TOP Classic: That Sinking Feeling

[An article about "wrong facts" that was originally published on Photo.net and elsewhere in 2008. This was also where I put forth the argument that 4/3 and APS-C sensors are more alike than different, which did not exactly convince anyone at the time, although I think the world has, on its own, slowly come around to something resembling my point of view since then. —MJ]

Ah, epistemology. The study of knowledge—what we know and how we know it—can always be counted on to be fascinating. Especially, I think, when it’s out there on the dance floor with psychology, doing the foxtrot.

One thing I’ve been aware of for a long time now is that certain bits of knowledge just “seem reasonable” to the human brain. In some cases, these bits of knowledge might be true. But sometimes they’re just completely wrong. And most people go right on believing them anyway.

In photography, there is a whole class of assumptions that fall into this category. They’re just not true, but they seem reasonable to people.

An early example I encountered was a claim by a man named Fred Picker, who owned and ran a darkroom products company in Newfane, Vermont, for a number of years (Mr. Picker died a few years back, and his company, Zone VI, got sold to Calumet a few years prior to that.) Picker wrote that fixer is heavier than water, therefore fixer sinks to the bottom of a print washer, therefore print washers that drain from the bottom are best.

Sounds perfectly reasonable. People believed it. In fact, people believed it so strongly that it became an article of faith…despite the fact that it’s wrong.

Fixer is heavier than water, all right, but fixer being washed out of a print goes into solution with the water and doesn’t separate back out again. Especially in the turbulence of a typical print washer, this happens nearly instantly. And irreversibly. If you take a pint of water and a pint of fixer, mix them together, put them in a bottle, stand the bottle on an out-of-the-way shelf, and come back again after six months, do you have water on the top and fixer on the bottom? No*. Fixer doesn’t separate out of solution with water and “sink to the bottom” of a quiescent bottle over the course of six months, and it certainly doesn’t do so over the course of an hour or two in a turbulent print washer.

In fact, almost all of the fixer carried over by a fiber-based print into the wash is rinsed away in the first few moments. Only minuscule amounts remain, mostly trapped in the fibers of the paper. It turns out that letting a print sit perfectly still in a water bath will usefully leach fixer out of the print and into the water. David Vestal demonstrated that you can wash a fiber print perfectly well in only a few milliliters of water simply by letting the print soak in successive water baths. Try it yourself: with a fiber print fresh out of the fixer, rinse it for a minute or two. Then put it in a tray barely covered by distilled water for ten minutes. Agitate a bit at the end of the ten minutes, drain the water, and repeat the process twice more. Then test the print for residual fixer. You’ll find you’ve gotten a very good wash.

Still, that old idea—that fixer “sinks to the bottom”—persists to this day. I can’t tell you how much time and energy I’ve expended trying to disabuse people of the notion over the years. And when you finally think you’ve settled the matter once and for all, you’ll find that people go right on believing it anyway. Why? Because it seems reasonable—and that’s that. One guy actually told me that he understood and appreciated my arguments, but that he had “heard” so many times from so many sources that fixer sinks to the bottom of his print washer that he was simply unwilling to disbelieve it!

There are several dozen of these persistent myths in photography. The same thing is happening with the newer field of digital—seemingly-reasonable misapprehensions that people can’t be talked out of. One of the ones that annoys me is that 4/3 sensors are “too small.” There’s a vocal minority online who are utterly convinced that the comparative size of APS-C and 4/3 are very far apart and that 4/3 is at a crippling disadvantage in comparison, always, no matter what. Heck, the focal length factors are 1.5X and 2X, and that’s a big difference. It’s true that, as a rough rule of thumb, 4/3 does cost you some fraction of a stop in high-ISO noise. But so what? There are lots of things that determine the speeds at which you can shoot. In fact, 4/3 and APS-C are very close in size. People can’t tell which is which from looking at prints, except when the prints are pushed to extremes and the viewers are told what they’re looking at and know what telltales to look for. And of course many people defend digicams, the sensors of which generally really are much smaller, as being very usable under many conditions and very high quality if used within their limitations. If you think of 4/3 and APS-C as being functionally the same, or at least lump them together in the same general category, you’ll be closer to right than all the people who wail about how small 4/3 is. It just seems so reasonable to them…they must be right.

That’s just one. I could list more, and discuss each one in turn. But it wouldn’t really do any good in the long run, of course.

I have a SaltHill Archival Print Washer—a beautiful thing crafted of smoked Lexan, long unavailable now and rare on the used market. For current products, I’d recommend Robin Whetton’s Nova washers if you live in England [the same company is now called The Imaging Warehouse —MJ] or John Bicht’s Versalab washers if you’re in the USA. The Versalab units are the opposite of the SaltHills in that they’re plain and utilitarian, but alike in that they are expertly engineered and work well.

