After the Flood

Photographs of the print room on the morning the flood was discovered by Emma Nadin

Since the last posting we have had a serious flood at the School of the Arts in Loughborough University, over the late May bank holiday somebody left all the taps running on the top floor of the building and over the next 36 hours it lead to severe flooding of half the building. The creative digital technology and photography HUB labs and studios are based on the ground floor and as the water cascaded down the IT side of the facility was badly damaged but fortunately the photography area escaped the flood. On the side of the building that was damaged by the flood was our research lab that housed some of our high end equipment that we have been using to develop our digital, analogue and alternative photography resource. The items that were damaged were the ultra large format 20" x 24" film camera and it�s film holders, prints and materials from our Platinum and Palladium research project were ruined, the large format HP Z3200 44" printer we use to create digital negatives and high quality prints has been put out action. The Flextight X5 virtual drum scanner escaped direct contact with the water but the computer and the Epson V750 were directly hit, our large format film processing equipment although drench is designed to work in an wet environment and is fully operational. When I was called in the water was still cascading from the ceiling and the electrician was turning off the electricity, the lights were off, the air was humid and dank from the hot running water, in some rooms you had to wade through the rising water, it was not a nice scene. The hot water had been pouring directly over the 20" x 24" camera and the wooden joints had swelled and expand, swollen ceiling tiles had fallen onto it crushing and concaving the bellows in leaving a porridge like residue over everything, the film holders for the 20x24 camera were full of water, it looked like a lost cause. With the water still pouring from the ceiling it was decided to recover the camera and move it onto the other side of the building where it was dry, after recovering the camera we proceeded to move some of the computers that had student work on them should we need to recover any of their files for assessment. After rescuing what kit we could I returned to the camera to clean and dismantle it to allow the components to dry out which was not easy due to the swelling of the wood, some parts would not move and had to be left stuck to one another.

The flood occurred just one week before the School of the Art's assessment shows and just after the Friday the students handed in their work for marking, if the flood happened a week earlier it would have been a total disaster for our students. Some of the students prints for the assessment was damaged in the flood but the School managed to get the prints reprinted by an external print bureau in time for the degree show, the original artwork was backed up by the students - good practice! The damaged area of the school was isolated and the shows went ahead as nothing had happened, the students and visitors had a wonder time enjoying all the visual delights on display.

Five weeks on and the labs are still being dried out by industrial dehumidifiers and blowers, the University and the insurers have been doing their best to put things right but when a building is subjected to extensive water damage it takes time for it to dry out and be repaired, there is no fast quick solution. In time all will be well and good and we can put this bad experience behind us.

After the initial tidy up one was left slightly bewildered and wondering what to do, half the facility was out of action but after a little bit of head scratching certain projects could continue which we had earmarked for this summer. Over the past five weeks the 20" x 24" camera which initially looked like a write off has been restored, even after being soaked by hot water over a extensive period the wood has fully dried out and returned to it�s former self without any warping or distortion. The wood used to construct the camera is cherry wood which has a very tight grain and I would highly recommend anyone building a camera to look at this material as it seems incredibly resilient and stable as tested in the great flood at the school of the arts. To get an idea of how resilient cherry wood is and how destructive a prolonged exposure to running hot can be the wooden parts of the camera were coated in two coats of hard oil with a further layer of beeswax. The hard oil used is the same used on wooden kitchen worktops and floors, it is tough stuff but over the course of 36 hours the hot water totally removed the hard oil protective coating on parts of the camera and directly penetrated the wood at the joints. All of the joints on the camera are tenon and mortice so even though they swelled badly they did not open up and come apart, on drying you can feel a slight unevenness at a joint and there is some discolouration but this can be fixed with a light sanding down. After repairing and re-coating the wooden parts the camera's mechanics were lubricated and all the camera movements are now fully operational. The bellows were another story, large areas of the bellows had suffered prolonged exposure to water and had also suffered the impact of failing ceiling tiles which when swollen with water are very heavy. Many of the ribs were badly deformed and larger areas of the upper part of the bellows were severely concave in. The bellows were removed from the camera and left to fully dry out whilst it was decided what to do. Now we could have ordered another set of bellows but this can take a long time, these are custom made bellows and it could have been the end of the summer before we would had them back and had an operational camera. I decided to restore them, the first job was to make a temporary jig to support to support whilst they under went a deep clean and removed any mould and left over particles from the ceiling tiles. After the deep clean the ribs of the bellows needed to be reshaped and to do this the bellows were moistened and ironed, this was a long process repeatedly heat pressing each individual rib until they recovered their proper shape and I am happy to say the bellows are back to their former self and work can now continue on 20" x 24" inch camera starting by photographing using large format 20" x 24" black & white negatives and then to produce contact prints over the summer term.

