Altered Film Techniques?

[Markw]

Hi all. I am going to be developing some B&W film tomorrow and I was wondering if there were ways of altering the negatives in any way? I know about scratching and burning them, but are there any other ways of achieiving any kind of altered effect on B&W film?

Mark

 

[terri]

I've been too chicken to deliberately hack away at my negatives, though I admit I've seen some fantastic images come from cut/sliced negatives.

Personally, I prefer to keep my negatives pristine and just employ various alternative photograhic processes to them. You can do wonderful things with different types of developers (lith developer for instance) and papers, for toning, split toning, exposing for pseudo-solarization or to make a bromoil print - the list goes on. For me, paper and developer are easier to toss aside than a negative if an experiment fails.

If you've already tried the cutting and burning, you could also try adding creases. Straight, crescent-shaped, etc - might give you some odd highlights, especially if you did it over a light table for control.

Post your images if you do go wild - I'd like to see what you come up with!

 

[christopher walrath]

Take some fixer on a fine paint brush and flick it over the film before developing. Might be cool.

 

[Derrel]

Reticulation is one effect. The film needs to be warmed up in a pretty hot water bath, and then chilled, normally by quickly dumping out the hot water,and then filling the tank with ice-cold water (chipped ice + water, for example). If you're interested in reticulation, there's got to be an on-line tutorial or two with suggested times for the hot water bath and its temperature range.