some notes on photography
photo by Tom Gore

the camera & its controls

There are several controls on the camera that are vital to any photographer who is serious about making photographs rather than simply taking them. These controls are the lens focal length, the subject distance, the aperture and the shutter speed. While modern cameras can have a high degree of automation, it is important to at least understand these functions.

Fig. 1 typical film camera.

Fig. 2 typical digital camera.

Fig. 3 typical scientific camera.

Coupling the use of these controls with your selection of film type, ISO and white balance settings in a digital camera, point of view, moment of exposure, lighting (through choice of time of day or use of flash or flood light) and its direction and quality as well as your control of film processing and print making or digital post processing gives you tremendous ability to structure and create your images, rather than blindly record the reality in front of your lens.

To use these controls successfully involves a certain amount of mental previsualization of the final image and this is the most important skill for a photographer to develop. Try to look at the world with a critical eye whenever you can. Try to see picture possibilities and envision how you would photograph them. By doing these visual exercises your photographic vision will sharpen rapidly.

The well-known American street photographer Gary Winogrand once said that he photographed things in order to find out what they would look like when photographed. He was a master photographer who used great skill in making his pictures. Winogrand relied on that skill but accepted accidental effects as the frosting on his photographic plate. One of the marvelous and exciting things about the photographic process is the role played by accidental effect. Many great photographers have benefited greatly from these fortuitous contributions by the fates, but they did not rely upon them. Instead, they counted on their skill and expertise, on their ability to see and on their use of the technical controls of the photographic process, both at the time of photographing and later on in the darkroom.

These camera controls must become second nature to you as a photographer through the constant exercise of them. Photographers must do constant visual finger exercises just as must musicians do. These involve becoming used to the physicality of the camera controls, to setting the correct exposure and focus until they both become instinctive. These exercises must also involve the heightened visual perception that allows the photographer to find or predict visually significant moments. If you always leave the camera to its own automatic programs you will have successes but also spectacular failures when the camera's computer makes wrong assumptions about your subject.

With practice, a feeling about the depth of field that results from a specific lens aperture and focal length combination can be developed that enables the mind's eye to create a previsualization of the final printed image. The real world is one of three-dimensional movement, rife with context and smell and meaning and sound and colour. It is an enormous plastic matrix that surrounds us and we photographers must attempt to imprison razor blade slices of that matrix in the little two-dimensional silver boxes that we call photographs. We have already lost three dimensionality and movement, smell and sound, and often as not colour also. We deal with a highly abstract iconography in which gesture is frozen, and meaning is removed from its context of everyday reality.

Because of most people's primitive belief in the truthful accuracy of the photograph, we photographers have tremendous powers of distortion and deception. In addition, after we have made our photograph as honestly as possible, there are a host of users of photographs who may make liars of us photographers through cropping the photo, altering its context or adding misleading captions as well as manipulating the photograph in the computer.

A famous example is the photograph used in 1954 by Senator Joseph McCarthy in an attempt to show the then U.S. Secretary of the Army currying favor with a McCarthy aide. The full uncropped photograph, which included several people not visible in McCarthy's tightly cropped version, shows that the McCarthy aid is a coincidental bystander rather than the target of the Army Secretary's attention. We photographers are often left in a moral quandary, for even when we attempt to be honest our work may be used dishonestly by others. As well, we must always be aware that our photographs are never absolutely objective. Instead they are always more or less intentionally made statements of opinion.

Perhaps of all this the single most important thing is not what is shown in the photograph, but what is left out. Perhaps next in importance is what is happening out at the edges of the frame, those little events that hover on the boundary of what is and what is not shown. Their presence reminds us of what may or may not lie beyond the frame's edge and how that may change the meaning of what is the main subject of the image. Of all aspects of photography what is more immediate to the making of a photograph, and more personal and visceral and ultimately subjective than the framing of the scene? Photographic vision is a subtractive way of seeing the world and is completely different to the additive processes used by painters. Nothing is more at the core of photographic vision than the way it crops out of three-dimensional reality a paper-thin cutout.

We all must accept our biases as part of our humanness, for after all, to be human is to be biased, and we must learn to use all the controls available to us in an attempt to be honest, and to visually confess to the biases that still do creep into our photographs. We must realize the differences between the substantively important moment and the visually important moment, between reality and its appearance. Photographs too easily trivialize, they too easily deal with the visually spectacular and in turn too easily become preoccupied by events of little real consequence while events of real importance that lack visual impact fall by the wayside.