Job CPP2 film Processor with Expert Drum and Timer

Another project which has been done since the flood has been to finally sort out our large format colour negative processing facility for developing 5x4 and 8x10 film stock. About a year ago we had a go at building our own manual operated film processor that could handle Jobo�s expert processing drums, a had some success with 4x5 film but 8x10 film processing was beyond the capabilities of the prototype processor. The processor kept the correct temperature required for colour processing but hand turning and manually emptying the drum was not precise enough, errors crept in the timing and distribution of the chemistry leading to blemishes and colour casting on the film. It was a bold attempt at trying to find a cost effective and DIY solution to colour processing and perhaps with the addition of a motor it could have been made to work. For further information on a DIY film processor go to the following link to read the second half the posting http://cdtp-photography.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/summer-projects-ultra-large-format.html.

Image require of DIY processor..........coming soon

Instead of pursuing with the DIY processor route I happen upon a second hand Jobo CPP2 film processor that is now the work horse for our large colour negative processing, we have an Jobo ATL 1000 processor for 120 film stock. The Job CPP2 processor keeps the water at the correct temperature, oscillates the drum at the correct speed to evenly distribute the chemistry across the film and with the addition of a lifting arm it allows the chemistry to added and removed quickly which is critical in colour processing, timing is everything. We have also added a prewash cycle to the processing stages to make sure the film is at the correct temperature when the developer is added, this has stopped any evenness in the coverage of the developer on the film and there are no colour casts on the film. Using wide neck bottles also helps getting up to 800ml of chemistry as fast as possible into the processor, a quick even application of developer onto the film is critical especially on 8x10 film which will show any uneven and slow distribution of chemistry as lines and colour casts. The Jobo CPP2 processor handles the 4x5 expert drum with ease but struggles a bit with the large 8x10 expert drum which sometimes results in the grinding and misalignment of the cogs, so far to rectify this problem I have just manually put pressure on the lift arm to stop the cogs grinding on the return part of the oscillating rotation, a removable support can be made in the future to support the large drum at the lift arm connection point. The lift arm is a known weak point when using expert drums, a bit of modding will resolve this and I hope Jobo's new CPP3 processor with lift arm has resolved this. The resulting colour negatives are excellent, not as good as the best commercial large format film labs out there but good enough for a scanning and any slight errors can be corrected in the digital darkroom. The quest though is to get a perfect negative and that requires further work on the chemistry side now the mechanical processing side is nearly sorted. At the moment we are using the two bath C-41 Tetenal kit which may not be give the finest results but it is easy to use when learning the method. There alternatives to be explored from the four bath Fuji Hunt kit, the three bath Rollei Digibase kit and you can still get Kodak C-41 chemistry which might yield the better results.

Jobo Expert Drum for developing 8x10 colour negatives

Another project or issue that I have been working on is the digitalisation of large format negatives, there was to be a series of tests done on our Epson V750 scanner using anti-newton glass but this was ruined in the flood, when I picked up the scanner water poured out of it, not good. The intention was to attached a 8x10 negative to the anti-newton glass and slightly suspend it above the glass scanning surface so as to not get any refraction between the two surfaces that create the dreaded newton rings. Certain films like Forma and Fuji the emulsion side of the film is not too shiny and newton rings are slight and the resulting scans are alright as a soft proof but Ilford and Kodak films are very shiny on both sides of the film and when scanned on glass nasty newton rings develop rendering the scan useless. During further scanning experiments we also found depending on the temperature and humidity films that previously exhibited no newton rings suddenly developed them, it was deemed scanning any 10x8 film stock directly onto the glass of a flat bed scanner is not desirable. The solution is to wet mount the negatives and this method removes any refraction and newton rings, it also helps reduce the film grain, finger marks and some imperfections in the negative. Wet mounting also keeps the film totally flat giving a uniformed sharpness to the image. The Epson V750 has a wet mounting option but it can only accommodate film up to 5�x7�, no good for 8x10 which we want to digitalise. The other option is to go for the high end drum or iQsmart/EverSmart large flat bed scanners that can wet mount 8x10 negatives. This is an expensive and highly skilled option and getting hold of equipment and up to date software is not easy but they do provided the best results, there are still high end scanner services available and this might be the best option for your final scan if you are outputting a large format print for an exhibition or for sale. Besides using the high end scanning option to digitalise 8x10 negatives it would be nice to produced your own soft proofs that have no newton rings, having your own scanning solution will allow one to control of all the different elements of a process as for some the process is just as important as taking the original photograph and is part of their creative method of working. The other element is cost, drum scanning due to it�s complexity and high initial start up cost of equipment and it's subsequent maintenance and use of skilled personal is not cheap, one of the constant themes of this blog is finding a sustainable and affordable method to high end large format and alternative photographic practice and sometimes this means doing it yourself, making and/or modifying your equipment. The idea is allow anyone to enjoy large format and alternative photography rather than just a few with deep pockets and this will in the end keep the large format and alternative photographic practice alive, it allows manufactures to keep on producing film and chemistry as there is a large enough market, perhaps no-longer commercial but certainly with enthusiasts and in fine art photography.

