Text based site map
Site © Copyright Barry Thornton 1999 - 2003
|
Brilliance in black & white
for you
Back in those days, it is hard to credit the
sale and size of Amateur Photographer. As a monthly magazine,
it would have been prosperous, but this was a weekly. Thickly
packed with advertisements and long articles by technical luminaries
like Dr. George Wakefield, this was no mere consumer magazine,
and from nostalgic memory it seemed two or three times as thick
as today's version. It had at least elements of a learned journal
in its make-up - it was certainly an important part of my photo
education. Yet it was entertainment too. The key character who
wrote a highly readable weekly column year after year was Victor
Blackman, a very experienced Daily Express photographer.
His tales of photographing the rich and famous had a romance
for ordinary AP readers probably belied by the door-stepping
reality. He used Tri-X in D76. Then as Kodak brought out HC110
his move to the brew took with him thousands of would-be street
photographers like me in the amateur fraternity.
Over in the States, Ansel Adams was perfecting and publicising
the Zone System. As he moved into older age, he took up Hasselblad
photography. Which film did the guru choose? You guessed it
- Tri-X (some others as well, such as Plus-X). And his developer?
HC110. He reported that it answered all his needs.
So now we had the street cred of the war and press photographers
behind Tri-X and HC110, and the acknowledged landscape master
craftsmanship of the perfectionist Ansel. It just became the
accepted wisdom. Despite the fact that the formula of HC110
has changed periodically over the years, as did D76, without
notice from the maker, and that Kodak's T-Max 400 emerged in
the late 1980s, people just kept using Tri-X in HC110 because
people in the know 'knew' it was the best.
Oddly the only other mono neg. film that approached this level
of overwhelming acceptance in the UK wasn't a Kodak film. It
was Ilford's fine FP4. Virtually every amateur, and many high
street social photographers relied on the high acutance Ilford
emulsion. So much so, that many years after the emergence of
Ilford's world-beating Delta 100, I still find many participants
in workshops I lead who have never even tried a roll of the
superfine grained Delta in comparison with their old reliable
FP4 (Plus now).
Continue ...
|
Back
|
|