There are still a few Zone VI products in the Calumet Photographic catalog [...in 2008. —MJ]. One is a circulating washing tray called “The Zone VI Studios Washing Machine.” Sure enough, the description touts the fact that water enters from the top and drains from the bottom—although the bit about fixer sinking because it’s heavier than water, mercifully, is gone now.

Mike

* Ever the experimentalist, Phil Davis actually tested this. He mixed working-strength fixer and water 50/50 in a liter bottle, let the bottle sit for an entire year, then carefully removed samples from the top and the bottom of the bottle using pipettes. The samples were identical. No fixer had "sunk to the bottom."

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Remi: "Paul Krugman (who you may or may not agree with) calls those 'zombie ideas': 'a classic zombie—an idea that should have died long ago in the face of evidence that undermines its basic premise, but somehow just keeps shambling along.'"

Mike notes: Below, John's comment answers Peter's question, and Ctein's link explains why.

Peter Wright: "I haven't washed a print in the last thirty years, but I washed a tank of films yesterday. (As usual—ten minutes under running water.) I wonder if the same ideas you write about might also apply to film washing: does a quick rinse followed by two or three sessions standing in still water remove all the fixer residue? In these water-scarce times that would be good to know."

John Ironside: "Having learned the hard way about negative reticulation due to changing wash temperature, I read (in AP/BJP?) of an expert's experiments with film washing by multiple short rinses in still water. I can't now remember the detail, but it was based on measurements of the diffusion rate of fixer leeching out of the emulsion. I think it might have recommended five rinses of three minutes to get an archival concentration. So I pre-mixed a large bucket-full of clean tap water at room temperature before developing. At each interval, emptying the developing tank and refilling it from the bucket. That method was successful for many years until I gave up darkroom work altogether. Earliest negs still look OK after 40+ years."

Ctein adds: Dear Mike, Same here, from the other direction. With pix, even! 

Sal Santamaura: For anyone who seeks high quality film and print washers today, I enthusiastically recommend those made by Alistair Inglis."

JK: "I should have guessed that TOP had already tackled the APS-C vs. Micro 4/3 shibboleth. APS-C sensor sizes range from 15.7mm image height to 13.8mm. Image height of an M4/3 sensor is...13mm. It takes some pretty magical thinking to imagine that a millimeter or two should make the slightest difference in image quality. All you really lose is a bit of sensor area to either side. So here it is in simple terms: M4/3 is basically the 4:3 version of APS-C."

Stan Rogers: "About that 'magical thinking'...that mere 2.7mm height difference (compared to the Nikon/Pentax/Sony/Fuji format) amounts to just over 45% more sensor area at a 4:3 aspect ratio, and 84.5% more sensor area at 3:2. Almost half again as much area for the same image is not negligible, not does it require anything like 'magical thinking' to believe that it can make a difference, whether that means getting half again as many pixels to play with or getting sensels that are half again as large at the same resolution (or something in between). Whether or not that difference matters for your photography is another question with a different answer, but you don't get to answer for anyone else any more than they (or I) get to answer for you."

Ctein replies: Since we're dispelling myths and taking on "magical thinking".... Almost no aspect of image quality scales with the area of a sensor. They scale with the linear size of the sensor. So, yeah, it is kinda "magical" to compare areas and claim a marked superiority based on that. In other words, it's a 20% gain, not 45% gain, in your same-format example. Which is visible...but just barely (differences in any of the metrics below about 15% simply aren't). The full-sensor difference works out to about a 35% gain, which is visible...but variations in sensors and camera electronics within the same format can produce bigger differences than that. At best, you can say that "on average" across all makes and models, you'd see that gain. 'Cept no one buys an "average," they buy a specific instance.

Mike replies: I've typically been what Phil Davis dismissively called "an eyeballer," which admittedly is getting more problematic as my eyeballs get worse. However, I have to say I've been consistently impressed by big jumps in numbers of pixels, intermittently impressed by specific sensor implementation (i.e., my current Fuji X-Trans sensor is wildly better than the same size sensor in, say, the early Pentax *ist D), and frankly unimpressed by incremental differences in sensor size, which seldom gives me enough to float my boat. The old seat-of-the-pants rule-of-thumb for film formats was that you have to move up or down two sizes before you see clear and consistent differences, and I think that more or less holds true for digital as well—meaning, if you want to see clearly detectable improvements, you need to jump up two levels in sensor size. Going from 4/3 to APS-C or vice-versa just isn't going to be visible in pictures, consistently. See Moose's comments on this in the Comments section.

