B&W Styles Through the Years

SA*

[Illustrations and captions simulated. Hope that's obvious. —Ed.]

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1940: Graflex Speed Graphic, 127mm Ektar, Wratten K-2 filter, Kodak Super XX Film, D-23 developer (scratch mixed).

1965: Pentax Spotmatic, 55mm Takumar ƒ/1.8 lens, stop-down averaging metering, Ilford HP3 ASA 400 film, Omega D2 enlarger with filed-out negative carrier.

1987: Hasselblad 500 C/M with Acute-Matte, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Zeiss Planar, Tri-X 320, HC-110 dilution B, orange filter. Shadows placed on Zone II. Oriental Seagull, lightly selenium toned.

2001: 3.1 megapixel Minolta DiMAGE 5, converted in Photoshop 5.5. Unsharp masked, uprezzed, and uploaded to PhotoSIG.

2012: Panasonic GF1, OIS zoom, RAW, Lightroom 3, Nik SilverEfex Pro. "Haloing? What haloing?"

Mike
(Originally published February 2012. Thanks to Grant for a correction.)

*Satire Alert.

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

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "Ha, ha, would love to have see that Monochrom added! But of that grouping, I'll take the 1987 Hasselblad 'look.' It still seems that the defining quality is not the hardware, but rather taste. To a large degree, you can simulate these 'looks' rather accurately using today's raw files as the starting point."

Mike replies: I've exaggerated them (coarsely) here, of course. I'm not certain how close you can really get if you're being subtle. My sense is it's probably better to let digital look like digital.

Christopher May: "Nice to see this one back from the archives. I hope that 'Great Photographers on the Internet' can make a comeback someday, too.

"I'll still take the Speed Graphic image. If we're going with Super XX, though, the only proper thing to do is match it up with some Azo and make a delightful little contact print. I seem to remember someone (Michael Kadillak, if I recall correctly) discussing Super XX's unique ability to build density 'to the moon' at the largeformatphotography.info forum. That characteristic made it a lovely match for alt processes and contact printing on Azo."

Eolake Stobblehouse: "Either you are making most of this up (impressive), or you have a downright unhealthy amount of knowledge of history and B&W...."

Mike replies: I started another one of these as if it were taken with a Diana toy camera in the style of Nancy Rexroth and then I thought, no, I'd better pretend I have a life....

hugh crawford: "Tri-X Pro should open up distant foliage more than that with its green bump—oh wait—orange filter? I don’t know but it seems like one of the more compensating dilutions and a bit more development might open things up. Hell I’d go to diluted D-19 but that’s just me, and I’d avoid Tri-X Pro like the plague anyway unless the alternative was T-Max. Looks you forgot the compendium, that might as some snap too.

"If I were going full grad school I’d be asking what’s hiding under the trees and why is it so scary, but that’s outside the scope here.

"The best thing that I ever did on my 500C was get a Rollie screen with a microprism in the center installed, never figured out that Acute-Matte popularity. I think the only time I used Tri-X Pro was with a Press 23 in high school, so maybe that association (and the whole male portrait thing) has biased my opinion."

Mike replies: Yes, you used the orange filter to counteract the green bump. And, I agree with you about TXP. I remember my confusion when I first shot a roll of TXP thinking it was TX. And, the crows were chasing a raptor around and vice-versa. And, I never did like the Acute-Matte either! That was the very first time I ever had trouble focusing a camera. Not the last. Sure could see the frame, just couldn't see the focus. Autofocus came around perfectly on schedule for my eyes.

Crabby Umbo: "I forgot all about Super XX, now that was a film! So full of silver, the box weighed twice as much as weaker, puny films!"

Mike replies: And you know this, but others might not: what comes after two X's? Answer: Three, AKA the mighty "Tri-" X, the best-known single B&W film name in photo history.

Wasn't Super XX ASA 200? I only used it once.

Crabby Umbo: "You are correct sir, Super XX was ASA 200, but it changed with 'tungsten' exposure and was much slower (people forget that 'strobe' wasn't the ubiquitous method of exposure for studio, especially product, until well into the '70s). It really was silver rich, very long 'scale,' and, at least when I was a pup, was the film of choice for making the color separation inter-negs from transparences when doing dye transfer prints!

"As others have stated, I never understood why TXP and TX were so different. I usually had to go looking for 120 Tri-X (individually boxed), or order it in from Kodak; while my local pro dealer was always trying to make me buy the Tri-X Pro 5-packs, which, on processing, just did not look 'right.'

