An ultimately colorful failure from 1973

gk fotografie · Mar 28, 2020

I remember this very well, a black and white negative printed on color paper via 2 different color filters. In order not to spend hours in the dark (developing color photos), my brother and I had bought a special daylight drum that could spin on a kind of roller bench, a fairly revolutionary device in 1973 It was called a Simmard Drum. Found this on the internet: Simmard Drum
Take this drum into the darkroom, fill with 1 or 2 pieces of photographic paper, close the lit, switch on the light and start the entire developing process. I wonder if this technique ever reached the US in those days. The principle was very useful in developing Cibachrome photos (printing slides) because you needed much less liquid. In the drum you could develop 2 pieces of 8x10" prints in one go, of course you had to use twice the required amount of chemicals, in that case.
But...I made a mistake with this photo, when the drum already turned round I noticed I had taken the liquid amount for 1 photo, while there were 2 prints in the drum. The end result is one-off, because achieving the same result in exactly the same way is absolutely impossible.
The model was very happy with a repro that I made afterwards.

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tirediron · Mar 28, 2020

I honestly don't remember the name, but a teacher of mine (who was my photography mentor for many years) had a system that looked identical, but I remember the drum being a colour other than black. Neat image!

terri · Mar 28, 2020

I think this turned out great! I've not heard of the name before. Actually, you were onto something - putting in the chemistry for one when you have 2 in the drum could have made for all kinds of unique images like this!