Paris Shop, 1995

I put 1995 down for any date that I can't remember (many). Ten years ago. Yeah, that seems about right. And next year, for anything I can't remember - 1996. It is possible to take the trouble and write your life's journey and then go through ten thousand negatives and order them by date. Maybe some photographer does that - but that's like Felix Unger territory.

Happy Birthday

My feet are still half-planted in the current age - since output is digital - but it's not anything to worry about while you are out and about in the Big "digital-consumed" Apple.

Non-digital internal workflow changes as your concentration takes a direct route to - gasp - your own imagination. (This can be good or bad depending on functioning of that realm). But your internal workflow changes. Definitely.

Where's the preview button? It's been moved into your brain; maybe your soul. Click and you may be haunted for days in your dreams. There's no button to turn the cranial preview screen off. No timing mechanism. It lingers as long as it wants to.

But wait - wait - can moving the preview device to your imagination get you better pictures? I can assure you with complete certainty that I don't know. The problem is in the definition of "a better picture." You and I are just a bit too close to know things like that about our own images. We know that we evaluate - we try hard - but some psychological distance between the desire for "a winner" and the image must pass first. Time helps. Speeding up the process - counter productive.

But with film - it is always a surprise to some extent. It is. I don't care how carefully you pre-visualized it - the results are never the same. Maybe this is more true in black and white photography where you are always dealing with an abstraction. You get tuned in to it - but you will always find some surprise.

I am always surprised by what I see in the negative - sometimes for the good. Sometimes for the bad. But you know what - that is what I enjoy most! The surprise. What a weird way to go about things. You do everything you can to control what is going to be on film - only to find that everyday is a birthday. Every day - a new "wrapped" present awaits you. Something you've stolen from the world and wrapped yourself - and yet you don't know what's in the box. This is the best part.

Happy birthday.

Grand Central, Dawn

Sanctuary, Night

Church. Fifth Avenue

Corner Scene

I'm going to start adding slightly larger images (700 px) to the blog. Let's see how that works out. I have a bunch of prints to get out today - but then I'm going to start looking more seriously into the next PC. (This took 12 minutes to sharpen @ full scan size of 5400). There are two sharpenings with Pixel Genius - first one is on the original full size (non-destructive) and that's what takes a long time. Then there is a second sharpening depending on the output device. Obviously for the web, this is quick. And even for say an 8 x 12 - painless enough. But if you are dealing with big files - watch out unless you've got the horsepower.

Oh, and in case you wonder - why bother with all that - the results are the reason. The prints I've done after going through this sharpening process have a very smooth transition between edges that looks sharp and yet natural. I guess it's that little extra difference - but it's worth it.

The Technical Trials

and Tribulations continue - sort of.

You folks aren't going to see any new images 'til I get this routing problem fixed up.

First off - ya might be wonderin' how I can even post to the blog.

Good question. The route from my PC to blogger.com to DaveBeckerman.com is different than the route from my PC to DaveBeckerman.com (and when I say DaveBeckerman.com I mean the particular server where my website is hosted.

And the ISP is correct. It is not on their end.
And the Cable company is partly correct, it is not exactly on their end. But it hops along through many company pipes before it gets to DaveBeckerman.

So who is responsible for the space between point A (my pc), B (the cable company) and C (the ISP)

I would have to choose B: The Cable Company. Or, none of the above.

* * *

Wherever the problem was - it's fixed. Of course I didn't do anything except turn on the computer this morning.

E-Mail Problems & Tech

Fair amount of technical problems today. Nothing to do with my pc - just some dumb e-mail stuff with the ISP - and not really their fault either.... just some stupid spam that was huge and that was making it impossible to get my mail - and so - I ended up switching to another back-end pop system... won't go into it.

If I don't respond to you promptly anymore - just chalk it up to a transfer that is going on behind the scenes somewhere in Atlanta.

And FTP to my site right now is next to impossible. Right now the ISP is saying it is probably a problem with Time Warner cable (could be); and Time Warner Cable can't find anything wrong. Symptom - lot's of FTP time outs, and my site (from my machine is slow to load images). But other sites seem okay. You know there's this whole routing process - all these pipes from my pc to their server and back and for all I know it could be a clog in any one of those pipes. So then who unclogs the clog.

Yup. Now that I think about it - clog somewhere because when I ftp my blog from blogger.com to davebeckerman.com - no problem. So something in the path from point A (My PC) to point B (Interland) is dropping the ball, and that path is different that the path from A(Blogger) to B(Interland).

As far as new PCs go. Yeah, for $2500 I can get a pretty amazing dual xeon processor Precision

Workstation from Dell.
Dell Precision 670x64

2 GB DDR2 SDRAM Memory, 400 MHz
2 2.80 GHz, 1 MB L2 Cache processors
250 GB hard drive (I have plenty of hard drives to stick in the thing already)

Their memory is expensive. I don't want another monitor, happy with this one.