"By the way, long forgotten film lore: does anyone remember Ektapan? Since I started in high-school in portrait studios, I knew all about it, it was an ASA 100 film that was specifically formulated by Kodak to function well under strobe. This was back when a lot of films had reciprocity failure both in long exposures, but short 'strobe' exposures as well!

"Available in 4x5 sheets (and a bunch of those weird formats like 46mm long rolls for portrait cameras), it was my personal 'go to' film for shooting product when we all converted to strobe for everything. Everyone used to compliment me on the scale of my black-and-white studio product shots, thinking I was doing some kind of ASA change and processing push/pull on Tri-X, when all I was doing was using Ektapan. A great strobe film long forgotten!"

Richard Man: "They made TXP 320 in 120 format? [Yes —MJ.] TX 400 is the King, the Godzilla of all B&W films. TXP 320 is a...mutant lizard."

Mike replies: I used to joke that Ansel's best virtuoso trick was that he could actually make TXP look good. Har!

Gijs Langelaan: "On the Hasselblad interpretation, I'm missing seeing the black border with the 'V' notches at the edge to show it was really made with a 'blad. Or did that style show up a few years later?"

Mike replies: Ah, I wanted to try, but my Photoshopping skills just aren't good enough.

Anton Wilhelm Stolzing: "This is a great post. Ansel Adams changed his way of printing considerably over the years. When you see early original prints, you are shocked how 'flat' they appear in comparison with the calendar editions. And haloing is a real problem, but less so in digital age than in the analogue years. You possibly know these Jean-Loup Sieff-prints where the dodging of the trees is so painfully evident...."

Comments

[Grant]

To the best of my knowledge, Verichrome was never made in sheet sizes — only rollfilm. In 1940, the films of choice for a Speed Graphic would have been Super Panchro Press and Super XX.

[Thanks Grant! Fixed, with a hat tip to you. --Mike]

[Mike Johnston]

I could have done one more titled "2020: Leica Monochrom," but do you think I'm crazy?

[Michael L Stockhill]

Your last comment is the best comment!

[Ancient Lamb]

I remember when you wrote an article, in the late and much-lamented Camera & Darkroom, comparing various, current 400 asa b/w films: Delta, Tri-X, Agfa, T-max, HP5 Plus, Neopan, XP2-Super and possibly some others.

You did a print from all of them and then did a blind test, asking people which one they liked the best. The surprising winner was XP2-Super, a film I've personally never cared for. No matter. It was a great article.

Happy days...

[Peter]

mobile phone?

[Dan Khong]

It's also amazing that through 72 years (1940-2012), that clump of trees and the formation of birds have hardly change.

[Rod S.]

The popularisation of 35mm cameras, a trend led from 1964 by the enormously popular Pentax Spotmatic, led to the first big degradation in image quality since the inception of photography.

That is the obvious and inevitable conclusion to be drawn when one becomes familiar with photographs made in the 1930s and 1940s onwards.

[Dick Barbour]

Amazing how those birds returned to the exact same pattern over all those years!

[Dennis]

Speaking of Speed Graphics and the like, if you watch HBO's newest incarnation of Perry Mason, you'll roll your eyes at all of the press photographers with their large format, flash bulb-equipped press cameras taking multiple photos without changing, flipping over, or in any other way acknowledging the need to somehow change the film (or the flash bulbs)! Hilarious.

[Albert Smith]

I'm missing something...

How can clouds be in the same configuration and the tree's foliage identical in every photo from 1940 to 2012?

[Magic! --Mike]

[Film Shooter]

I really do not understand what this comparison image post is suppose to prove other than they all look fake.

[Kevin Crosado]

I prefer 1880 wet collodion.

[Bill Tyler]

Ok. So what's the story? These were all taken within a few seconds of each other, per the flock of birds and the cloud shapes. And why are we comparing yellow, orange, and no filter varieties?

[Lynn]

"I could have done one more titled "2020: Leica Monochrom," but do you think I'm crazy?"

That would be the same as the 1940 Graflex image, right? But of more interest to me is how each year these photographs were taken, the birds flew in exactly the same formation - amazing! But that's not all - the same goes for the clouds! Surely this weird phenomenon deserves its own TV series on Netflix?

