My experiment with 600 manipulation

mysteryscribe · Apr 25, 2006

I develope my paper negatives (bigger than 2x3) in a peanut butter jar converted to a daylight film tank.... how cheap is that?

patriciao82173 · Apr 25, 2006

:hail:so tell me about how you make it positive then....

ETA: I should rephrase to say tell me how you "cheaply" make it positive as I know the technical way to make it positive.

mysteryscribe · Apr 25, 2006

I love you already... you know the way to a mans heart is through his camera.

first of all this is the home made lid for the peanut butter jar daylight tank....

To make a print I scan the negative onto a flatbed scanner (using a homemade backlight of course). The backlight even on paper makes it scan better. Unless it has a problem then sometimes I don't use the backlight. Then I do whatever darkroom things I want to do in a freeware editor. Then I just upload it to a printer.

Now before you say how that is cheating. I used to use a local prolab for my work when I ran the studio. After I retired I went back there with my son in law, who is now running my business. into the ground of course (just kidding he is doing great),... this prolab is now scanning negatives (on a drum scanner) to make any print larger than a 8x10... Like it or not its the wave of the future.

If I have a print made now it is generally a poster so it has to be scanned anyway. If you are shooting 2x3 or better still 3x4 or 4x5 negs a flat bed makes a decent poster print.

patriciao82173 · Apr 25, 2006

Okay I'll bite tell me about the homemade backlight...just so I know

patriciao82173 · Apr 25, 2006

And now I wonder why I got rid of all that stuff and went digital at the end of school...what was I thinking?

terri · Apr 25, 2006

holy crap!! Charlie has moved in for the kill, complete with diagrams. :lol:

How can I compete with that?? :irked:

Patricia, Polaroid 669 film is still widely available and not too hideously expensive. Great fun for emulsion lifts and image transfers. There are a few more basic supplies needed to get started, but having the tray and the tongs is a start. :thumbup:

Hand coloring is one of those basic skills that you can take along no matter what else you're playing with.* I use the oils and pencils the most, too, probably followed by chalks.

*Isn't that right, Charlie? :mrgreen:

patriciao82173 · Apr 25, 2006

I have all the stuff for the emulsion transfers the problem is the time-frame issue I have to work around. I have about 2 days every two weeks I can do stuff like that(when 2 of my rugrats are at Grandmas)
I've actually started on this project but I haven't got to the emulsion part yet I loaded some other pack film(just reg. b/w) in one of my cameras to test it and found out the shutter wasn't working so now I have to get brave(In college we had one of those film dark rooms where you go into a revolving door something about that room and loading film on reels that now I like to take my time with and requires me to "get brave"- :lol:

)and take it out and put it in the other camera which is a newer battery operated model and I know the shutter works in it but I still need to do a bracket test on it. Then after that process I'll wait two more weeks and take a trip somewhere to have a photo day and then I come home and probably wait two more weeks and then maybe I might actually get to make some emulsion lifts ...it's a long process but I think that's a good thing it gives me time to think over the next steps.

terri · Apr 25, 2006

patriciao82173 said:
I have all the stuff for the emulsion transfers the problem is the time-frame issue I have to work around. I have about 2 days every two weeks I can do stuff like that(when 2 of my rugrats are at Grandmas)
I've actually started on this project but I haven't got to the emulsion part yet I loaded some other pack film(just reg. b/w) in one of my cameras to test it and found out the shutter wasn't working so now I have to get brave(In college we had one of those film dark rooms where you go into a revolving door something about that room and loading film on reels that now I like to take my time with and requires me to "get brave"-)and take it out and put it in the other camera which is a newer battery operated model and I know the shutter works in it but I still need to do a bracket test on it. Then after that process I'll wait two more weeks and take a trip somewhere to have a photo day and then I come home and probably wait two more weeks and then maybe I might actually get to make some emulsion lifts ...it's a long process but I think that's a good thing it gives me time to think over the next steps.