One thing I don't know nuthin' bout - this 64-bit business. There are warnings that some applications won't run on 64-bit operating system. Okay - what are they?

Man with Sunglasses

PhotoKit Sharpner, Pixel Genius

Over the last few days - in addition to all the film experiments, I've been testing "PhotoKit Sharpener" from Pixel Genius.

Reason: my own sharpening techniques (and I've been using several including masking) are just not quite up to snuff. Or sometimes take too much manual manipulation.

Photokit Sharpener is for real. And it does make what to me is a dramatic difference in the quality of the prints.

It is geared towards a sharpening workflow. I haven't gone through all the options yet - there are many - but I have been doing a two-step dance where first you sharpen the capture (in this case from 400 and 800 ASA negatives) - THIS TAKES A VERY LONG TIME ON A 5400 16-BIT FILE. I should give the specs on my PC before saying that - maybe later.

It is a non-destructive sharpener. Sharpening is done via a combination of several layers masks.

Then you go to step two where you get your print to the final size for printing with all your correction layers etc. and then you apply an OUTPUT sharpening which is geared towards your output device, in this case an inkjet printer. This doesn't take as long as step one since you're working on a smaller file. I've been doing 12 x 18 prints most of the morning at 240 dpi.

Since I just bought it - it means that a) it will save me time and b) give better results than I can do on my own.

Obviously this is not a review since I don't have the time to write a good review. This is just a further note about what's been going on in the Beckerman workflow.

One caveat. This thing wants a fast processor and lots of memory if you're working on a 5400 dpi scan. So much so - that I may finally (after what - five or six years) have to upgrade the PC. It may be a sign because this morning the machine was making some weird noises; probably the fan was having some troubles. I opened the guy up and cleaned it thoroughly and hopefully turned it on and same noise - definitely from the main fan. I'm not saying that's a reason to up and get a new machine - but it is time.

HP5 Plus @ 1200

Woman on Bench



Subway Crush



Balloon Jump



Victoria's Ticket

HP5+ @ 1200 ASA - 11 minutes / 68F

Highlights are close to being blown. More "pushed" looking than @ 800. Not pleasing to my eye. You could probably drop it down to 10 minutes - which would fix highlights but still lose something in the shadows. I'll just stick with the 800 ASA for now. They pretty much all look like this.

Film Development

I will eventually post this on its own page. But here are the gory details:

Ilfotec DD-X and Tri-X @ 400.

Exactly as the Ilfotec Instructions recommend. However, I got better results using the times for 68F degrees rather than 75F which were too contrasty. Whatever the temperature - I use a cold water bath (the sink). I keep a gallon jug of ice cold water in the fridge and I keep the water bath about 4 degrees lower than the temp. of the developer. Basically this keeps the temp of the developer where it is supposed to be. When you add DD-X (1:4) and I think due to the air-temperature, or maybe the chemical reaction, without the water bath the temp. at the end is a few degrees higher. I suppose that if you are developing film in the Alaskan winter, your water bath might need to be warmer.

Agitation has a tremendous effect on the contrast and appearance of grain. Stirring is a bad way to go as you can't keep repeat it accurately. A number of inversions of the tank within a set amount of time is the way to go. The agitation for the above combination I use is 4 inversions per minute (within 10 seconds).

Keep your time exactly the same by pouring out the developer 10 seconds before the allotted time. And then straight into stop bath. Stop bath has two purposes: stop development and to some extent lengthen the life of the fixer. Everything I use is one-shot - so the latter bit about the fixer doesn't matter. But stopping development - that does. (There are many discussions about whether this stopbath is necessary or not. I don't know. It's cheap and I use it.)

HP5+ @ 800. This will produce more pronounced grain than Tri-X @ 400 but it's got an excellent tonal range and really does pick up shadow areas well and curbs highlights. Instructions are what the manufacturer says they are, though again, best results at the 68F time.

Today I shot one roll of HP5+ at 400 (will try it later in the DD-X); and one roll of HP5 @ 1200 ASA (which honestly is all the speed I need). More later...

I can tell you that 1200 ASA with the F2 summicron was plenty fast for shooting in the subway which I did. I sincerely hope the roll turns out okay because there are good shots on it.

* * *
Developed the HP5 @ 1200 for 11 minutes at 68F. Results were pretty bad. Most of the highlights blown (didn't matter whether this was done in low-light in the subway or outdoors in bright sunlight). Shadows - fair. Not the way to go for me.

Under Vanderbilt Overpass

This is actually my own favorite from yesterday morning (pre-dawn). Something I would never had done if I was working with a tripod which I would have felt compelled to use with slower film. One of those - I've stood here a million times and never looked up shots. And of course the pigeon - symbol of New York - which should be put on the City Flag - helps.