It’s not fun, but it has to be done.

2023 Update: For an update with new vendors, much cheaper and every bit as good, click here.

Henry Ford, genius that he was, determined that it’s better to get a semi-skilled worker to do one task many times than to try and train him to do many tasks once. And, I’m afraid, when it comes to framing lots of prints, that a production line mentality is consonant with productivity and low error rates. Let’s face it. Only an assembly line worker, could find this work interesting.

I have previously illustrated how I Mount and Mat Really Big Prints. In this pictorial I will walk through the framing process.

The time had come when I finally had to frame the last 15 prints for my one man show – some 18″ x 24″, the rest 13″ x 19″ – all mounted on 22″ x 28″ stock. Marty Paris, the UPS man, sadist that he is, had dropped off the framing supplies from the fine folks at Redimat, so there was little excuse but to get down to it and get through the drudge of framing. Earlier, glass had been procured from the nice people at Paso Robles Glass down the road, so no excuses remained.

I use classic black frames.

You need a clean, well lit, flat workspace, some Titebond II wood glue and a moist rag to clean up glue squeeze out. While wet, this glue is water soluble. Once dry – don’t even think about it.

No sledgehammer needed. A drop of glue on the two mitred surfaces, pop in a corner piece, and tap it in gently with a soft blow mallet.

Wipe off any glue squeeze out and move the frame to a safe place. The matt surface is fragile and easily scratched. I delegated custodial and security duties to my regular assistant, Bertram the Border Terrier. If you use one of these, do make sure the chap is comfortable, as in the picture above. Guard duty is stressful, diligence essential.

Thirty-three minutes of indescribable tedium later, fifteen frames are assembled. Note the unceasing diligence of the faithful hound.

When you buy glass this large – these sheets are 21 15/16″ x 27 15/16″ – do ask the glazier to pack them in groups of five, or you will be risking a hernia. Glass is heavy! While the frames accommodate 22″ x 28″ mats, I have the glass undercut by 1/16″ as the glazier cannot guarantee tight dimensional tolerances.

Now for the toughest and most dangerous bit. Tough because cut sheet glass is coated with fine polymer granules to prevent abrasion between adjoining surfaces. These must be cleaned off. Dangerous because you can easily cut yourself on the unpolished edges (ever seen a glazier’s hands?) – polishing these is God’s way of telling you that you have too much money. You need to get the glass crystal clear and lint free. Any dirt will show like you wouldn’t believe if you use black mats, which I prefer.

Rather than using an ammonia-based glass cleaner like Windex, which is prone to leaving streaks, I prefer Sprayaway, which is ammonia-free and simply does a better job. The lint-free cloths are from Griot’s Garage, a superb business which really cares for its customers. You can wash and reuse these until they fall apart. Forget the paper towel rolls from the local Home Depot – these have so much grease and oil in them as to be useless.

You will find it far easier – and safer – to clean the glass by placing it in the frame. That way you are protected from the sharp edges and it doesn’t slide around dangerously because of those polymer granules. I do this on a black marble table top for the simple reason that the black background discloses every piece of dirt and lint.

Once clean, drop the mat/print/mounting board sandwich in.

Now, do yourself a favor. There is only one effective way of installing framing points in a frame, and that is using the right tool for the job. This superb tool, available from Blick Art Materials in the fine state of Texas, goes by the name of the Fletcher FlexiMaster Framing Tool. Expensive, you say, at some $80? Nonsense. How about perfect point installation, all sixteen of them, in thirty seconds?

Thirty seconds later. What is your time worth?

I leave drilling of holes for the wire eyes until the end for the simple reason I can never remember how many prints are portrait and how many landscape in my ‘production run’ and, of course, the placement is either on the long, or short, frame sides, respectively. Use a drill size that allows you to torque the screw down easily but not so large that it’s sloppy. If you are struggling and your Phillips screwdriver is jumping out of the screw, your drill is too small. This has to be right. The completed frame + glass + print is heavy and you do not want the screw coming out in the next California earthquake or whatever natural disaster your location is prone to.

