Perhaps you have already been flooded with letters about an error in your article, “1984 Color-film Roundup” (February issue), which should be rectified. In the Color-negative (Print) Films chart, on p. 87, the headings for the last two columns on the right are transposed: “3,200 K lamps” should read “3,400 K photofloods,” and vice-versa, which would correct the problem.
Tips on photographing the spectacular Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque
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Carl Purcell
Some events in certain cities are strongly associated with photography because of their visual nature. One of these is the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. It draws thousands of professional and amateur photographers to New Mexico each year because of the vivid color of the balloons and the ideal weather conditions in the arid desert climate.
You can make black-and-white prints from your color negatives—but how good are they?
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Larry Sribnick
From time to time you’ll find it necessary to make black-and-white prints from your color negatives. If you’re doing your own color printing, there’s no reason why you can’t make your own black-and-white prints, too. The best part is that you won’t have to buy any new equipment—only paper and chemicals.
Hazardous-waste dumps can kill an unwary photojournalist just as dead as enemy artillery can
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Howard Chapnick
Photojournalism is hazardous. It’s not for the faint-hearted or those unwilling to risk personal danger by photographing an unstable world. To report what happens in the world puts photographers constantly on the edge of disaster. War, riots, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tornados, and floods are just some of the perilous events that photojournalists cover.
Russell Lee says, “The photograph was taken in southwestern Iowa in December, 1936, on my first field trip for the Resettlement Administration. “Prolonged drought and the Great Depression had caused desperate living conditions in the area.
When the urge to see goes beyond the reach of camera lenses, consider a small, dual-purpose telescope
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Kenneth Poli
We photographers have been called voyeurs more than once' over the years since 1839 when Daguerre started it all (photography, fella, not girl-watching). I’m not going to take sides as to whether we are or we aren’t. But if we are voyeurs, it might explain a quirk I’ve noticed in myself and a lot of photographer friends.
Do you make good pictures on a hit-or-miss basis? Learn a better way with these special visual games
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Cora Wright Kennedy
Are you a photographer who longs to make stronger, more meaningful pictures? Do you feel stuck, even though you’ve tried lots of different approaches? If so, consider playing some special visual games, whether or not you have a camera in hand.
More about choosing the best lens for your purposes: remember that the quality of the mount is also important
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Norman Goldberg
Last month I promised to continue discussing just about everyone’s favorite mystery: how to choose the best lens. This would be hard enough if only the well-recognized brands were involved. But recently we’ve seen more and more new names (and no names) on lenses, making the choice bewildering.
Glossy photo books take armchair travelers to remote areas of Asia
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Yvonne Kalmus
Even though the economy is on the upswing, a trip to the Orient may still be a bit too costly for many of us. Fortunately, books—photo books in particular—provide a means of vicarious vacationing in far-off lands. Thanks to four recent publications, for instance, we can travel through China, Tibet, India, Indonesia, Bali, Java, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma for the princely sum of $144—all inclusive.
Robert L. Bracklow’s Old New York; The Image Bank, “off-duty”; David Bailey’s cheap chic of the ’60s
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Harvey V. Fondilier
Little is known about Robert L. Bracklow—not even when or where he was born, or his middle name— yet this talented amateur left a remarkable photographic legacy of the city he loved. (Shanties to Skyscrapers: Robert L. Bracklow’s Photographs of Early New York, The New-York Historical Society, Dec. 15, 1983-May 6.)
Tape a world all your own: Tomorrow may bring computer graphics to everyone
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Leendert Drukker
Anyone who has seen “Star Wars” can appreciate the fantastic possibilities of computer-generated graphics, whereby reality and imagination are indistinguishably blended. The artist draws with a stylus on a tablet, activating impulses in an electronic grid underneath it.
How to make photographs from your home-computer displays
Two simple-to-operate systems give you good image quality at low cost
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Don Leavitt
Now that there are nearly 3,000,000 households with personal computers—a figure that is growing by leaps and bounds— there is more interest than ever before in low-cost methods of making photographs of computer video displays. Up until now, the available methods for making hard-copy documentation of computer displays have ranged from ink-jet color plotters to sophisticated computer-operated electronic film printers such as Polaroid’s Palette system and the largeformat Dunn cameras.
I recently purchased a Canon Power Winder A. The instruction sheet for it says not to use nickel-cadmium batteries because they might damage some kinds of film. Why is this so? David Mikesic, Johnstown, Pa. We asked Canon and they replied: “The reason that nicad batteries are not recommended is that there is no safety feature built into the Power Winder A to release the tension on the film after the roll has been completed.
Amos Nachoum uses photography to help preserve the beauty of the underwater world
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Steve Pollock
To Amos Nachoum, the ocean is a vastly important and dangerously misunderstood part of the Earth. “For many years,“ he writes, “the ocean has been the setting for horror stories. The fearsome images that people have of sea creatures—what I call the ‘man-eating shark syndrome';—has set the stage for widespread abuse and destruction of-ocean life."