Newspapers, especially those that are still bent on the front-page scoop that sells copies, show a distressing obsession with sex and violence, with the maudlin and the sentimental. While we no longer live in the world in which Weegee filled the front pages of the New York Daily News with morbid photographs of the latest gangland murder, a quick review of an anthology of photos from the Associated Press files shows 68 photographs of disaster, accidents, war and physical violence and only 47 of everything else including sports, politics, historic events, and portraits of the famous and not so famous. Horrible things sell newspapers and, in addition, usually have an immediate visual drama that is often lacking or more subtly present in other, more normal, situations.

As a result, most reporting is done by exception and we never see headlines saying "nothing happened today and everyone had a good time". Not one major press award has gone to the serious and great documenteurs of the recent past, photographers such as Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Bruce Davidson, Robert Doisneau, Josef Koudelka, Susan Mesielas or Mary Ellen Mark. Instead, the awards usually go to the maker of the best instant statement of the year, a statement that is accessible to all, but that has real meaning to none. It is the real photojournalist's function to show and explain people and their worlds rather than to become the maker of vulgar visual sensations.

in your camera bag

Your camera bag should have a number of things in it aside from the camera itself, which should have a wide and comfortable neck strap. First and foremost, put lots of film into your bag. It is always better to have too much rather than not enough. The camera bag should include other useful things such as additional lenses (especially useful are a 24mm wide angle, a fast 50mm standard and a 135mm moderate telephoto or a 24mm to 70mm zoom lens), lens brush, lens cleaning paper, mini tripod and cable release, small flash with fresh batteries and a spare set, spare light meter, filters and lens shade, road map, note pad, phone calling card (or at least a few quarters) and some emergency rations. Often small tools including mini pliers, screwdriver and a roll of strong tape come in handy. If you can manage it, a second camera body can be a valuable asset. In addition put in something to read during those occasional hours of waiting that photographers always seem to face. This can leaven the tedium.

Fig. 3 three common lens types

The normal or standard lens is 50mm in focal length and is used most often and has an angle of view of 46^o, a 24mm wide-angle lens has an angle of view of 84^o and a 135mm telephoto 20^o. Many photographers work only with wide angle and tele lenses and skip the standard lens completely.

exposure & the camera

Different subjects will each make their own demands on the photographer while, at the same time, the film or chip will always impose its own demands. These demands of the film or chip must be met, otherwise all else is lost and no image will be had at all. Each type of film requires that a certain quantity of light reaches it in order that it is sufficiently exposed. While there are special developers for "pushing" film beyond its normal sensitivity, none of these work nearly as well as the correct exposure would have. The light meter in the camera or the hand held meter will indicate how much exposure is required in a specific lighting situation with a given ISO rating for the film. ISO stands for the International Standards Organization and the numbers are a relative index of the film's sensitivity to light. Film speeds now look like:

ISO 400/27^o.

The first half of the number is the old American ASA value and the second half is the German DIN value. A film with a first ISO number of 400 is twice as sensitive or fast as one of 200 and four times as fast as one of 100. The second number, the one with the degree symbol, is part of a logarithmic scale in which 27^o is twice as fast as 24^o. We will only refer to and use the first number). Once the light meter has been programmed with the film's speed it will indicate the correct exposure options as pairs of acceptable shutter speeds and f-stops.

There are two camera controls that allow the amount of light reaching the film to be altered. These controls are set according to the light meter which has already been programmed with the film's ISO rating. First is the shutter speed which regulates the duration of light reaching the film. The numbers on the shutter speed dial are fractions of a second. They show how long the film will be exposed to light. While a 1/100 of a second may seem like a very short time, it really is not. Something that is either moving quickly or is very close can move quite a lot in that brief time, leaving behind a blurred image on the film.

The shutter speed has two functions, one as half of the exposure equation and the other allowing either the freezing of moving things or the blurring of them. Some blurring is necessary if the idea of speed is to be communicated. A car traveling at 100 miles an hour, frozen sharply at an exposure of a ¹/₁₀₀₀ of a second, might as well be parked at the side of the road. The same car photographed at a ¹/₄ of a second will appear as a blur that is suggestive of speed and movement. If the camera is panned with the moving object, the background will be blurred but the subject will be sharp against it. This is particularly effective for communicating the idea of speed.