I drill the holes six inches down for both portrait and landscape prints. Why the pedantry? Because if you make everything uniform, hanging a bunch of prints dead level becomes easy if everything is identically placed. Old H. Ford taught me well.

The wire eyes can now be attached.

Once again, if you are fighting that screwdriver, use a bigger drill for the hole. And please repeat after me: “I will not use an electric drill to insert the screw”. Unless you want to split the wood frame, that is.

Attach the hanging wire – I use 20 lb wire which is more than strong enough. Don’t even think of using synthetics like nylon. They will rot with age and …. well, I leave the rest for you to figure out. Tension the wire identically for each picture and the degree of sag you will get when you hang them will be …. identical. Hanging pictures is right up there with framing – I suspect more practitioners have been driven to chemical dependency by this process than through doing their annual tax returns. And the eye is incredibly sensitive to improperly aligned prints – or horizons. It’s something God seems to have built in to our genetic make-up.

Finally, place one of the provided bumpers at each corner to protect the wall.

What does all this cost?

A sheet of paper sized 18″ x 24″ for the Hewlett Packard DesignJet 90 printer costs $4. Inks probably add another $4. The mat is $14, the mounting board some $7, the glass $18 and the frame $26. Add $2 for the wire, hook and mounting tissue, and you are in for $75 for each framed print. So my show, with thirty of these, plus a couple of dozen unframed prints in the saw horses on the side, adds up to some serious money.

But is it worth it, or what?

Aaah!

How does $20.39 delivered sound?

When, with the help of that merry boulevardier, Bert the Border Terrier, I wrote about my happy times with studio flash I grumbled about the cost of a wireless connector between camera and power pack. This obsoletes one cord, making for one less thing to trip over, but I couldn’t find anything reasonably priced, so I put the idea out of my mind. Canon makes a unit called the ST-E2, for some $210, which will trigger their Canon flash units only, and that price is for the transmitter only! And that’s an optical transmitter, meaning your receiving flash gun has to be in line of sight of the transmitter. No way, José. B&H also lists many units from other makers. My only interest is in radio transmitters, which do not require line of sight, and the cheapest receiver-transmitter I can find on their site is some $125 and that requires mains power. Ugh! Lose a cord, gain a cord. Too much money, too little gain.

The other night, thinking about that strobe piece, and preparing mentally for the annual Christmas family snap which requires strobes as often as not, I was reminded of a conversation with a nerdy friend. You know, the one who thinks nothing of dismantling his computer to convert it to a faster chip or ripping apart his motorcycle in the quest for two more horsepower. This fellow had bought an el cheapo radio receiver-transmitter from eFraud, excuse me, eBay, and was singing its praises to the high heavens.

Now, truth be told, he was visiting from Crime Central, a.k.a. Baltimore, and the libations were flowing freely, so I dismissed this as so many ramblings of a too active brain. But that strobe piece caused something of a flashback to that discussion so I checked eCheat, sorry, eBay, to see what was out there, dialing in the words “flash remote”. Well, seemingly hundreds of choices presented themselves so I went for the cheapest, smallest, battery powered radio unit, going for the startling sum of $4.95. OK, OK, plus $14.99 postage. So $20.39 all in, counting 41 cents to the serial larcenists and pant droppers in Sacramento, CA for sales tax. My unit of choice goes under the splendid name of “New Wireless Remote Radio Slave Strobe Flash Trigger AA”. No prizes for originality, but five days later my good friend Greg Littell, who doubles as the mail man, dropped off a small package which must have cost the vendor all of $1.99 to mail. Hey, whatever, I was only in for $20.39 all told.

And here it is.