New Kodak high-speed daylight-balanced slide film is designed for best quality with E-6 push-processing
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Fred Ward
Fred Ward is a veteran Washington-based photojournalist who has been associated with the Black Star photo agency since 1960. His work has appeared in practically all of the world's great picture magazines, such as Life, Time, and Newsweek.
Camera Type: 35-mm multimode with three automatic (programmed-normal and high-speed, aperture priority, shutter priority) plus full metered manual singlelens reflex Normal Lenses: 50-mm Nikkor f/1.2, f/1.4, f/1.8; 50-mm Series E f/1.8; 35 → 105-mm Zoom Nikkor f/3.5-4.5 (tested)
Long favored by amateurs, zooms are now joining the working press
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Thom O’Connor
News photographers are the shock troops of the picture business, traveling light, moving fast, shooting quickly. In the past, most news photographers thought zooms too big, too slow, and too fuzzy. But times—and optical quality—have changed.
Photographic collaborations prove that sometimes four hands are better than two
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Harvey V. Fondiller
Making a photograph—like painting a picture or writing a poem—is usually done solo. But from the time photography was young, pairs have shared credit lines for pictures made jointly. Dual credit lines are famous, from Hill & Adamson and Southworth & Hawes to Bruehl/Bourges and Bullaty/Lomeo.
An inexpensive way to protect and display your prints is to use metal-section frames. They come in many sizes and are easy to assemble
Resources
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David Vestal
Frames protect prints that are put on display, keeping them clean and helping them look good. Writing in the late 1960s and early ’70s, when metal-section frames were new and came in few forms, I described several other kinds of frames for photographs.
Multiformat 6x7-SLR system includes panoramic 35-mm and Polaroid backs, auto-exposure finders
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The Bronica GS-1 is a multiformat SLR. With its primary back, it produces medium-format 6x7-cm negatives or transparencies on 120-size film. These images are the so-called “ideal format” because they are directly proportional to standard paper sizes such as 8x10, 16x20, etc.
Owners of the Bronica ETRS and SQ-A can now shoot 35-mm—including a 24x54-mm w-i-d-e format
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Medium-format photographers owning the Bronica ETRS or SQ-A can now shoot any 35-mm film, including Kodachrome, in their camera. Separate backs are supplied for these two cameras, and both come in two different formats. The 135-N gives normal 24x36-mm frames; the 135-W, an extrawide 24x54-mm format.
Ultrawide-angle lens provides a broad photographic view
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Most amateurs run into few occasions when they really need an ultrawide-angle lens, and are therefore unlikely to lay out several hundred dollars for one. At its modest price of $89.95, the 20-mm Plura-Coat f/2.8 promises to place a broader photographic view within their reach.
On August.24, 1969, the ice-breaker tanker.S.S. Manhattan sailed from the port of Chester, Pa., on a voyage of exploration. Her mission was to attempt to sail through the legendary Northwest Passage to Barrow, Alaska, there to pick up a symbolic barrel of oil.
Electronic, photographic, or “hybrid” imaging—each system has specific applications
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Don Leavitt
What does it take to make an image? A reflecting pool of water? A stick to draw lines in the sand? A pen? A brush? An engraved printing plate? A camera obscura? A lens and sensitized plate? A camera and film? A camera and an electronic-image sensor?
Earlier this year, Chicago Tribune readers came across an engaging Trib magazine article, “Hackin' It.” The piece, photographs and text by Diane Schmidt, portrayed the world as seen through a cabdriver’s windshield. It had an irrefutable sense of the real.
The Shogun Inheritance: Japan and the Legacy of the Samurai, by Michael McIntyre. New York: A&W Publishers, Inc., 1982; 216 pp. with approximately 200 color photographs; hardcover, $27.50. As Japan assumes an ever-increasing role in world economy, U.S. attention to its corporate practice—much of which is rooted in ancient laws set down by military dictators (“shoguns”) some four centuries ago—becomes correspondingly more intense.
POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY will periodically list nationwide photographic workshops. If you wish to have your workshop listed, please send complete information at least three months prior to the registration date to: Workshops, POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY, One Park Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016.
Fuji spurts to ISO 1,600, Agfa unveils its high-technology models, and Kodak reveals new Ektachrome 100
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Bob Schwalberg
The availability of genuinely new chemical technology—and not mere marketing—has unleashed a Niagara of new color-print and transparency films. Principal advances are in the shaping of silver-halide crystals to obtain greater surface area for increased speed, the formulation of more efficient color couplers to make possible thinner emulsion layers which limit the spread of light within the image layers, and the regulation of chemical processing by new acutance dyes and developer-inhibitor-releasing (DIR) couplers that give sharper and finer-grained images.