A darkroom inside the camera
A remarkable mid-century invention allowed a photographer to produce pictures almost immediately, a bit of magic that is rarely matched even by current digital cameras.
Instant gratification in the Swinging Sixties
Film photography
Live long and prosper
What makes a device last for decades?
Our photographer routinely handles cameras from many different eras, using them to take pictures rather than keeping them for display. Those that work best are neither the youngest ones nor the most expensive. What design features make for a long life?
The artist and her tools
Our photographer accompanied a pair of artists on a picture-taking expedition this past weekend. As expected, he has observations to make about old and new technology. But he was also driven to more general musings about the relationship between artists, their visions and their tools.
“Outside the proper scope”
What you can do, and what you should do
In the Five Colors Science & Technology library of photography are a number of old books that we still find interesting. Apart from details of procedures and chemistry that are hard to find elsewhere, they show the different ideas, through the years, of just what was a good photograph.
With or against the grain?
Defects become desirable
Our photographer is bemused by modern efforts to re-create, digitally, two of the least desirable qualities of fast film: high contrast and large grain. But the paradox of limitations and defects becoming highly sought-after features is not new, and is as widespread as ripped jeans.
The anti-selfie
Candid photography (for the expert)
We turn again to the theme of technology transforming society, or at least one part of it. With the invention of the 35mm still camera about a quarter of the way into the twentieth century, a whole area of life was suddenly opened up to photography. That was not the intention of the inventor, who was only looking for a lighter-weight way to take pictures himself.
But why pictures?
A photographer explores the ubiquity of images
Fooling around with a certain bit of relatively recent technology prompted our photographer to ask the question: why are there so many pictures? Our main way of capturing reality, that great manifold of experiences, is still the two-dimensional image. Being a scientist he then sought an answer (where a philosopher might instead have fallen into existential doubt). It’s not so hard to work out, really, but does highlight something important about our memories, and how technology is changing them.
In the eye’s mind
What you see depends on what you’re looking for
Our photographic consultant is fond of pointing out to us, with the help of books and magazines, the different styles of great photographers. Clearly part of the variation in the final image is in the subjects they choose: Ansel Adams is famous for mountains and landscapes of the Southwest, quite a different thing from a New York City street photographer catching an instant among people. “But,” he says, “put in exactly the same place, facing exactly the same subject, they’d still come up with different pictures. They just see differently.” Which is true, and much more widely applicable than he meant. Even the same person looking at the same scene can see something entirely different at a different time. A simple exercise can show this.
How do you set out to learn something?
Taking charge of your own education
This week our photography consultant had the opportunity to watch as two young people developed their first rolls of film. Of course he enjoyed their excitement at actually using this unfamiliar old technology, and was reminded that his own first roll was a long time ago. (It’s still available in the archives, but is—understandably—not brought out for printing very often.) More important, though, are his observations on learning things, which is not the same as being taught.
The webmaster builds character
A physical scientist encounters social media
We mentioned, some weeks ago, that our webmaster had been assigned to develop the Five Colors S&T social media presence. This wasn’t because he’s an expert already, but because he wasn’t; in fact his inclinations tend toward weekends reading eighteenth-century essays by the light of a kerosene lamp. We thought that, apart from the fact that he generally does a decent job of anything, it would be good for him to do something unfamiliar and especially to have contact with people not like him. As Calvin’s dad (from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes) would say, he’d build character.