Christopher Birken (sic?) Old School Photographer (Ansel Adams old school)

[JBW]

I was watching PBS news-hour on YouTube when a 5 or 6 minute segment on Christopher Birken started playing. He usues the same type of gear as S.A. and of course does his own dark room work. If you go to this link and move forward to about 15 minutes you will be amazed at how dodging and burning is done in a dark room and be blown away by what he captures with his talent and his gear.

I just checked the link and it took me right to the segment.
B

[Manfred M]

Thanks for posting. The equipment Birken uses is far larger than what I used, but the processes are quite familiar. The mask that is shown is where the "Unsharp Mask" concept in digital photography comes from. The dodging and burning he does are very much done the same way I did, although I used a vertical enlarger, not the horizontal design he uses.

Cibachrome printing is something I did as well and I 100% agree with his assessment of the look one gets out of the process. I was not quite as dedicated as he was, but spending 2 or 3 hours to do a single print was quite common. It's a dye-destructive reversal process, so only colour transparencies (slides) were printed with it.

The one place where the report is not quite accurate is that all the darkroom work you see him do is done in 100% darkness. While red or amber safelights were used for B&W work, colour materials were sensitive to those all the wavelengths of light so the only light that was on came from the enlarger. Cibachrome material was a bit harder to use because unlike other colour or B&W paper, it had that medium brown colour to it, so the image that was being printed was much harder to see and work with. Once the enlarger light went out, everything was done in total darkness, so a very solid workflow was required; everything had to be in its place because all work was done by touch and feel.

That certainly brought back memories.

[JBW]

Thanks for posting. The equipment Birken uses is far larger than what I used, but the processes are quite familiar. The mask that is shown is where the "Unsharp Mask" concept in digital photography comes from. The dodging and burning he does are very much done the same way I did, although I used a vertical enlarger, not the horizontal design he uses.

Cibachrome printing is something I did as well and I 100% agree with his assessment of the look one gets out of the process. I was not quite as dedicated as he was, but spending 2 or 3 hours to do a single print was quite common. It's a dye-destructive reversal process, so only colour transparencies (slides) were printed with it.

The one place where the report is not quite accurate is that all the darkroom work you see him do is done in 100% darkness. While red or amber safelights were used for B&W work, colour materials were sensitive to those all the wavelengths of light so the only light that was on came from the enlarger. Cibachrome material was a bit harder to use because unlike other colour or B&W paper, it had that medium brown colour to it, so the image that was being printed was much harder to see and work with. Once the enlarger light went out, everything was done in total darkness, so a very solid workflow was required; everything had to be in its place because all work was done by touch and feel.

That certainly brought back memories.

My ears don't always work quite right his last name is Burkett. Here's a link to his web page.

I'm guessing that IQ that he achieves is only possible with some seriously high end gear. \

M'Lady is curious: Why does his camera have a hood? Please and thank-you.

[Manfred M]

My ears don't always work quite right his last name is Burkett. Here's a link to his web page.

I'm guessing that IQ that he achieves is only possible with some seriously high end gear. \

M'Lady is curious: Why does his camera have a hood? Please and thank-you.

He uses an 8" x 10" view camera; which incidentally is the same type of camera that Ansel Adams and Yousef Karsh used in their work. These devices are very simple beasts, a simple wooden box and all the focusing work is done by looking at a ground glass screen that sits where the film does. In order to compose the shot and focus the camera, the lens projects the image onto the ground glass screen. This is quite dark, when compared to the ambient light, so a hood is used so that the photographer can see what hits the focusing screen and make the required adjustments. The image that the photographer sees, by the way, is upside down.

The camera is hardly "high end gear". The only high end part is actually the lens and shutter; the camera itself is just a light proof wooden box.. The film plane and the lens carrier can be independently adjusted; the modern shift / tilt lens has some of these capabilities. The quality is due to the large negative or transparency that can be produced. The lenses for these cameras are generally inferior to the lenses we find on modern DSLRs or mirrorless cameras; but it doesn't matter because the images are not enlarged nearly as much as what is done when one prints an image using a full-frame film or medium format digital camera.

You might want to read the following on the operation of these cameras:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_camera