You get the receiver, with a 1/4″ mono plug, which plugs into your strobe’s power pack, a mini-jack adapter, a transmitter-to-camera cable if you have no hot shoe, and the transmitter. The whole things weighs – well, about $1.99 in postage.

The instructions are written in Chinglish. “Trigger flash lamp in long distance and in all around way without barrier”. Let Dr. Pindelski, your Sino-studies expert, translate. “Radio remote strobe transmitter and receiver, not requiring line-of-sight”. They also say you need a 12 volt 23A battery for the transmitter, the bit that goes on the camera, and two “Size No. 7” batteries for the receiver, the part that is plugged into the strobe’s power supply. That’s “AA” to you. I popped the small Phillips screw in the transmitter, and the 23A battery was already there.

By contrast, the receiver was sans AAs, excuse me, No. 7s, so I dropped in a couple rechargeables.

Now, there’s a bit of a snag. My Novatron power pack, being Texan, has little in the way of effete connectors. When Texans decide you need to connect a camera to their power pack, they make the connector a household ‘H’ plug, which is designed to transmit some 15 amps of power. So, off to Radio Shack for a pair (they wouldn’t sell me one) of their 274-340 1/4″ coaxial jacks and to Home Depot for a household H plug. Solder the two together, glue the bodies for a nice look and this is what you have at an additional cost of some $7. The Dr. Pindelski 1/4″ Mono Plug To H Socket Adapter. Available from me at $99.95 + $30 shipping, should you need one. Order early as I expect to be inundated with Christmas and Hannukah orders.

Time to test this little rig. We don’t need the 1/4″-to-mini-jack adapter, so that goes in the cardboard box in the corner of the garage which the black beetles call home, together with the coax cable, as my Canon 5D has a hot shoe. This is how it looks on the 5D:

Let me stress, my 5D can sustain 250 volts, so I’m safe. You should conduct your own test before use if you are unsure.

Finally, here is the receiver plugged into the Novatron power pack, the same one those good Texans use to fry the miscreants on Death Row.

So does it work?

You bet.

As reliable as the Texas Electric Chair. I measured the range at an astonishing 75 feet on my 5D. At 76 feet it fails to trigger the flash.

Not bad for some $28 all told, huh? And one less cable to trip over.

Who needs it?

I was making an 18” x 24” print the other morning for a friend and noted, with mild annoyance, the presence of grain, however fine, in the blue sky. The original was a 2 1/4” square medium format Kodak Portra VC160 negative, taken on a Mamiya 6, aand scanned in a Nikon Coolscan 8000 scanner. All sold earlier this year, by the way, with the advent of the Canon 5D.

That ‘grainy’ picture….

My reaction gave me pause for thought. First, no rational person could complain, as the grain was extremely fine. Second, at any normal viewing distance, no grain was visible. I confess to having had my nose in the print when I noticed the grain, as it was coming out of the HP DJ90 printer. Just like the old darkroom days, it’s still exciting to see the end product of all that work!

So what is the significance of grain to the art print today?

As an art concept, I think that Tony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon as he would later become, popularized the idea of intended grain with his monochrome series of inmates of mental homes in England. I don’t have it lying around at home, but the work was very moving, rendered more powerful by that Tri-X grain. It was a great idea that worked to complement the pictures and, inevitably, became a cliché though overuse.

While the great early Leica photographers – Cartier-Bresson, Kertesz, Brassai – all struggled with grain owing to the poor emulsions available at the time, for the most part you see their work reproduced in books. Rarely are the reproductions larger than 8” x 10” and what little grain is visible at that modest enlargement ratio is further masked by the printing process. So we don’t think of them as ‘grainy’ photographers. Grain, stated differently, is not relevant to the aesthetic appeal of their work.

Absent the excesses of a David Bailey and a Sarah Moon (who did it in color), fashion photographers avoided grain like the plague. After all, they did actually have to show the fashions, and the finer details of lace don’t exactly benefit from coarse clumps of grain.

