[Leica] WAS: discreet shooter and shooting discretely NOW loupe &pixels????????????/

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

I'm guilty.
I used to have a foldable linen tester thing on my keychain when I was first
starting out and my last years of school.
A few of my main photo friends also did.
We'd look at each others 8x10's then later 11x14's at a coffee shop and we'd
check out grain patterns with our loupes. Linen testers just as good if not
better than a lot of loupes.
You're looking at the grain pattern.
See how sharp or fuzzy that is.
We wanted our enlargers to be in calibration and we wanted to be using an
ideal dilution with the developers we were using.
I could pretty much tell which dilution you were using with your Rodinal
with a magnifier and often which developer was used. At least I was right an
amazing amount of the time. Or those were the times I remember.
Oh and if as we were starting out had really nailed our focus or not.
Sometimes we didn't but a friend would point that out to us.
Tell us which part of the image was sharper than their face.
And on and on.
When my Linen tester fell off my key chain I didn't buy another one.
Till a few months ago.
They are no longer made of metal but plastic.
You find that out when you take it out of the shrink wrap.
Its not on my key chain.

With it I'd now at a show if I was looking at darkroom or inkjet.
Without it I don't.
I wouldn't mind knowing. The people who work at the galleries never do.

The grain at the edges of a print should be as sharp as in the middle.
If not your enlarger is not in calibration or you should be stopping down
more. When you start out in the darkroom you need to check your prints to
make sure you are getting them sharp from edge to edge. Regardless of how
much you screw up a neg with your camera lens and hand holding a print
should represent what you ended up with at its best.

With digital you hit the zoom in button and you don't need a loupe I would
think.


Mark William Rabiner