[Leica] Re: Positive vs. Negative

[Jim Brick <jimbrick@photoaccess.com>]

I agree with Mark that modern color negative material is a whole lot better
than it used to be. For the years 1970 through 1980, I used color neg
exclusively. I mixed my own C-22 process from scratch, with minor
modifications. I had fun,  and the results were great. Then work took over
and I didn't have the time for darkroom stuff and I switched to
transparencies. Fuji 50. Then Velvia came out. Then I started making
Cibachromes. And lately I've been making LightJets as well. I've never
looked back.

There is something about looking at a transparency on a light table, vs
looking at a color neg on a light table. With a transparency, you know at
that moment if you have it or not. You still have to print the neg to say,
with conviction, I have it or I don't.

Since most of my photography is for large display prints, I use mostly 6x6
and 4x5, which would require a scanner far more expensive than I can afford.

Of course, the school picture business, portraits, and weddings thrive on
color neg. They could not use transparencies very easily. There are quite a
few stock photographers that have switched to neg. They have them duped
into a transparency for filing with a stock agency. Stock agencies run on
transparencies.

Jim


At 11:49 PM 6/13/00 -0700, Mark Rabiner wrote:
>><Snip> 
>As far as the trend for photographers in general specifically perhaps ones
with
>established ways of working:
>Part of it is class warfare!!!
>Color neg has no class! You don't shoot catalogs and magazine work with color
>neg. 
>Color neg is for low level stupid low life portrait and promo work. Events 
>and weddings.
>The OTHER section of the yellow pages in the phone book. (Portrait)
>Commercial photographers feel it gives them a bad image. Makes them look bad!
>Some commercial photographers I know don't even like a print from their
>transparencies they only show the transparencies themselves.
>But not always ORIGINAL transparencies.
>One I have in mine has a few BLACK AND WHITE PRINTS made into larger
>transparencies so they can be shown on the same boards as the rest of his
>"book." And many of his cards are larger transparencies of his tear sheets; 
>shot
>out of magazines with the layout.
>At one point I heard photographers in New York had a "Tray"
>Art Directors would say "Bring over your Tray." An Kodak Ektagraphic tray 
>they'd
>project on the projector they always had their.
>The photographers book WAS their round "tray" of slides. You'd see them on 
>the subways.
>But I think now that Photoshop is always the intermediate step things are 
>changing.
>All the punch that needs to be put in can be and is as part of the process 
>with Photoshop.
>And color negs are much easier to scan than transparencies if the scanners are
>not real high end.
>So I think even the die hards will eventually give in and give color neg 
>anther shot.
>Art directors will be asking for it so they will be forced to. It's a lot 
>easier
>to shoot you don't have to bracket and worry about an incredibly restricted
>tonal range a slide has.
>Mark Rabiner
>I'm positive about Negatives!