost, and the processing time was 60 seconds. Except for a slight waviness from the very irregular reagent spread, the negative is quite even, well gradated, and extremely detailed - probably at least as detailed as original T55, and perhaps more.

A Weekend with D700

2011-04-18T05:25:00.000-07:00

Admit it. You want one of the newer full-frame DSLRs, or you bought one. It's inevitable that projection plane imaging onto electronically-read surfaces will continue to challenge chemically processed projection plane imaging, for the next decade, at least. Eventually, surface array imaging and life experience recorders will merge (with their own controversies and social impacts) and put the SX-70 and a DSLR into the same slot with Daguerre's camera, where they probably belong.

"Daddy, why can't I see the picture now?"

Apocryphal or not, the truth of this story continues to be played out as better imaging and display technologies are brought into being. Photography has a fairly short history of only a couple hundred years, so extending out a millennium or so, we can expect that quaint ideas like film, megapixels, and even eye-like lenses to eventually be overtaken by things far more powerful.

Meanwhile, artists, technophiles and others charged with the paying duties of recording weddings, products and news will turn to whatever is the surest, fastest and most reliable, within the confines of quality set by predecessors. Check out any 25 year old Popular Photography magazine and you can see how poor some things we thought were OK seem today.

In that perspective, I offer you this image of the pretzel-lensed Nikon D700 with its 12 quaint megapixels, a paradigm of 2011 photography, with a nod to the past in the form of the much overused and cliche tilt-shift lens attached thereto. Photoshop does a perfectly good job of perspective correction or selective blurring, so who needs this Hartblei 45mm Superrotator noodle? Who indeed? Perhaps this tool for artistic expression, loaded with all its chimerical, almost steampunk componentry, (sans leather and goggles, but you can add them) will be obsolete sooner than we expect. Or maybe it will evolve into something even better, bypassing hilarious NEF raw files, JPEGS and allowing us to see in some new way, maybe even in the mind's eye.

This is a rental from EP Levine, a good place to go and check out equipment in Waltham, MA. Their staff, selection and rentals, and this D700, are excellent.

Norwegian original translates The Impossible Project story

2011-04-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

I just happened to be searching for a picture of The Impossible Project factory and ran across a Norwegian language article, which I put through Translator. Sometimes Translator does a very good job, and other times the results are rather humorous. I think that's the case here.

For a Norwegian to English translation of the article, click here

Polaroid Waltham Cafeteria - gone

2011-04-16T19:29:00.000-07:00

Friday as I was driving to visit EP Levine Photo on Bear Hill Rd., I looked across 128 and noticed that the old Polaroid cafeteria that I had posted an image of here, has been demolished.

Parking the car on that hill, even with the four way flashers on, is quite risky, since tractor-trailers and other high speed and mass vehicles aren't used to anyone stopping along that relatively steep and narrow section of Bear Hill. I quickly scooted out and grabbed the digi, shot, and jumped back into the car just as another large tractor-trailer approached, similar to the one you see in the gap where the caf used to be.

Just wanted readers to know there are certain risks to be taken in our quest for more instant photography, which we accept. Click on the image to see the pile of rubble. Click here to see what this looked like about a year ago.

i spy with my plastic eye

2011-04-13T04:59:00.000-07:00

Sort of reminds me of Luscious Jackson's lyrics to "Naked Eye" which is a favorite here, i spy with my plastic eye consists of artists who we know using various mediums and inexpensive cameras and optics in the most creative and satisfying ways.

Apparently there are two shows and two books, or maybe one new book called i spy with my plastic eye II. To look for yourself (the website won't let me link to or embed any image from it, which makes it difficult for bloggers to point to except this way at this link here.

Well worth a look at this website, and I think I will buy the book!

Interesting "Polaroid" Video

2011-04-12T16:39:00.000-07:00

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Graflex Super D

2011-04-12T11:54:00.000-07:00

We also have a near mint Graflex Super D 4x5 camera with Auto Diaphragm (first ever) and a properly setup graflok back for sale. The back rotates into portrait or landscape modes with the push of a button.

This is a glimpse of the fine lens, with the lever and spring arrangement. It gets cocked open for focusing, and stops down the instant the shutter button is depressed. What a convenience this must have been!

Just send me an email. This one is all tuned up, very clean, ready for use. I have a PA-45 on it right now, but you can put any modern 4x5 film holder on this camera.