The other control that regulates light is the aperture or opening in the lens itself, which can be varied in diameter. This changes the quantity of light that reaches the film. Doubling the area of the opening will allow double the amount of light through. Because the diameter of this opening is expressed as a function of the focal length of the lens, the sequence of numbers used to describe the aperture, the f-numbers, may seem quite odd. The series looks like this:

Fig. 4 the f-stops

The important thing to remember is that a change in setting from a smaller number to the next larger halves the area of the opening and so halves the amount of light entering the camera (e.g. going from f5.6 to f8 halves the light). Conversely, opening the lens setting from a larger number to the next smaller will double the amount of light (e.g. going from f16 to f11). Remember that smaller numbers like f2 mean a bigger opening and larger numbers like f16 mean a smaller opening. Not all lenses will have all the numbers; in fact most 50mm standard lenses used on 35mm cameras will only have f-stops from f2 to f16.

In addition to controlling the amount of light reaching the film, the aperture (or f-stop) also regulates the depth of field. This term is used to describe how much of the subject that is nearer or further than the point upon which the camera is focused will also be in focus. Small openings like f16 allow much greater depth of field, large ones like f2 result in very shallow depth of field. Each has its advantages. Shallow depth of field will make a sharply focused object stand out clearly against a fuzzy background, while greater depth of field will allow all of a three dimensional object to appear sharp, in spite of parts of it being nearer or farther from the camera. Similarly it will allow both foreground and background elements to be sharp at the same time.

Many newspaper editors prefer subjects that are set against out of focus backgrounds and for that reason many photojournalists use large f-stops with 200mm or 300mm lenses since they give very shallow depth of field.

 Fig. 5 relationship between aperture & shutter

Each of the controls of shutter and aperture has two functions. In every photographic situation it is important to chose a combination of a shutter speed and an aperture that will result, firstly in correct exposure and secondly, in the correct freezing or blurring and the right depth of field for the subject involved. This means a constant trade off between the two unrelated functions and we will have to make frequent compromises. Remember also that it is not safe to handhold your camera at shutter speeds that are longer than a 1/30 of a second. You will almost inevitably move the camera during the exposure, blurring the entire frame. Always use a tripod or other support for such longer exposures.

using flash

Frequently there is not enough available light for correct exposure, both indoors and outdoors after dusk. In these situations flash is often used. Remember that the shutter must at the camera’s designated flash synchronization speed, often 1/60 of a second, or lower. If a higher speed is used only partial exposure of the frame will result. Also remember that the light from a flash unit falls off very rapidly, in fact inversely with the square of the distance to the subject. Most flash units put out enough light for subjects closer than 5 meters but not farther away. Read the manual for your flash since flash units vary considerable in features and the degree of automation that is possible. Many modern flash units are dedicated to particular camera models and will function as an automated extension of the camera.

Flash is also very useful for adding fill light into shadows, particularly when photographing in full sunlight. Again the sync speed must not be exceeded, which means the possible aperture/shutter speed combinations are going to be limited.

digital photography

Most photography today is done with digital equipment that uses a charge-coupled device (CCD) or a Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chip as the light sensitive element. In a CCD there is a photosensitive region and a transmission region made out of a shift register and thecontrolling circuit converts the resulting charges into a sequence of voltages which are, digitized and stored in a memory device. The CMOS chip has circuits that allow them to implement logic gates to create paths to the output, resulting in low noise levels and low power consumption. Data from the chip is usually processed in the camera before being stored on a compact flash or smart card better cameras allow storing relatively unprocessed RAW files or highly processed TIFF or JPG file storage. RAW formats, sometimes thought of as digital negatives, vary hugely from one camera maker to another, so RAW files will have to be converted before being imported into Photoshop or other software for editing. For more please see the article on digital images.

black & white films

While film was still king, there were a large number of special purpose black & white films in addition to many colour films, we are generally faced with a choice between four different types, regardless of the manufacturer. These four types of film are:

In normal situations the advantages of ISO 400 speed films are that first, the speed itself is often a great help in those all too frequently encountered less than perfect lighting situations and second, a gentle smoothness to its tonality that often produces better prints, especially for photomechanical reproduction, than the slower films will.