Ilford Delta 100: Newton Rings

So how to find a solution to scanning large format film now we have no scanner to experiment with since it was destroyed in the flood, a bit of lateral thinking is required, how do we proceed and find a solution to scanning 8x10 film which is affordable, the quality is acceptable, no newton rings and the process relatively straight forward. At work we use a Flextight X5 virtual drum scanner to scan our 4x5 negatives, now this scanner is expensive and most will never own one but there are locations across the country where you can rent one by the hour so they are reasonably accessible. The interesting thing about this scanner is it is glassless, no newton rings and no wet mounting, there must be other scanners that can do glassless scanning and perhaps could accommodate 8x10 negatives. After a bit of research I came across Microtek's ScanMaker that has been around since the turn of the century slowly evolving in it�s connectivity, resolution, dmax range and focussing though it�s glassless scanning approach has remained constant. I have purchase the 8700 model off Ebay for the princely sum of �5.00, this model has an usb connection so you can use it on a current Mac running VueScan software. The scanner comes with two carriages, one has glass and they other is for glassless film holders that range from 35mm to 4x5 film. I tried the glass holder first and it still exhibited newton rings on shiny kodak colour negative film but a lot less than the Epson V750 and perfectly OK for a quick soft proof of the negative if you needed to check the image before sending it off for drum scanning. Next I looked at the glassless film carriage and measured it to see if I could make my own 8x10 film holder to go into it. Thankfully the measures where all round numbers and I just need to machine a 2mm rebate into 6mm deep frame to make the holder sit at the correct height for focusing. I made a quick prototype out of MDF and slotted it into the carriage. To give the MDF some extra rigidity and to stop it coming out of the carriage I gaffer taped it in, if the film holder was machined out of an aluminium plate at a later date there would be no issues of bending or deformation which are undesirable as the film must be perfectly flat for a sharp image to be scanned. After the film holder was secured to the carriage I attached a 8x10 negative to the rear of the film holder so it would be suspended above the lens. To support and keep the film flat I placed the blank I cut out making the film holder under the negative, with the film evenly supported I used magic tape or Scotch tape to fix the film to the film holder, the tape leaves no marks on the film and holds the film securely on place. As I taped the film down I applied pressure to each of the opposing edges to create tension to keep the film flat whilst scanning. The taping was a lot more easy than I thought it would be and it only takes a minute to prepare the film, after the film is attached you can hold up the film carriage to check for dust and any unevenness in the film�s surface. Once happy with the mounting of the film it is place into the scanner. I use VueScan rather than SilverFast, it is cheaper, works with petty much all scanners on a Mac running 10.8 and I subjectivity prefer it�s rendering of colours from a colour negative. This scanner has only a true optical resolution of 1200 dpi but this resolution still produced a 16 bit colour file at over 600 mbs and print output at 300 dpi of slightly over 90cms on the longest edge with no need for interpolation, more than enough for most people needs. The resulting scans using this glassless scanning technique were excellent, the images were uniformly sharp, the colours seemed correct, the dynamic range was a joy to behold for a landscape photographer, by not putting the negatives onto glass there was very few dust particles, and lastly no newton rings - joy! The latest version of Microtek�s glassless scanners is the Microtek ArtixScan F2 that will scan at a true optical resolution of 2400 dpi which is really the maximum resolution required from a 8x10 scan as this will produce a 16 bit colour file at over 2Gbs, more than enough for a large format printing and not killing your computer. It has been good to find an affordable solution to scan 8x10 colour negatives and the resulting prints from this workflow have been excellent. Digital medium format cameras may have superseded 5x4 film in terms of resolution but they still do not come close to 8x10 and you have to re-mortgage your house to buy a 60-80 megapixel digital back.