There are two things I know how to do really well that almost no one else knows how to do. That's leaving out the things I know how to do that a lot of people know how to do, like chop onions, or make a roux.
The two things I am talking about are writing briefs, and I won't bore anyone with that, and shooting litho film. I've been dreaming about shooting litho film regularly, I don't know why.
Once upon a time, I used to shoot camera, that's what we called it in the trade. No matter how big of a printing plant you have, you probably only need one camera operator per shift, at least no place I ever worked needed more than two a shift. Most of the time, it's an easy job, if you've got clean copy. Mindless, really. An apprentice can do the easy bits without supervision. So even if you've got two cameras going, you can let an apprentice to the easy bits.
The camera is as big as, well, hmmm. There's two ends, the film end, which is inside a darkroom, and the copy end, which is outside the darkroom. The darkroom is a room, and the camera room is a room, so the camera is as big as two rooms. At its most extended, a really big camera would be 20 ft long. The copy board in a big printing plant is maybe three feet wide, and five feet tall, and a thick metal frame holds it steady. It's got a hinge, so you can lie it flat to put the copy in, and then swing it up so it faces the camera lens. And there's a glass door with a metal frame and a latch. The copy board has a rectangular bullseye, and you center the copy, and close the door, and close the latch, and swing the copy board up. Usually you're shooting at 100%, but if you aren't, there are knobs that you turn to make the copy board move closer to the lens (enlarges the copy) or further away (makes it smaller), and the copy end slides along a track, pulled by a wire, and you read the numbers on a gauge, and when you get to the right spot, you lock a latch and that holds the film end in place. If you want to reduce something to maybe 15%, you have to roll the copy board all the way to the far end of the room.
Then you check the lens, to make sure that it's open to the right f-stop. F-22 usually, for line work. Maybe f-16 for halftones. Halftones are the way you shoot photographs so the printer can print them.
Then you open the door to the darkroom, walk in and close the door behind you. There are red lights in the darkroom because litho film doesn't "see" red. It thinks red is black. It also thinks blue is white. And it won't shoot gradations of grey, it only shoots black and white.
You open the back of the camera, and the lens is closed, so the light doesn't hit the film and ruin it. You lie the back down, maybe, depending on the camera. You flip a switch, that turns on a vaccuum, that sucks air out the back of the film board through a grid of tiny round holes.
You reach into a box of film, and select the right size, and center it on the rectangular bulls-eye that's painting onto the back of the film board. After a while you have learned how to lie the film flat in exactly the right place, without having to pick it up and move it until you get it right. Then you swing the film board back up, and close the door to the back of the camera, and close the latch, and set the timer for the camera lights, and push a button, and the lights come on.
The film is exposed, you open the back, take out the film, and put it in the film processor, a machine that develops the film.
Nothing to it, really, if you just do it all right. I could walk out of the darkroom while the camera was shooting the image, reload the copyboard as soon as the lights went out, walk back into the camera room and put the film into the processor, reload the film, and walk back and forth, over and over, until everything I had to shoot was shot.
And that's easy, and anyone can be taught to do it in a few days.
But the hard part was shooting halftones, and separating colors.
Halftones require a screen, that breaks the light up into little squares, a tiny dot of light becomes a tiny dot of ink, and a lot of tiny dots is light grey. A lot of big dots is dark grey. And every photo is a little different, some are very light all over, some are very dark all over, and some are very contrasty. And then there are color photos, if a photo is very red, then it will look dark, because red is black to the film. And if it's very blue, it will look light, because blue is white.
The halftone filter is a big piece of film with a grid built in, and you lie it flat over the film and roll it down with a roller to make it lie flatter. It has to be bigger than the film so it will have extra air holes to suck it flat.
And to adjust for the variations in the photos, you have to adjust the time of the exposure, but you've also got to "flash" the film to make your whites come out right. That means removing the screen while you are inside the darkroom, and briefly exposing the film to a yellow light, and that "pinches up the highlights", that is, makes the tiny dots in the white smaller, and "adds tone to the blacks", that is, makes actual dots in the dark areas, not just black (clear film, really, because film is negative, so black on the film doesn't print, so it's white, and white does print, so it's whatever color you print, say if you use black ink, clear is black.
And if you are enlarging or reducing the photo, you've got to compensate with the f-stop, and that affects the time, because the smaller the f-stop, the less light the film gets. (The bigger the number on the f-stop, the smaller the aperture. F-22 is half as big across as f-11. But half the diameter means 1/4 the light gets through.)
Anyway, it's an art, and sometimes you've got to reshoot your halftones, because if you shoot a lot of linework, it exhausts the developer, so your guess about the exposure is off. It's always a guess, anyway, but after a while you develop an internal way of guessing that's pretty much right most of the time. You'd rather shoot the halftones first, but the strippers would be standing around idle, so you have to shoot the lineshots first, and then you can diddle around with the halftones.
And then there are the fiddly things, like taking an old ad and reshooting it because the customer lost the artwork. Which isn't a problem as long as it's black and white. But what if it's red and black? Or blue and white? Oh, I could still shoot it, but I had to use color filters, and sometimes special film that meant turning off all the lights in the darkroom, and working blind.
And then there was, in the old days, hand separating color photos, but I never got good at that, because electronic scanners came in about the time I was learning.
I dream about it, a lot. I dream that I have a part time job shooting camera, I used to free lance and shoot in a lot of different plants, because I was willing to work odd hours. I dream I am in a plant I've never worked in before, trying to shoot halftones on a camera I've never worked on before. I'm trying to keep the strippers from noticing that I'm having difficulties, because they are lower on the totem pole, but always looking for an excuse to jump up, and it's easy to knock off a camera man who's using up too much film. That's humiliating, I can't let that happen. I'm a master cameraman, I can't let a journeyman stripper show me up.
For example, I could set up real items on a stand, and shoot them, instead of copy. We would do that in a pinch, for ads where the photo had not showed up on time.
A master stripper is on a level with with a master cameraman, the pecking order is apprentice (lowest), journeyman (middle) and master. I was a master cameraman, and a highlevel journeyman stripper, but I got accepted into law school before I became a master stripper. And I never dream about stripping. I always dream about shooting camera.
I might not dream about stripping because my eyesight isn't good enough, anymore, and I'll never be a master stripper. |