Here is a link to USENET post I wrote about the conversion of this camera to graflok. It is so old I forgot about it, and was posted before google. Here it is

Waterbury 9" Lens from the 19th Century

2011-04-07T14:29:00.000-07:00

While we are waiting for someone to scoop up this cool single element Waterbury lens, made by Scovill of NY, I might ask if someone knows what the proper name for the wheeled stops are in this version. I listed it with "Waterhouse stops" and it has been pointed out that this is not a very accurate term to use.

This is a nice brass lens and I had imagined using it on some wood camera project, but we are clearing out a few of the many photographic artifacts here in the lab to augment the fund for materials (or make room for new toys) and have put a couple of things on ebay, this included.

Antique Scovill lens and Polaroid 195 being sold by us

2011-04-06T15:11:00.000-07:00

Just an FYI - we have a couple of items on ebay. Money goes to New55
http://shop.ebay.com/researchlabz/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Polaroid show in Boston you cannot miss

2011-04-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

If you are in the Boston area and have any interest at all in fine Polaroid images, you have a month to go see Instant Connections at the Panopticon Gallery, located in the Commonwealth Hotel, in Kenmore Square. There is a T stop right in front, and it is a very short walk from Fenway Park, so it is easy to get too, and free.

Hunt's Photo has their in town store practically in the gallery, too, so you can pick up film, chemicals and paper after being suitably inspired to make some images.

Here is a link to Panopticon Gallery.

Quick view of the Polaroid 8x10 system

2011-04-03T04:50:00.000-07:00

More R3 Results

2011-03-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

This one with TMX, another successfully processed R3 negative, scanned at the default settings with the V750.

Click on the image to fill your screen.

PSHNE camera show April 30/May 1 in Wakefield MA

2011-03-25T09:55:00.000-07:00

PHSNE - Photographic Historical Society of New England, holds regular meetings and have two shows each year to buy cameras, lenses, parts, and stuff. While being so close to Waltham and Cambridge, the epicenter of all things Polaroid and the history related thereto, PHSNE members seem to have even more of an interest in very early cameras, processes and gear. You never know what you will find. If you need medium format bodies and lenses, this seems to be the place to go. All the wedding photographers have switched over to full frame Canon and Nikon digis, so the Bronicas, Mamiyas and Hasselblads are ever more numerous. The PSHNE show is also a great place to pick up a funky 120 rollfilm camera that you've never heard of for almost nothing. What fun!

The show runs two days, and here is a link to the show details, and directions.

Hugh Laurie - Polaroid Commercial

2011-03-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

Bruna Stude - Empty Oceans

2011-03-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes by pure chance one comes across an unexpected or astonishing find: Such was the case at Galerie103 in Poipu, Kauai, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Gallery owner Bruna Stude's own photographs are modestly displayed in the small corridor between her two larger Galerie103 spaces that contain current shows.

Empty Oceans (link here-very much worth clicking on!) are Stude's more recent expressions of her ocean-going life since she left her native home of Croatia. A scuba and free diver, Bruna Stude would crew on ships every year, sail to relatively unknown and nontraditional places. "I just drop in the middle of the blue ocean, experiencing the feeling of being in a place people haven't been." For over a decade, Stude would dive on remote places and they would always see lots of ocean life, but then in the last several years, fewer large fish, like sharks, were seen. "Last year we didn't see any" she explained, "it became disturbing, the world changing at a fast pace that we are not aware of."

It was around that time that Stude made what she thinks was an unconscious decision to photograph the empty ocean. Over one week, in Seven Seas a day of empty ocean was chronicled. "But it is beautiful" she said. "I've found a way to photograph how it feels to be in it, and after experiments with cameras and shutter speeds I've learned how to do it. I try to say how it feels."

Visit more of Bruna Stude's work here.


Seascape 20

Good Progress

2011-03-22T13:29:00.001-07:00

I'm happy to report progress on a number of fronts and will have updates pretty soon, I think. Meanwhile, less blogging, and more doing!

Lou Barranti - The Downtown Waitress Project

2011-03-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Friend, frequent contributor, and, in my view, wonderfully purposeful "straight" portrait photographer Lou Barranti recently suffered the indignity of having some of his photos auctioned off in the Polaroid auction. But that hasn't stopped Lou, who has remained a loyal 55 follower and enthusiast, and continues to build The Downtown Waitress Project, now online and ready to see.

Click on the link, here, to visit.

On Lou's site you can click through very well presented scans of T55 and other 4x5 images, most of waitresses, and some of his daughters, too. These are people we might have seen somewhere, or did we? The person who comes to our table, you go to their workplace, this is their life, or is it - do we know them? Do we notice?

Please do notice, and enjoy Lou's site.