A Passion for Photo Technology -
Looking Back at 50 Years of Photo Technology
byWin Labuda
Preface
When, as is my habit, I go to bed late and then spend twenty minutes loo-
king at one of the many photography books I have accumulated, I am so-
metimes curious to find out more about the photographers whose pictu-
res have interested me. In particular, I want to learn about their cameras,
the films and developers they use or the inkjet printers and papers they
prefer. In other words: I am not only interested in the visual works, which
often enough are impressive, but am equally intrigued by the technology
with which they have been created. There is a fascination about cameras,
those structures made out of glass and chrome or deep black – the
fascination of the collector for the object of his desire. For the collector,
cameras transcend their existence as soulless apparatus and turn into
cultic, even beloved sculptures. In this essay, I am writing for those who
like my photographs and who are equally interested in the technology
which has accompanied my photographic work of the past five decades.
The analogue age
From 1956 until 2005 I usually worked with the most modern analogue
35 mm cameras of the respective time and generally used FP4 film by Il-
ford with Perceptol development, Agfapan 100 film with Rodinal deve-
lopment, or later, in the colour genre, Velvia film by Fuji. Occasionally,
however, I also worked with my medium-format cameras. I found the lar-
ge 4 x 5'' format to be too slow and too heavy for my way of working, alt-
hough on the other hand, I appreciate the wonderful image sharpness
which I achieve with myWista-4 x 5'' or with the Sinar Handy. Today my
large-format cameras mostly tend to occupy a place of honour on my
studio shelf. To me, the painstaking selection of a lens suited for the re-
spective motif was always a basic prerequisite for the successful produc-
tion of good photographs. In general, I have good and very good lenses in
my collection. Beyond that, however, I do have a few lenses that have
been termed "divine" by the photographer Herbert Jäger, my friend in
photographic spirit to whom I am indebted for much valuable advice
concerning the improvement of my technique. For instance, the Planar
1:2.8 of the twin lens Rolleiflex 6x6, the 1:1.2 – 80 mm Apochromat lens of
the old Canon FD series, the 50 mmMedical-Nikkor and the 120 mm
Hasselblad lens are part of this group - and of course not least the 38 mm
Biogon belonging to the Hasselblad SWC.
During our trips prior to the year 2000, I used the Asahi Pentax 6 x 7 as
standard medium-format camera for many years, followed by the lighter-
weight Mamiya 7-II, an exceptionally good 6 x 7 camera with an apertu-
re-priority auto-exposure mode. It is especially well suited for landscape
photography. Its lenses are of exquisite quality and are not inferior to the
Zeiss lenses of the Hasselblad. The 6 x 7 format meets my idea of the ideal
proportion for many motifs. A fifteen-fold enlargement results in a pictu-
re format of 90 x 105 cm. It seems sufficient to me, even if one wanted to
cover the walls of MoMA in NewYork. Unfortunately, the Mamiya as
1
3 - The author in 1988 in his la-
boratory. The computer is a
Commodore 64 with 64 KB
RAM
2 - The author in 1978 on a
photo tour in America
1 - The author in 1968 with his
first Rolleiflex