I've always held other aspects of sensor size are more important than absolute IQ—the angle of view of particular focal lengths (important, say, with the Leica M), the size of lenses, the size of viewfinders, and whether you want more d.o.f. or less more easily.

But, as Stan notes, we each get to decide for ourselves, ultimately.

Comments

[BH]

The real issue with sensor size is less about image quality than it is about rendering. m4/3 don't look like 35mm and 35mm don't look like 120. Sensor/film size, focal length and depth of field effects are real. Whether or not these differences actually matter in your photography depends largely on how and what you shoot.

As someone who primarily shoots wide angle, I treat my m4/3 and full frame systems very differently. On m4/3 I spend a lot of the time stopped down, getting everything in focus. On my full frame I often shoot wide open, where I can get really nice depth of field rendering even with a 28mm lens.

[James Bullard]

Given the 2nd law of thermodynamics (AKA entropy) your explanation is the one that "seems right" to me although I well remember hearing about how fixer sank to the bottom.

[Kodachromeguy]

Ah, Fred Picker. He dogmatically stated a lot of things but did not really understand the physics or engineering behind many of these pronouncements. I knew some photographers who called him Fred Pricker.

[Edd Fuller]

I think this phenomenon is particularly prevalent among highly intelligent people, who simply refuse to believe that anything they have reasoned out can not be true. It explains in part why smart people sometimes do such dumb things.

[Zelph]

The fixer may not sink but put prints in a vertical washer and fill with water. Let sit overnight(no agitation) and do a resisual fixer test. You may well find the test reveals more fixer at the bottom than at the top.
Not sure why but it works more often than not.

[That can only happen in a poorly designed washer where the print cannot get any water flow at all on one side, usually because it sticks to the wall of the washer toward the bottom of the cell. Most of the innovation of the SaltHill washer, for instance, was that carefully designed jets held the print suspended in the middle of the cell, and aeration insured turbulence. —Mike]

[DavidB]

Here here! on the four thirds comments. I am truly surprised that the same people don't complain how small Cannon's 1.6 sensor is to the huge Sony 1.5 sensor. This clearly must result in the Sony having better Dynamic range right? Also the Tinny Sigma APS-C 1.7 sensor must by why its high ISO is bad. Let just completely ignore all sensor makeups, physics and just look at size Right.
Funny how most will crop an APSC image to 8x10 and will through away any size difference between the Four thirds sensor and an APS-C!

[Roger Bradbury]

In the school darkroom, we had a device that siphoned water from the bottom of the sink while fresh water trickled into the sink from the tap at the top. The idea was that it converted almost any sink into a print washer, but I was told that the idea was to ensure that water with fixer was flowing away while fresh came in. I don't remember anything about fixer being heavier than water. This was all a long time ago, so If I've got the details wrong I'm sure somebody here will let me know.

I haven't used a Nova print washer but I do have a Nova monochrome print processor, where the print drops into vertical slots with dev in one, then stop bath then fixer. A lid keeps the solutions fresh for days, whereas if you are using the usual tray system you have to fill the trays every time you want to print then clear it all away at the end. It is especially good if you are just making a print or two, or don't have much time to spare.

[Moose]

" In fact, 4/3 and APS-C are very close in size. People can’t tell which is which from looking at prints, except when the prints are pushed to extremes and the viewers are told what they’re looking at and know what telltales to look for."

I took some time comparing the studio sample images from DPR and IR for Oly OMDs and Fuji Xs. In the straightforward qualities of details resolved, noise, and so on, there just wasn't a clear winner. Each scored subtle points, neither could be called a winner.

On quality issues such as BH discusses and color rendering etc., they may differ, but not on the basics, which are all that is sensor size related.

"And of course many people defend digicams, the sensors of which generally really are much smaller, as being very usable under many conditions and very high quality if used within their limitations."

No one has yet noticed that one of the images in one of my latest books was taken with the miniscule sensor of my Panasonic XS40, at 720 mm eq., and cropped.

Base ISO, decent light conditions, work from the Raw file, decent post processing skills, and the results can be very good. I was only working to about 8x10, but clearly some image files will look good larger.

[Darlene Almeda]

I see your point regarding m4/3 and APS-C, but the crop factor is a killer for some of us. Coming from 4x5" to 6x6cm was a professsion adjustment, but FF 35 to APS-C is about as low as I will go for serious shooting. How much real estate do you end up with if you have to move the walls?

