Month: February 2007

Ilford SFX 200 infrared film returns

Nicolai Grossman 1 Comment

35mm and 120, hell yeah!

Direct PDF links: data sheet, development chart

Ilford press release:

Monochrome enthusiasts will welcome the news of the reintroduction of ILFORD SFX 200 infrared film – the unique medium for adding incredible definition and texture control to outdoor black-and-white photography.

Black-and-white goes red

Underlining its commitment to the world of black-and-white photography, ILFORD PHOTO is in the process of reintroducing various specialist films. Leading this movement, and available from March 2007, is the much admired ILFORD SFX 200 infrared film.

ILFORD SFX 200 is a special red-filtered film perfect for landscapes, mountainscapes and similar subjects due to its ability to add high definition to green foliage, cloud formations and open skies, especially when combined with the ILFORD SFX 200 Cokin ‘P’ series mounted red filter. It is also popular with architectural photographers due to its characteristic for emphasising contrasting textures.

A medium speed panchromatic film, ILFORD SFX 200 is available in 35mm and 120 roll film. It has long been a favourite with specialist photographers, but was not continued when the company went through a corporate reorganisation in 2005. Because of its sensitivity, the film will be produced in small quantities on a ‘made on demand’ basis to ensure that it is always fresh and fully active.

"We have always been aware that the black-and-white market incorporates many photographers who revel in pushing the abilities of their film to the maximum in order to attain extreme results," says ILFORD PHOTO marketing director Howard Hopwood.

"The revival of ILFORD SFX 200 film will enable those specialists who concentrate on outdoor photography to achieve a remarkable degree of control over their images, utilising all types of weather conditions to produce their ultimate visual concepts."

A major user of ILFORD SFX 200 is professional photographer Dave Butcher: "Most of my photography is with Ilford FP4+ 120 film," he says "however, I use SFX for the striking effects it produces when foliage is producing infrared (in the Spring and Summer when the sun shines!). Unlike some infrared film, it can be handled in daylight with no special precautions, so it is very easy to use in the mountains where I spend much of my time.

"Another good reason to reach for the SFX is when there is a strong heat haze. It’s difficult to take big views on days like these with normal films like FP4+, but SFX with an infrared filter cuts through the haze and lets you get a shot of the view you can’t even see with the naked eye!"

ILFORD SFX 200 is available in special value promotional packs which contain three rolls of 36×135 film plus an ILFORD COKIN P red filter.

An ILFORD SFX 200 print competition is planned to encourage photographers to experience the versatility of this film, and to put their artistic talents to the test. Full details will be announced shortly.

A full technical data sheet on the ILFORD SFX 200 film can be downloaded from www.ilfordphoto.com

“Cheap Shots: The Silver Dreams of Plastic Cameras” show, MI, US

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Cheap Shots show flyer

“Cheap Shots is an exhibition of photographic art created with cheap, plastic cameras, old cameras, pinhole cameras, and Polaroids. In an age of expensive, hi-tech equipment, these simple cameras offer a refreshing, lo-tech view of the world in our time. The work in this show was created by seventeen artists from the Michigan area who call themselves the Krappy Kamera Club. This will be their first public showing in Ann Arbor.”

When: Cheap Shots will run from Friday, March 23rd to Friday, April 6th, 2007. The opening is March 23rd from 7:00pm to 10:00pm.

Where: Gallery 4, 212 Nickels Arcade, Ann Arbor, MI [US]. On the second floor above Arcade Barbers.

The gallery will be open during the show Thursday and Friday from 3pm to 7pm, Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5pm, and by appointment. The show is free and open to the public.

More info on the show from Matt Callow.

Here’s a larger version of the flyer.

f295 Symposium registration information

Nicolai Grossman 2 Comments

Tom Persinger writes:

f295 is pleased to announce registration information for the The f295 Symposium on Lensless, Alternative and Adaptive Photographic Processes on Friday 27 April 2007. The registration for the lectures and round-table discussion will be handled by Conference and Event Services at Carnegie Mellon University.

We’re offering an early bird, discounted registration rate of $100 to all of those who register by phone before March 1. Students (w/ valid ID) are being offered a discounted rate of $70.

Rates are as follows:
Early Bird Discount Registration before Mar 1: $100
Registration before April 1: $120
Registration April 1 – April 20: $165
Late Registration and in-person (April 20 – 27): $200
Student rate with ID: $70

After March 1 the rate increases. The online registration system will also be available at that time. I’ll forward the URL at that time.

To take advantage of the early bird rate please call:
Conferences & Event Services
Phone: 412/268-1125
confserv@andrew.cmu.edu

Your registration fee includes:
This includes admission to all events of Friday 27 April including the 8 lectures and 2 round table discussions (9am- 5pm), name badge, coffee/tea/snacks during breaks, a program of the days activities, and access to the sale of books by symposium speakers.

Complete, up to the minute symposium information may be found on the website: www.f295.org/wordpress

See you in Pittsburgh!

Best,
Tom

Arca Swiss Monoball Z1 ballhead review at The Digital Picture

Nicolai Grossman 2 Comments

Unique to the Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead is the aspherical ball. As the load on the head is moved away from center, the effects of gravity increase. To offset the higher gravitational effect, more ball tension is needed. Conventional ballheads require correcting tension control adjustments to be made. The Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead, because of its elliptical ball, automatically adjusts to handle the off-center load. In other words, the tension automatically gets tighter as you move the load off-center. And it works as advertised. Very nice.

