Re: [Leica] Making a "black" cube

[Adam Bridge <abridge@mac.com>]

on 9/24/01 8:06 PM, Ted Grant at tedgrant@home.com thoughtfully wrote:

> I mean it's always beyond me why one would ever want to waste film doing
> this strange kind of testing to determine, I do believe some kind of
> exposure level value of some sort, I do hope that is correct and if not I'd
> appreciate it immensely if some of you good old fashion types might
> enlighten me on the purpose of what appears to be some kind of Neanderthal
> film testing for heaven knows what reason.
> 
> I mean, I suppose the content of image may mean nothing, however as long as
> the negative is coal dust black, some what like that chap "Adam's, Ansel I
> believe was the name, you lads know that great rock, mountain , fern, fauna
> and peeling paint fellow with those strange zone number efforts, actually
> bloody confusing to a photojournalist you know.. Action of the moment and
> all that sort of stuff, not much time for figuring out the number selection
> system.. ;-)

Well, in some sort of self-defense, I was asking because I was wanting to do
some science about processing film in a variety of developers (another
related thread).

So I thought it would make sense to set up a consistent reproducible image
to photograph so that I could make some solid sense about the images I was
exposing.

Because I'm not very sophisticated, but I am by training an engineer (okay,
an electrical engineer with almost a degree in English (American Lit)), it
would make sense to have a way to in the image I was setting up each zone.
And so I was thinking about how to really achieve black when I remembered
reading a Scientific American that had a thing about how to make REAL black.
So I asked here.

I guess I like the idea of repeatability. And I like understanding the
technical parts so the creative parts have a decent chance of being properly
expressed - so what I see, or envision as that Adams guy would say, is
something I can achieve with reliability.

It's ain't sexy but it seems like science to me.

The only problem I have is that the arthritis in my knees make working in
the darkroom for any length of time rather painful. I don't have my own and
use a commerical facility in Sacramento that doesn't have stools (gonna fix
THAT.)

So, that's where I was going with the request for the cube.

I'll bet someone at Kodak might remember and I'll go haunt their site to see
if it's there.

Thanks for the ideas though - and the black velvet sounds like it'll
probably work just fine.

Adam Bridge

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