[Neil Swanson]

Ah, Fred Picker. I went to his ZoneVI Workshop in 1978?, '79?. Sure he was an opinionated SOB but the experience was great. His staff were very talented (Allen McWeeny was one) and spent long hours just talking shop and life. In just a few words Fred could describe how to use the Zone System practically in a way Ansel Adams needed volumes for. I flat out left there a better working photographer. I left there so saturated with others images I barely short a frame or a sheet of film for a month. I also bought with my tax return that year his print washer. I still have that along with the film washer and several other darkroom tools. His timers that adjusted "time" based on actual temp were brilliant. The Cold Light head just made the greatest difference ever pin my print quality. It's very sad it is all in boxes and not in action.

[Dogman]

I set up my first darkroom around 1973 and not long after that I bought a Kodak tray siphon. I still have the siphon somewhere around here although the darkrooms are all long gone. I used the siphon as my only print washer for many years. Using the tray siphon required constant monitoring of the prints and shuffling them around during the entire wash cycle. Years later I finally bought a Versalab archival washer. I would dump the prints from the hypo into an oversized tray using the tray siphon and let them rinse until the print session was over. Then I would set up the Versalab and give them the final wash. Sometime later I bought one of those residual hypo test kits. I checked prints washed in the Versalab against some washed 20+ years earlier using only the Kodak tray siphon. Saw no difference in residual hypo between the two wash methods on the prints I tested. The Versalab made the job faster and easier but the Kodak tray siphon appeared to actually wash just as well as long as careful monitoring of the prints was performed.

I often chuckle to myself, remembering the information I gleaned from photonet years ago when I religiously read and contributed to those forums. According to most of the forum advice I received when I was considering moving to digital, I am performing the impossible by actually making photographs with the equipment and methods I am now using. Happily, I no longer attempt to delve too deeply into photo forums or the technical minutiae of photography. I just take pictures.

[Anthony Shaughnessy]

On the subject of wrong thinking there was an interesting article on the BBC radio 4 program From Our Own Correspondent this morning ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064x3h1 ) about the widespread belief in black magic in Tanzania and how this was going to affect the upcoming elections there. Made me think of this article and how many nonsensical (to me) things are believed in by apparently intelligent people .
Anthony

[Robert Harshman]

All of these discussions are currently being moved to the basement of history as my iPhone can make a better picture than your Sony A7Rii if I'm a photographer that knows what they are doing and gets lucky. Today's phones and cameras are so good it seems almost pointless any more to discuss camera/lens ability. A basket of fruit seems to me.

[I don't agree. I shoot heavily with my iPhone 6+, and there are a significant number of occasions when the pictures are technically compromised with the iPhone and wouldn't have been my Fuji X-T1. See this post for a prime example: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2015/04/02/index.html
--Mike]

[Chuck Albertson]

It works for washing film, too. Ilford worked out a system in 1976, when the UK had an extraordinarily rain-free year and water conservation was the order of the day. We had the same kind of winter in the Pacific Northwest in 1976-77, so I adopted the Ilford procedure and still use it - good idea, as another nasty El Nino is running and we will likely be a bit short on precip through fall 2016. For a two-reel tank, mix up a half-gallon of water. First cycle, 5 inversions of the tank and dump; second cycle, 10 inversions; third cycle, 20 inversions. Ilford says three cycles should do it, but I add one more of 40 inversions. Negs from 1976 on look fine (I still print some of them).

[Gordon Lewis]

Another piece of conventional wisdom during my darkroom days was the idea that one had to place the grain magnifier on top of a sheet of print paper (rather than the easel itself) for accurate focus. I ascertained through my own tests that it made no difference, at least not at the enlarging lens apertures I was using, and in fact the grain in my prints was always pin-sharp. Nevertheless, I would often be chided for my "sloppy technique" by dogmatic observers.

[mike plews]

Hypo is so heavy that it compresses all the fresh water to the BOTTOM of the wash tray therefore the only proper way to wash prints is to skim the water from the surface.
Everyone knows this ;)

[Andrea Costa]

I witnessed the birth of another "zombie idea".
Months ago, a photographer explained his dislike for the OM-D E-M1 stating that he could not use it for his very big, very detailed wall prints: at some shutter speeds, with some lenses, using it in continuous shooting mode, the camera suffered from non-avoidable shutter shock that ruined his work. All would be good, if this understandable critic has not evolved in this often repeated idea that I found on many forums: the E-M1 suffers from shutter shock and thus is completely unusable. Mind me, no one saying this has ever used the camera, and there are scores of pro photographers that use it for high level works without having probs. But you can still find this zombie shambling around...