There are, in addition, many specialized films including infrared films (used mostly in science but also by pictorial photographers because of its grain, halation and ability to render a clear blue sky a rather dramatic black), document copying films such as microfilm and lithographic film, (noted for their extreme high contrast and used creatively because of this) and ultra high-speed films (up to ISO 10,000) (used mostly in science for recording extremely fast phenomena or artistically when extreme grain is desired). Stay away from films such as Ilford's XP2 or Agfa's Vario-XL. These are single layer chromogenic films that must be developed in the standard colour negative process C-41. Don't try to develop these in black and white developers since the results will be very poor.

colour film

There are two main types of colour film, those intended for prints and those that result in slides. All colour print films are developed in C-41 chemistry and produce negatives for colour printing or scanning. All colour transparency films (except Kodachrome) are developed in E-6 chemistry to make colour slides. Print films usually have the word color in their names and slide films have the word chrome in theirs. Many press photographers are now shooting colour negative film, which is developed and scanned directly into the computer. Kodak’s Ektapress films were specially designed for this.

film processing

Nearly all film must be handled in total darkness before it is processed and high-speed film is especially susceptible to fogging by stray light in the lab. No safelights can be used for film handling until after the fixing stage, by which time the film can be handled under normal room light. Any mechanical damage to the film will show up in the final prints, so be very careful not to mutilate it, especially when it is wet. The developer we use for film processing Ilford's Ilfosol S. We will use it in a diluted form as this results in finer grain, more efficient use of the chemicals and less chance of accidental contamination of the stock solution. In order to minimize the possibility of contamination; do not pour any chemicals back into the developer bottle. All used developer must be discarded in the large collection bottle.

You will need 200 ml. of diluted developer per roll of 35mm film. The temperature for each step should be 20^o C. The processing procedure for Tri-X or HP5 is:

(Steps 1 through 3 must be done in the light-tight developing tank while steps 4 through 6 can be done in room light.)

If it is necessary to speed things up a bit, then the following steps (which use a chemical that reduces the washing time) can be substituted for the last three steps above:

This assumes that you have made normal exposures and are using the standard processing temperature of 20^o Celsius (or 68^o F.). You may find that you want to increase the developing time somewhat depending on the lighting that you're using (high contrast sunlight versus soft, overcast daylight for example) and the exact nature of your light meter and camera combination. Some cameras tend to consistently underexpose or overexpose and this can be compensated for by altering the ISO setting on the camera meter and the development time. Some people deliberately vary their processing, using the zone system, made famous by Ansel Adams, of altered exposure and development to control the final look of their prints.

a general rule of thumb

under expose + over develop to
increase contrast.

over expose + under develop to
reduce contrast.

An example of contrast control using our normal ISO 400 film with diluted D-76 developer would be shooting at ISO 800 in soft light and developing for about 12 min. in order to gain a bit of contrast, or shooting at ISO 200 in bright sunlight and processing for 7 min. in order to reduce the contrast a little. In the old days this was described as exposing for the shadows and developing for the highlights.

This is the basic idea behind the zone system, which is a very rigorous application of this concept of modified exposure and processing. In practice the 35mm photographer can't fully apply it because of the variety of subjects and lighting situations likely to be on one roll of film, each type of which may require different exposure and processing. However, it is a useful control to keep in the back of your mind; eventually it will make an impossible lighting situation possible, and generally it can help make negatives that are somewhat more consistent and easier to print than they would be otherwise.

basic printing

There are two major types of printing paper used in photography. The first is totally fiber based (used in serious print making for exhibition and other situations in which full print quality and archival permanence is important) and the second and more common is resin coated with a plastic film that prevents the cellulose fibers of the paper from absorbing chemicals during processing. This allows very fast processing times with a shorter wash. This paper is not archivally stable and is incapable of the rich full tonality of what many of us think of as real paper. One reason is the decrease in the quantity of silver used in most photographic papers today and another has to do with the actual bonding between the silver salt-bearing emulsion and the plastic layer.