Today, grain is mainly used by the cadre I think of as “photographers’ photographers”. That’s anything but a compliment. What I mean is those photographers who use grain and, yes, black and white, to make ‘art’ prints whose content is solely appreciated by other …. photographers! In much the same way that those late nineteenth century French academic painters strutted their stuff with some of the most insanely boring pictures ever committed to canvas – folks like Bouguereau, some of whose excrescences, incidentally, may be found on the walls of Hearst Castle here in central California.

Show the loving mother a grainy picture of her baby and she will immediately dismiss it as an example of poor technique. Show a grainy landscape to anyone but a photographer and the reaction is similar. And warranted.

So, gazing at that grainy sky in the print I had just made, I consoled myself that today, with the best digital gear, grain is already a thing of the past and that, for the point-and-shoot class of equipment, it will likewise disappear very soon as sensors are perfected.

And I, for one, will be more than grateful.

Money far better spent than getting yet another lens or camera.

I have always been a fan of the great state of Texas. In addition to providing drivers with cheap oil in any number of distillations concocted by corrupt state politicians earning their kickbacks, any state that has a predilection for frying bad guys rather than giving them three square a day, air conditioning, free bed and board and color television for upwards of fifty years, has to deserve the respect, admiration and gratitude of the taxpayer.

The addition of another fine product from that great state, a Novatron studio flash outfit, to my small equipment cache a few years back, only served to confirm my love of things Texan. The flash heads in that kit proudly proclaim ‘Novatron of Dallas‘. Go Cowboys!

Who needs studio flash? Well, anytime a portrait beckons or a still life has to be just so and heat is not to be a factor in the equation, studio flash is the ticket. Your Coke-bottom lens, well stopped down to cope with the powerful light output, suddenly becomes a Summicron, Planar or Canon ‘L’ – and the flash outfit will likely run you far less than any of those magnificent optics. Camera shake is a thing of the past. The light duration is very short, after all.

Too bulky, you say? Don’t have studio room, you grumble? Nonsense.

Here’s my kit, with that sophisticated man about town, Bertie the Border Terrier, providing scale. (Modeling fee? 1 cookie).

What you see, in addition to that fine canine specimen, is a transportable case containing three Novatron 500 watt flash heads, three tripod stands, the power pack and some long flash synchronization cables, as well as two silvered umbrellas which attach to the flash heads when shadowless lighting is called for. I used to pack an electronic flash meter also, but that is no longer needed with digital. Pop off a couple of snaps, check the LCD screen in the camera and correct exposure is assured.

The 500 watt-second heads in my kit are discontinued, replaced by 600 watt-second ones and, as with mine, these include ineffectual modeling lamps to purportedly help you assess the effect of the lighting. Once again, that LCD screen in your digital camera does a superior job. Better still, tether your Canon EOS digital using the Canon EOS Capture utility (maybe Nikon and others make something similar – I don’t know) to a laptop and you will really be able to judge your lighting. That estimable vendor of photo gear, B&H, lists a three head 600 w-s Novatron kit for some $900. A bargain and all the power you need for the home studio.

The heads on mine have three position power switches and I usually use them on 1/4 or 1/2 power, which gives a recycling time of some 2 seconds when all three are in use. One is a main light, the second a modeling light and the last a background or hair key light. For the latter, a small tripod/boom-arm made by Manfrotto, suitably counterbalanced with a sand-filled sack, (high tech at work), is suspended above the apprehensive subject’s head. You too can make out like George Hurrell – he even managed to make Judy Garland look attractive!

Now while more modern units integrate the power pack and flash tube – thus unnecessarily increasing bulk and cost while trading both for looks – you still have to run power cables with either, so what’s the big deal? Further, some seek to add to the cost by using a wireless connection between camera and power pack. There’s something in that as it obsoletes one cable, meaning one chance less to trip, but there are already so many of those I have never been tempted by the additional outlay.

