[Leica] Empiricism

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

> My old time partner used to say, "you don't need anything but Metol, Sulfite
> and
> water and you got the very best all round developer you'll ever need!" Now he
> did
> say that 40 years ago and I suppose there've been improvements since then.
> EXTOL?
> 
> But when I print 35 - 40 year old negs and they produce a print quality like
> nothing
> from the negs of today, I have to wonder what was the improvement? If only one
> could
> buy the D23 already mixed I'd be inclined to use it once again over all the
> others!


Ted,
It's kinda funny. I've always been basically an empiricist. If you take a
bunch of prints and show them to people, they'll say, "Oh, I like this one
and that one." You learn more about what people really think looks better
than you do if you merely listen to what they _say_ they like.

This methodology was the basis for a lot of our assumptions today--some of
the work of men like Loyd Jones and C.E.K. Mees, the JND test, minimum
exposure, target CI--most of it was orginally done with stacks of prints and
large number of viewers. That's how the technical system we take for granted
was arrived at. That's how Kodak whitecoats originally decided how much
exposure film needs and how much contrast prints need, and so forth.

Yet nobody does it any more. We don't tend to think it's "scientific." I
learned early on, writing articles, that you can learn a lot by just asking
people to look and then listening to what they say. Because a lot of times,
if you ask people, "do you like qualities X and Y, that film Z is supposed
to provide?" They'll say, "oh, yes." But you show them a nice print from
film Z and also one from film A, they'll say, "This one looks better to me,"
and point to the film A print.

Getting people to actually _look_ is one of the hardest things in
photography. (In teaching photography, it's also hard to get students to
really decide if they like something or not. They tend to pick what they
suppose other people like.) But lots of times, people just don't want to
look at evidence. They don't want to look at prints when judging lenses.
They don't want to look at results when judging film. They miss things on
their own contact sheets. (How many times I've said to a student, "I kinda
like this one," and they answer, "I never noticed that one before!") When
teaching lighting, everybody wants to look at lighting diagrams and nobody
wants to look at light.

Over the years, many people have e-mailed me asking me to tell them my
opinions about the optical properties of lenses THEY ALREADY OWN! I think
that's really funny. I just tell them to use the darn thing and look at the
results.

A lot of the conclusions I've arrived at were arrived at empirically--many
times, using others as the basis for the essential information. My notions
of format size, lens angle of view, even what technical properties are most
desirable in lenses, were mainly arrived at that way.

In judging D-23 vs. Xtol, most people wouldn't think it's important to do
trials and actually look at results. We know what we like. We can hear a
list of properties expressed verbally and "decide" what we approve of best.
Never mind looking at actual pictures.

Most people love the idea of grainlessness. But what do you suppose I found
out when showing people Tech Pan prints and Tri-X prints? T-Max 100 prints
and TMZ prints?It's very, very interesting. Sometimes what people _say_ they
like turns out not to be what they actually prefer.

- --Mike