Girl - whatever you do, don't try bromoils! :lol:

THAT is a long process and given your schedule here, you might never get done. I'm kidding, of course.

Yep, finding those precious hours to get creative is a real challenge. And then, when the time IS there, I have to hope I am actually in a creative frame of mind, so I don't force things. It always turns out to be junk when I do that.

One of the nice things about emulsions lifts is that you CAN take the picture whenever you want, and store the print as long as you wish. With image transfers you need to be set up and ready, you'll be peeling that print apart before it has a chance to develop. You have to be mentally prepared to move quickly through the steps.

But it's all highly addictive.

mysteryscribe · Apr 25, 2006

HOW TO MAKE A BACK LIGHT CHEAP TO SCAN LARGE NEGATIVES USING A FLATBED SCANNER

I wanted to scan in odd size negatives so that I could colorize and digitalize them. So I tried to buy a scanner to do it. I found them to be rather expensive to say the least. The truth is I could buy a brand new flat bed scanner with high resolution and 35mm scan light for under a hundred bucks but a 2 1/4 scan scanner was much more. Forget about 4x5 I couldn't even find one.
So what I did was to buy one that was set up for 35mm and then build a back light that covered a larger area. Building the light was a bit of trial and error but I finally got it close enough for black and white, color slides were pretty easy to correct, and color negatives aren't all that bad. But I am a retro photographer and almost everything I shoot is black and white so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to make the color adjustments better.
So here is what you do.
1)... Find your way to a Lowe's or Home Depot Store.
2)... Wander around lost for fifteen minutes, cause you wont find a salesperson to help you.
3)...Find the electrical department by yourself.
4)... Find a trouble light with a small 8" or so reflector. They come in two sizes a small and large. You want the small one unless you are going for the 4 x 5 negatives then you will probably want the large.
5)... Find a new florescent home type bulb..They are spiral and fit in the trouble light (lamp type) socket. Get the equivalent of 75 watts. I think it is. Not any larger than that for sure no smaller than 60 watt equivalent.
6)... Stand in line, behind a woman with twenty flower pots, or a man with fifty different sized bolts, or more likely both.
7)... When you get home find a cylinder to fit beneath the opening in of the trouble light. I use the plastic cover off a blank CD container a fifty count container. If I were doing it again, I would use a piece of poster board rolled into a cylinder. I could adjust the length of the cylinder to make the light more or less intense that way. I could also adjust the spread by making it a funnel shape for really large negatives. At the moment I am shooting 3x4 max, so it doesn't come into play now.
8)... a diffuser is needed. If you don't use one the light will be stronger in the center. A good diffuse is foggy plastic like a cd cover several makes it even better. I am a little leery of wax paper, but if your negative is protected it might work as well. I just place the foggy plastic over the negative between it and the light. It seems to work fine. How many folds is just an experimental factor.
9).... You can make a negative holder out of poster board.
At this point just crank up the scanner and do your thing. You will need a good photo editor with negative setting to make a positive to work with but almost all of them do have it. I just found a couple of shareware programs that convert color negs to positives and do a pretty good job. A little tweeking is required but the images are quite useable. If you want a really good print take the negative to the lab. But to just have a proof these things do well. I don't want to endorse anything so google them up google them up. both the ones I saw were thirty bucks each and both have a trial version. They say you can do the same thing in photo shop for about five hundred. Anyway good luck

LET'S SEE YOU TOP THAT TERRI ROFL

patriciao82173 · Apr 25, 2006

I bought a neg scanner to attach to my flatbed a while back it lasted maybe 100 negatives or so and then started getting interference and I threw in in the trash so this is a great fix for all those negatives I have stored up. Perhaps, relatively speaking I might could make one with a shoe box(maybe about the size of my scanner bed, a flourescent under the cabinet style lamp and some diffusion --parchement paper might work it's not exactly waxy)