Continue reading at The Digital Picture

I personally don’t like ball heads that much. In theory, they seem faster, but in practise, they’re much slower for me than a 3-way tilt head. If you nail the camera position the first time, it’s faster, but how often does that happen in real life? For me, never. With a 3-way, I can get one axis right, lock it down, and move on to the next withouth screwing up the others. With a ball head, if you don’t get it perfect the first time, you have to start all over on all the axes.

Am I missing something? (Really, if there’s some way of using them that I’m not aware of, I’d like to learn it, because 3-ways are heavy and stick out.)

Faking your own art?

Nicolai Grossman 2 Comments

This story is related by Robert Anton Wilson in Ishtar Rising:

An art dealer once went to Pablo Picasso and said, "I have a bunch of ‘Picasso’ canvasses that I was thinking of buying. Would you look them over and tell me which are real and which are forgeries?” Picasso obligingly began sorting the paintings into two piles. Then, as the Great Man added one particular picture to the fake pile, the dealer cried, "Wait a minute, Pablo. That’s no forgery. I was visiting you the weekend you painted it." Picasso replied imperturbably, "No matter. I can fake a Picasso as well as any thief in Europe."

[Source, via Chris Rywalt]

Funny, yes, but is it really a larger question? Every try to take something you made that doesn’t speak to you and try to tart it up to make it look like it does? What would that mean, anyway: faking, or working to bring out the "you" in your own work? Useful/not useful?

I have a bunch of photos in a holding bin that do nothing for me, but I can’t quite write off, either. Every once in a while, I go back and revisit them. Sometimes I start fiddling with it, radical cropping, monochrome vs colour, toning, viewing it at different sizes… although I don’t think that’s trying to fake my work—sometimes you have to shovel a little shit before you find the pony—it sometimes feels like it in the moment.

By the way, this doesn’t work most of the time. But sometimes it does: I’ll come back after a few months and see something in a completely different way, and it ends up becoming one of my favourite pieces.

Which leads me to another question: are some of these questions really worth examining this deeply? Most of the artmaking process doesn’t make intellectual sense to me. Yeah, you can say that artmaking trajectory X generally has a set of properties and perils, but at some point, I have to just play it as it lies. I’ve accepted that the above is part of the editing process. It simply is. Why put it under a microscope?

That said, sorting out what the perils are really is important, I think, because once you have a map, you are usefully disabused of the notion that you’re alone in this game. It’s pretty much the same for everybody. You are not a unique and special snowflake on the path of artmaking. While this goes against the grain of the Artist Mystique, I think it’s great, because there are nuts and bolts problems that can be overcome, and how to do so doesn’t have to be a mystery.

Art vs. Business: social contracts & disowning your work

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Gallery owner Edward Winkleman has a characteristically thoughtful and thought-provoking post on his blog about artists disowning early "non-representative" works and the implied social contract of selling art:

What’s emerged in conversations lately (due mostly to Richard Prince’s refusal to permit reproduction of his much earlier work for a catalog accompanying an exhibition of it) is a question about authorship, specifically whether an artist can essentially rescind authorship because the earlier work no longer represents their current vision. Can Richard Prince declare that for all intents and purposes an earlier work he created is not "a Richard Prince"?

Continue reading, don’t skip the comments!

I really recommend Winkleman’s blog as a whole: his writing explores interesting territories within art and art business while provoking intelligent discussion in the comments. A+ all the way.

Shutter Stories Web zine launched

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Shutter Stories Magazine has just gone live, featuring interviews with photographers Yasuhiro Ogawa, Jim Zuckerman, Martin Bailey, and Noah Grey. The interviewing is solid, with a good balance of technique, process, and art in general.

As an added bonus, I was pleased to discover that I really like a lot of Jim Zuckerman‘s work. While I usually have a hard time connecting with high fidelity landscape photography, he seem to really know how to work it, turning digital’s shiny smoothness to his advantage.

New Ilford Professional brand and products

Nicolai Grossman 2 Comments

I don’t know exactly what "translucent, reverse print, vinyl and pop-up films" means in terms of tangible products or how you use them, but they, uh, sound cool? Maybe this makes more sense to you than it does to me.

ILFORD press release:

Enhanced image performance and premium graphic quality – some of the numerous benefits to the new ILFORD range of professional film products

Marly, Switzerland – ILFORD, a major player in the development and manufacture of photo quality media for inkjet printing and photographic processes, announces today the launch of its new ILFORD Professional Brand aimed at helping professional photographers attain maximum image quality through a range of premium products.

In keeping with the ILFORD commitment to providing professional photographers with the tools to achieve constant, superior results, ILFORD has created and manufactured a new range of paper, film and vinyl products.

Developed to fill a niche market, the new ILFORD Professional Brand enables photographers to diversify their services and produce images on translucent, reverse print, vinyl and pop-up films which they can purchase in small quantities rather than committing to buying in bulk. The new product range is also compatible with the ILFORD STUDIO software.

"The intrinsic artistic value of a photograph is as important to professional photographers as its investment value", said Andrew Stewart, Sales and Marketing Director of ILFORD. "With the new ILFORD Professional Brand, photographers can now work with a host of new applications, without sacrificing quality or image stability. Where the professional photographer may once have been hindered by the lack of such quality products in small quantities, the new additions emphasize the ability of ILFORD to expand and cater for new markets", he concluded.

The new professional range will go on sale in April 2007 and will be available in 17" – 44" rolls with a single roll minimum order quantity. This product range, as well as other ILFORD products, will be distributed in the USA through WYNIT.