Tag: Notes on photography

Posts and reflections on images and photography.

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ARGENTIC PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE 21st CENTURY

Église Saint Trophime, Arles – Éric Petr, 2024 | Nikon F3T, Nikkor H85 f1.8 & Ilford Delta 100

In the 90s, I stopped photography after ten years of passion.

In those years, digital photography arrived and supplanted film photography in just a few years.
A tidal wave that shook an entire industry. All photographers will have something to say about this era, often recounting a painful moment.

For my part, a great sadness seized me. I buried my equipment and my work as if to forget forever this passion for which I had devoted so much time and for which everything seemed to disappear forever.

Ten years later, I slowly returned to the image scene like an addict returning to his drug. 

It was with the Nikon Df, in 2013, that I rediscovered the lost pleasures of film photography.
This camera seemed to me to be the closest thing to silver-based practice, not in the process, but rather in the way it felt to take the shot. Nikon Df is the kind of substitute that photograhpy addicts can take to fool their bodies and minds. But of course, the feeling is deceptive and, despite everything, unsatisfactory.

It had to come to this, to close the loop and, to bring out the old gear from the 80s, recapture the divine sensations of silver halide and continue the journey with our first loves. 

Today, I no longer take pleasure in digital technology, and it is essential for me to continue my quest where my raft ran aground.

⚪️ Click on the images to see them in silver grain detail ⚪️

On the way to Arles – Éric Petr, 2024 | Nikon F3T, Nikkor NC24 f2.8 & Ilford Delta 100

It is probably difficult for many people to understand this relationship with film photography. But film photography is an extraordinary tool!

Once you’ve got the hang of it, you will feel like you have gone from a modern car to a vintage one, without any further assistance. 

You shoot and do not have to worry about checking whether your photo was actually taken. Your gesture and technique with film must be beyond reproach, otherwise all your images will be lost forever.
Silver halide is a technique with no net and no room for error.
Concentration is total and the choice to shoot takes on its full value and meaning.
Your choice of film will depend on the type of work you want to achieve, and the same goes for developing the film, with the different developers and exposure times that will bring a particular style to your image.

And then there is the grain of film! This magnificent grain is not the result of the digital recording of electromagnetic waves through a low-pass filter, but of the photochemical process of exposing light to an emulsion of silver halide crystals. 

The plastic result is so different! 

Approach, enter, zoom into a silver image and see these clouds of crystals in infinite colors or shades of gray, like the dots in an etching or the particles that make up stellar clusters. 

Feel the beauty of the silver image!

Self-portrait – Éric Petr, 2024 | Nikon F3T, Nikkor NC24 f2.8 & Ilford Delta 100

Over the last few years, I have been amazed and delighted to see that silver-based photography is gradually making a comeback, not as a mass-market application, but as an alternative creative practice.

Generally taken up by young people curious about the medium, traditional photography has risen from the ashes to occupy the artistic field, and many associated activities have developed in parallel, such as laboratories for developing film and prints on photosensitive paper, training courses in silver photography, small publishing houses dedicated to the authors of this old photography with a fresh eye, as well as numerous stores selling second-hand equipment and silver film of all types.

So, in the 21st century, silver or digital photography?

Beyond this choice, photography is a commitment, a way of seeing, feeling and describing the world around us.

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WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NIKON NIKKOR?

Nikon F3 and Nikkor-Q 135mm f2.8 (1965)

What is the relationship between the brand names Nippon Kogaku, Nikkor and Nikon? A purely personal analysis rooted in Japanese writing.

Explanations…

The NIKON Company was created in 1917 following a merger of three major Japanese optics groups under the name Nippon Kōgaku Kōgyō 日本光学工業 (Japanese Optics SA).
If we unpack, it comes to: 日本 Nippon (Japan) 光学 Kōgaku (Optics) 工業 Kōgyō (Industry).

It was only in 1945, after the war, that the company decided to launch a program for the production of cameras and spectacle lenses.
Between 1945 and 1946, tests were launched and the company moved towards marketing its first camera, under the name NIKON 1, which was actually marketed for a year in 1948, followed shortly afterwards, in 1949, by a second model, the NIKON M.
It was 40 years after giving this name to its first camera, that the firm Nippon Kôgaku Kôgyô 日本光学工業 took the trade name NIKON ニコン Corporation.

But the name NIKKOR ニッコール came long before the firm Nippon Kôgaku Kôgyô changed its name to NIKON ニコン in 1988.

The name NIKKOR ニッコール was registered in 1931 to identify its new line of lenses for photography, whose production was used in particular to supply lenses to the LEICA, CONTAX and then CANON companies until 1947.

But why and how was the name NIKKOR chosen at the time (1931), and what does it mean?

NIKKOR comes from the contraction of Nippon Kôgaku, and an “R” has been added to the end of the new name.

To understand the obviousness of this contraction, we need to look at the interplay of Kanjis (Japanese characters or letters) that occurs.
Indeed, if the explanation doesn’t make sense with Western characters, it becomes much more eloquent when reading Japanese characters or kanji.

Let me explain.
Nippon Kôgaku 日本光学, comes from 日本 (japan) and 光学 (lenses), which gives: “Japanese optics”.
The contraction results from the subtraction of two kanji from the initial name of the firm.
We start from, 日(本)光(学), Ni(ppon) Kō(gaku) or Japanese optics, to arrive at the following contraction, 日光 (Nikkō) which means: “sunbeam”.
We suddenly understand better this subtle transformation which, for someone who knows how to read Japanese, becomes obvious.

Then, simply apply a new spelling to this name, borrowing from another Japanese writing system (Katakana), to obtain with the same phonetics and the same word “Nikkō” 日光 but written:
ニッコー and add to it, an “R” or “ル” to obtain the final result: NIKKOR ニッコール.

The name NIKON, which was found 17 years later for his first camera, NIKON (model no. 1), follows the same logic.
The difference is that the double “K” (or small ッ) disappears, and the “R” (ル) at the end of the NIKKOR name is replaced by an “N” (ン).
Thus, NIKKOR ニッコール becomes NIKON ニコン.

By borrowing the Katakana syllabary to write the names NIKKOR and NIKON, the Japanese writing system used to write foreign words, was the Nippon Kōgaku Kōgyō firm, even back then, showing its desire to make the excellence of its know-how known the world over?