Perhaps one-day plastic paper can be used for serious printmaking, but at present it is best used for proofing and fast printmaking for reproduction purposes. It tends to have a short gray scale and it lacks the magnificent rich shadow details that are a hallmark of fine prints. However, these shadows are almost impossible to reproduce photo-mechanically on a printing press so plastic paper is perfect for journalistic applications, though it is rather sad to think about the future historical resource of the newspaper morgue, which quite probably will be filled with useless images a hundred years from now when the plastic breaks down.

The paper we are using is Ilford's Multigrade IV RC Deluxe. It's resin coated with a double emulsion made up of a high contrast component that is sensitive to magenta light and a low contrast component that is sensitive to yellow light. By varying the colour of the light from the enlarger with filters, the contrast of the print can be varied. Be very careful with the filters since they are water-soluble and must be handled very carefully with dry hands. Only open the filter slot in the lamp house when the enlarger is off, otherwise light leaks out and will affect what other people are doing. A low number filter gives low contrast prints and a high number filter gives high contrast ones. The result of this is:

low contrast negative
+ high contrast filter
= normal contrast print
&
high contrast negative
+ low contrast filter
= normal contrast print

This control, coupled with the film exposure and development modification discussed earlier, gives you a great deal of control over the final print.

When making contact prints enlargers #1 through #6, with 50 mm. lenses and long columns, should be at the 15" setting and those numbered #7 and #8, with 75 mm. lenses and short columns, should be at the top of their stands. An exposure time of about 16 seconds with a #2 filter at f8 should give consistent contacts if your negatives are correctly exposed. Place your negatives emulsion down on the paper and make sure that there is good contact between the negatives and your paper by pressing a glass plate down on the film and paper. Use the red safelight filter on the enlarger to see what you are doing when aligning the negatives, then turn off the enlarger, remove the filter and make the exposure.

Fig. 6 Beseler 23C enlarger

When making enlargements be sure your negatives are clean and put the emulsion side down and flat under the guides in the negative carrier. As you move the enlarger up and down make sure that the brake is off and that the enlarger head is at the 35mm position.

While it may be useful to open the enlarger lens to get a brighter image for focusing and composing, it must always be returned to f8 for the actual exposure. At this f-stop the lens gives its maximum sharpness and contrast. The exposure should be determined from a test print with 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 second strips for an 8" x 10" print. If it is necessary to change the filter the exposure time will remain constant for #00 to #3½ and will be twice as long for filters #4, #4½ and #5.

Unprocessed paper can only be handled under the orange safelight (even then, no closer than one meter and for as short a time as possible), or under the enlarger's own red safelight filter. No other white light must reach the paper except the actual timed exposure from the enlarger.

The exposed print should then be carefully processed as follows:

Always use the tongs when processing prints, being careful not to scratch the paper surface with them. This keeps you out of the chemistry which otherwise will get all over your clothes and it saves great amounts of time that you will otherwise spend washing and drying your hands. Remember to discard all developer and fixer in the collection containers.

Rather than waiting for your prints to dry, you may prefer to take them away and dry them elsewhere. If so, carry the wet prints in a plastic bag. Don't let them remain wet for more than a couple of hours and never let them dry in contact with each other or they will become firmly and permanently stuck together.

some general notes

While photographic chemicals are not generally harmful, it is a good idea to avoid drinking them or bathing in them. In fact, don't ever ingest any of them and keep them out of your eyes. Full strength acetic acid is quite powerful and will burn both your nose membranes and skin. Don't breathe it and if you do get it on your skin or in your eyes wash it off immediately. You might want to read parts of Susan Shaw's OVER EXPOSURE, Health Hazards in Photography.

Some of our developers consist of chemicals that are dissolved in water and they will crystallize out given the chance. Spills of any sort must be wiped up and washed down with a wet sponge. The last person working in the day should dump both developer and stop bath. The fixer should be left in its tray with the lid on to keep out dust and to reduce evaporation. It should be tested occasionally with potassium iodide (labeled 2% KI). If the fixer is not good because it is saturated with silver complexes, a white precipitate will form. In this case, and only in this case, it should be discarded. All our chemicals can be put down the drain for the present, but they should be flushed with plenty of running water.

Film processing should be confined to the film darkroom, and printing to the printing room. Don't carry wet things like film or prints through the revolving door and do not poke body parts out of it while it's rotating. It will easily remove your smaller digits or your head so be very careful with it. It's not a toy for terrorizing little old ladies or your fellow photographers.