If your camera is an older Leica, like an M2 or M3 with those superb sturdy flash contacts, there’s no need to compromise with a cheesy adapter to take the standard 3mm coaxial connector that bedevils the flash reliability of cameras thus equipped. Just go to Paramount Cords and get a cable terminated with the connector of your choice. The other end? The Novatron boys, bless ’em, use a simple, cheap and very sturdy household ‘H’ plug! Must be all that experience they have in Texas with high current loads in their correctional institutions. I wouldn’t bother with those coiled cord wonders either – a problem waiting to happen. As for choice, well how about the old Nikon push lock, Koni Omega (remember them?), old Leica M (tip #30 if you must ask), Rollei locking (great for that 3.5F or 2.8F), and many more?

Users with modern digital cameras with fragile internal flash contacts worry about trigger voltages – the amount of voltage transmitted through the camera’s flash contact when the flash is triggered. Most recommend that 9 volts or less (the Canon EOS 5D allows a whopping 250 volts!) is the safe way to go. Well, you can measure the trigger voltage of any flash unit with a voltmeter and two fine tipped probes. Charge up the flash and touch the probes to the two flash contacts. My ancient Novatron kit comes in at 6.4 volts, falling to 2.5 volts if a Wein Safe Synch is fitted between power cord and power pack. By the way, my fairly recent (Chinese) Vivitar 283 portable flash unit comes in at 10.1 volts, though I understand some of the earlier Japanese ones could really fry things. Motto? Check your camera’s instruction book and use a voltmeter first, to be on the safe side.

Now $900 may seem like a lot – about the cost of one more unnecessary lens for your camera – but I have found the utility value and payback from my Novatron to be excellent. Whenever I wanted to take some studio portraits I would rush to the local pro-dealer, leave half my net worth and Border Terrier behind as collateral for the loan and pay a weekend fee which was invariably over $100. A few of these trips and several things dawned on me. First, I was wasting time and gas on all those trips. Second, it was getting expensive. Third, my credit card record was getting messed up because the clerk in the store had an IQ in single figures. Fourth, I missed my dog! Finally, I was restricted to weekends, as the weekday rate was ruinous and things far too rushed.

Thus, I reckoned, the first nine times I used the Novatron now in my hall closet, it had paid for itself. And my credit score improved too.

For still lives it’s a killer set-up, for you know your lighting is cool and constant, nothing fries and all is repeatable as you concentrate on composition.

As for studio work, you be the judge.

When a plain background is called for, by the way, I use a Photek Background-in-a-Bag. You crumple the cloth and separate the poles, stashing the lot in a small canvas bag for transit, placing the background cloth in a clothes drier for a few minutes before use, to get the wrinkles out. Some $120 for the 6′ x 7′ model, which is more than adequate for head and shoulders portraits.

So my two cents’ worth on the matter are that a studio flash outfit should be a serious consideration for anyone seeking to make quality studio portraits, picturing interiors or doing still life work.

And if the only flash connector your camera sports is a hot shoe, no problem. Just splash out $20 on a Nikon AS-15 hot shoe adapter and your point-and-shoot has just become a studio camera. I use the AS-15 on my Canon EOS 5D rather than messing about with that silly flap that stubbornly refuses to disclose the coaxial socket. B&H continues to list this great little gadget.

Finally, if you are concerned about obsolescence, my twenty year old Novatron outfit, for which parts continue to be abundantly available (though it is as reliable as it gets), works every bit as well with my EOS 5D as it did with my 4″ x 5″ Crown Graphic. I bought my kit used some ten years ago and have had no problems with it. When they go out, replacement flash tubes are cheap and heavy, professional use will likely dictate new capacitors in the power pack now and then. It’s not about to go out of fashion, until the folks at Apple work out how to pass vast amounts of current through the air without connecting cables.

An update addressing use of an inexpensive radio remote trigger may be found here.