I came up with a way to eliminate (or greatly minimize) the staining of amidol when used as a paper developer. Do I release the secret, or do I take it to my grave (about 22 years from now according to the life expectancy tables)

Now is the time for a clique of billionaire hobbyists to resurrect outdated emulsion technologies. How about for starters the complete patent and plans for ASA 10 Kodachrome? Never liked the look of Kodachrome II Process K-12, or Kodachrome 25 process K-14. The bronzy colored skintones, and the muted red brick colors of ASA 10 Kodachrome were the bomb (not to mention fill flash portraits of women with bright red Max Factor lipstick). Ernst Haas like it so much, he still had bricks of the stuff Kodak could not process after 1966. This exclusive Kodachrome ASA 10 revival team could find a nice tax advantage by setting up shop in Lichtenstein. I am sure the world's greatest research chemists would be available for a price for QA the chemical and process line manufacturing. Welcome to my personal reality distortion field:)

What I enjoy most with this famous photo, is that it has an optical illusion that causes the shadows cast by the clouds to appear to be moving. I used to think it was animated in someway, until I realized it was just good ol' contrast effects. The illusion works best by looking at the right hand portion of the photo, the shadow will appear to be moving in your peripheral vision.

THat song sure reminds me of this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh23YADF11U&feature=related Who could have sued who in this instance? :)

Hey Mike, Know of any workshops for Luddites looking for a darkroom anachronism such as me? I could show the Leica M film users how we used to brew our own high acutance film developers to get the most from a tripod mounted Leica M and a 50mm Summicron stopped down to optimum aperture:)

(Sung to the tune of Alouette) Tiny sensor, teeny tiny sensor, Tiny sensor, this is how you play. Compare it to a nice full frame, now your feeling lots of pain, lots of pain, cry in vain, OH!!!!!!!!! Tiny sensor, teeny tiny sensor, tiny sensor this is how you play......

This coming October, I will be facing yet another rite of passage. I will be packing up thirty some odd years of darkroom equipment and chemistry into our Jeep, and making a cross country trip to North Carolina, where it will be lovingly reborn into new life. My other friend named Mike who lives there, wants to get back into the darkroom after ten successful years as a digital photographer. The materials I had so lovingly coaxed into performing as I desired are no longer available, and so the many things I used to tweak old forgotten formulas from many a deteriorating old book go away for the last time:) I am just simply happy that these things will end up in the hands of someone who wishes to soldier on against the digital tide, rather than end up in some metal scrap pile.

Ctein, Back in the film days, I "discovered" that prints needed grain to have additional edges for your eyes to focus upon at the contrast boundaries, and create the impression of sharpness. This is why I never liked the look of Panatomic-X or Ilford Pan F 35mm negatives compared to say Tr-X or Ilford HP5 negatives-the prints from the grainier, faster films always looked crisper. Of course, they would not print the same due to the differences in the characteristic curves, but a good printer knew how to fix that. And don't get me started on how terrible prints from Tech Pan negatives looked. I got several Gamma .55 associates off that stuff and onto larger format film:)

To Marcelo (and all others who own this lens and are "in the same boat"), Do not let the digital age turn this lens into a very expensive paper weight. Get a set of bellows for your digicam, and make sure the mount on the open (lensed) end of the bellows can use LTM M39 lenses. You are now the proud user of a lens for macro work that I would dare propose a guess that will blow away any "proper" macro lens away for sheer image quality. As a matter of fact, this is a good use for any reasonable "retired" enlarging lens. I would imagine Schneider Componon S lens (merely great lenses compared to this one) would be kick butt as macro photo lenses as well. Art Kramer would sometimes stop by and help me when I ran a darkroom live chat forum on Compuserve (and I read many of his contributions in the popular photo magazines when i was a youngster). He is a wonderful gold mine of all sorts of photographic arcana. Ask Art to recall the story of W. Eugene Smith, and the Zeiss Biotar testing program he took upon himself back in the early 1950's. It is a wonderful tale that refutes the modern axiom that "true artists" don't worry about equipment. It will make you feel better Mike, when you start to think you worry too much about equipment on these very pages!:)