[PRCo] Re: Films

[Dwight Long]

Fred

Leitz got most of the publicity with his Leicas but Zeiss made better lenses--so, BTW, did a company called Schneider.

D76 was a very good developer for 120 or 116 size roll film, or for sheet film of same or larger sizes.  It was not so good for 35 MM.  Microdol produced a much finer grain and was preferred (at least by me after some adverse experiences in developing 35mm B&W with other developers) for 35mm.

Travels next year?  Could you persuade Jack May to defer his now-postponed Polish trip to next year and then all of us could go together?  I can't do anything lengthy the rest of the year, but next year is another story. A month is out of the question for me even then but two weeks is possible.  Not enough I haven't done in Italia to interest me and France can wait--possibly forever.  Poland, the smaller cities in Hungary and Czecho plus Poland, and even a return trip to Romania, are of much greater interest to me.  On the other hand, so many new lines have opened in Spain (including main line HSR) that a return visit there would hold some attraction.  One wonders what Thomas Fischer might have on his reduced plate of offerings for next year.

I'll be off line until Wednesday--but then again so will you for most of the time!

Dwight

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Fred Schneider 
  To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org 
  Sent: Thursday, 12 May, 2011 17:14
  Subject: [PRCo] Films


  I think the Ansco products were very bad when you stacked them against Kodachrome.   We all know that Kodachrome had extreme dye logevity, particularly dark storage.   Compared to E4 Ektachrome, the Anscochrome probably held up better.   I have a few slides that my father took in the early 1950s on Anscocolor that lasted longer than Ektachrome E4 process from 1960.   The anecdotes were probably Ansco versus Kodachrome.   
  At one time Lancaster city had four camera stores and one was an Ansco dealer.   Even he admitted that it was difficult to sell the Blue and Red boxes.   He said, "The yellow box sells."   But both of them had similar black and white papers and chemistry.   They all, for example, developed buffered borax developers in the 1930s for moderately fine grain work.   Why?   Because Ernst Leitz and others were developing miniature cameras to use motion picture size film (35mm) in casettes and we needed something to get a little more detail out of the negatives.    Agfa Ansco's formula book called their's Developer number 17.   Kodak called their's D-76.   They were essentially the same thing.  i imagine if I could find a Dupont or a Gevaert formula book, I would find a similar product.   In time everything in this country disappeared except for Kodak and imports from Germany or Japan.   

  On the subject of black and white, it has been about 13 years since I last exposed and processed a roll of film.  The last roll I took was when I was asked to come to my 40th high school reunion with a camera.   We are now up to 53 years.   I've printed black and white negatives within the last month but I have not exposed any.   

  Preferred?   I used Kodachrome until it became obvious to me that it wasn't going to survive and then I switched to Fuji Astia about two or three years before the final demise of the Kodak product.   I still have some unexposed Kodachrome if anyone wants to make a remember when display.   Use depends on how many trips I take in a year.  Last year I didn't even use an entire brick of film.  This year I'm thinking of driving to Salt Lake City for the August 7th opening of the two light rail lines ... might use up 10 rolls on that trip.   I think we got wiped out of the Japan trip but now several of us are talking a month in either France or Italy next year and that ought to be good for 20 or so rolls of slides.   I will probably take both slides and digital.   

  Finally bought a Nikon D-90 a few years ago.   The uncredited photo of 4398 in a recent trains magazine was taken by me with the D-90.   I also bought a Canon printer a few months ago but it still sits here unconnected.   One of these days I'll wire it in and make some prints.  

  There just seem to be so many other things that get in the way ... painting the kitchen ceiling, trips, naps.  



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