[Peter Komar]

Hasselblad with Verichrome Pan or Ilford FP4, some of my best B&W negatives EVER. I have the favorites scanned and make some very nice prints on my EPSON 3800. Should I just ditch my digital cameras and blow the dust of the medium format system ? Developing film is not that difficult, my favorite combination was FP4 film in a pyro developer, hand mixed. Ahhh those were the days, am I crazy ? Mike, maybe your next shed should be a mini darkroom, just for film developing, B&W inkjet prints can be quite good these days.

[David]

The Tri-X in HC110 looks great to me.

[PDLanum]

How did you get those birds to be in the same exact spot "over the years"?

[Infinite patience. --Mike]

[Mani Sitaraman]

1940. I have eyes only for you.

[John Y]

Why are there different styles since Ansel Adams? His prints are still appreciated as masterpieces nowadays. Doesn’t that means our aesthetic yardstick hasn’t changed through these years and mainstream photographers are still striving for Ansel Adams’ tone interpretation?

[Howard Sandler]

I like the Speed Graphic look best, and that’s why I bought one (SA).

[somnath]

That's one patient blob of cloud

[Lee]

I was going to say you should have used Verichrome Pan with HC-110 in the Hassy shot, but I see Peter Komar already mentioned that. It was my favorite 120 film in my Fuji 690, and roll film backs in the Wista DX.

[Frank Lehnen]

Incredible how you managed to capture the same flock of birds throughout the years.... ;-)

But seriously, the Hasselblad look pleases me most.

[Neil Swanson]

I remember when T-Max first came out. Everyone was all over it. I was a TX guy. T-max was ugly but I soon realized that by cutting the development time by I think 2.5 mins it was a breeze to print and the highlights were no longer blocked up. I printed with a Cold Light so I can’t imagine printing “stock” negatives with a condenser enlarger.
Funny thing was, exactly what I did with development times was mentioned on that long paper data sheet in each roll. Speaking to a Kodak rep I mentioned my times vs the recommendations and he nodded yup and said posted times were too long. Still, I was a TX guy.

[Hélcio J. Tagliolatto]

As soon as I read the title of the post I tried to observe the images without reading notes.
And the one "made" with the Graflex and XX film was the one that pleased me the most. Soft and pleasant tones.
How interesting!

[Andrew J.]

Now tell us what the original "file" was taken with. XH1?

[Mike Plews]

During my very brief time at Brooks Institute I burned through a lot of 4x5 Super XX. Excellent film. We used D76 and printed on DuPont paper and the results were terrific.
Kodak still makes Super XX as a cine stock. 400 feet will set you back about $250 at B&H. Cinestill appears to be respooling this film and a roll is availiable for around $10.
Might try a roll or two when it is again safe to venture out.
By the way the strange but compelling film The Lighthouse was shot on Super XX using antique Petzfal lenses. Worth your time.

[T. Edwards]

I just watched the 2020 B&W movie Mank and I was struck by the clarity and richness of the shots. I watch a ton of "golden age" black and white films but it was amazing seeing the clarity and sharpness of a "modern" B&W film.

[SteveW]

T. Edwards: Did you watch Mank on a B&W Television?

Heh.

[Dan S]

A 2020 image would be from an iphone and would include a pterodactyl coming out of the tree.

[Crabby Umbo]

Mike Plews, nice tip on The Lighthouse...even the previews on Youtube are Stunning! Not only shot on Super XX, with vintage Baltar lenses (a fabulous old movie lens line from Bausch & Lomb), but mostly shot at T2.8, and in the original 35mm movie format that was "near square". All that before Willem DaFoe and Robert Pattinson even start chompin' on the scenery!

[Andrew Kochanowski]

PhotoSIG, my goodness, you knew about that site? Blast from the past that one.

[Earl Dunbar]

The ‘87 Hasselblad TX320 shot developed in the dreaded HC-110! Oh my, never @ me agqin for my choice of developer, Mike! XO

[Roger Bradbury]

While I like the "Speed Graphic" rendition the most, you've left out a few trends from the past. So, Satire Alert! : )

There's the plastic slot in filters boom from (I think) the 1980s, so that should be a multi image "filter" and a starburst "filter" together. What do mean, why? Why not?

Then there's the High Dynamic Range shot; takes ages and a costly special app to create, but you'd fail there because your original image isn't anywhere boring enough to go HDR on. The image doesn't lack shadow or highlight detail, but that in itself is no reason not to.

You've also omitted the Really Shallow Depth Of Field For No Good Reason shot. Usually taken by men who can afford ultra fast lenses, which is why the shots are described as "blokey"; at least I think that's the word...

I could go on...