I'm taking advanced photography in high school this semester. The project that I was assigned was to give a presentation, with handouts for all other students, on ~black and white film...and how it works~ All I have found so far is how to develop film. We already know how to do that. We learned that in basic photography. I'm suppose to tell how it works. If you have any information at all, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

-- Michele Krajewski (MLKallstar@AOL.com), February 15, 2000

Answers

Try the Time-Life Photo series from some years ago. One of the volumes had good presentation of how film worked, and how developer developed the latent image. Good diagrams. I found that book series extremely useful for teaching basic photography concepts to grad students who would use photography in their scientific work, but didn't have to be experts.

-- Frank Ramig (rramig@bcm.tmc.edu), February 15, 2000.

Look in your library for Basic Photography and Advanced Photography by Francis Langford Smith, published by Focal Press. Very complete treatment of film chemistry, silver halides, etc, without going way deep into a lot of math. I believe most of it is in the Advanced book.

Also, the US Navy Photographer's Mate 3 and 2 manuals are good sources.

-- Tony Brent (ajbrent@mich.com), February 15, 2000.

Is these pages any use? I am totally out of touch with what an advanced photography course in high school would cover.

http://alpha.nsula.edu/departments/chemphysics/everyday/photo.htm

http://members.aol.com/photogchem/

-- Bill C (bcarriel@cpicorp.com), February 16, 2000.

I have some basic information on photochemistry and the development process in my article on Mixing Developers at http://unblinkingeye.com.

-- (edbuffaloe@unblinkingeye.com), February 19, 2000.