Re: [Leica] Empiricism

[Richard Comen <rpcomen@mcn.org>]

I had a professor many years ago at UCLA who said it beautifully: His words
were " Young people, the specimen is the authority".

Richard



At 07:38 AM 11/15/00 -0600, you wrote:
>
>> 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
>
>
>