The Paper Negative

mysteryscribe · Jul 15, 2006

probably will be some in the retro gallery tomorrow afternoon. If I don't decide to write instead

mysteryscribe · Jul 16, 2006

I have been unable to reproduce the asa 25 image. I have no idea what I did yesterday or what I'm not doing today. What I am going to do is build a new daylight 4x5 tank and see if I cant get a little better results with it. More consistant than hand rolling the tank to use less chemical, I hope I will have it tomorrow. I am also going to switch cameras. The 4x5 eats up materials. I'm going to try to work the kinks out in 3x4 I was trying to test the new 4x5 at the same time but I already know that it is sharp I found out from a negative I did earlier.

So tomorrow I plan to cut a bunch of 2x3 papers and get the twenty five times down then try to push it once more. ASA 25 is just two stops that shouldn't be a problem at all. Fifty might be one stop too far but I cant see that either.

mysteryscribe · Jul 17, 2006

I shot paper at asa 25 all day... The times to get a decent negative are running over 20 minutes this is not practical. However I expect that one could run d72 (dektol) at 1 to 2 and cut that significantly.

I'm going to give up since I really don't care enough about paper to persue it. It is a novelty that I can live with at iso 5

mysteryscribe · Aug 4, 2006

I was looking on ebay for a better lens for the 4x5 when I saw something that really made me laugh. Someone was selling a very cheap early kodak shutter. They had stripped it from a folder then removed the glass and fitted a pin hole in it.

Now I have made and sold some pin hole cameras on eba, but it never occured to me that anyone would buy a pinhold lens and shutter assembly only.

In case you are an early camera person it was a dak shutter one of the cheapest made ones. I kept thinking of all those shutters I have junked. time to look around the place to see if I have any left.

DocFrankenstein · Aug 5, 2006

This doesn't make much sense from theromdynamics point of view.

How much of a sensitivity increase are we talking about here? Comparing a preflashed/non preflashed papers.

JamesD · Aug 5, 2006

It does make sense from a thermodynamics point of view if you consider the other effects which come with push-processing a photographic medium. As with film, you increase contrast, but narrow the latitude. The grain increases--although, the size of the negative minimizes the effect, just as it does with large-format film.

It's a set of tradeoffs, not a something-for-nothind deal.

mysteryscribe · Aug 5, 2006

I swiched out the lens on a 3x4 camera since it was a pain to cut the film from a 4x5 sheet. The only advantage was the ability to use the rangefinder which I cant do with 4x5,

So what was left was a completely funcional 3x4 camera without a lens. Bearing in mind that someone things a shutter on a pinhole camera is a good idea I mounted on and make the 3x4 pinhole. I will most likely shoot only paper in it.

I am shooting it as we speak and have been for the last hour and have one more to go. then I will see how the darn thing works.

JamesD · Aug 6, 2006

While I'm in the darkroom tonight, I'm gonna spool up some 120-format paper. I've got a couple of spools available now, so I've got no reason to shoot.

Except that the Mamiya 645 100s is positively a brick. I mean, can a camera weigh any more?

mysteryscribe · Aug 6, 2006

645 is probably pound for image size the worst.....

Now I have tried all day to get paper to shoot at iso 25... I got it twice but then it stopped working.

I preexposed it like this ( shot a piece of white paper five stops underexposed) then shot the paper neg at iso 25 Twice i got it dead on and three times 1/2 to 1 stop under exposed.

I also changed the chemical mixture and time. Doubled the concentration of the chemical and added 50 to the time. Neither seems to have hurt the paper negs Not sure how much they improved them either. After I rest I'm going back to give it one more try.

JamesD · Aug 6, 2006

mysteryscribe said:
645 is probably pound for image size the worst.....

Now I have tried all day to get paper to shoot at iso 25... I got it twice but then it stopped working.

I preexposed it like this ( shot a piece of white paper five stops underexposed) then shot the paper neg at iso 25 Twice i got it dead on and three times 1/2 to 1 stop under exposed.

I also changed the chemical mixture and time. Doubled the concentration of the chemical and added 50 to the time. Neither seems to have hurt the paper negs Not sure how much they improved them either. After I rest I'm going back to give it one more try.

Good deal, Charlie. Pre-exposure is one of the things I'm going to try with my rolls. I'm writing an article for my website about the paper negative, and my experimental images are going to go as illustrations. So, we shall see. This is an area where guys like us can actually do some useful research and contribute to the photographic field, and I think that's exciting, yanno?

mysteryscribe · Aug 6, 2006

JamesD said:
Good deal, Charlie. Pre-exposure is one of the things I'm going to try with my rolls. I'm writing an article for my website about the paper negative, and my experimental images are going to go as illustrations. So, we shall see. This is an area where guys like us can actually do some useful research and contribute to the photographic field, and I think that's exciting, yanno?

Well i continued on and I think preexposure is a crock.... What I came up with as a guesstimate so far is that paper when expose in sunlight or mostly sunlight it iso 20 when exposed on a cloudy day or in light shade it is iso 10 when exposed under studio lights or in deep shade as in on my front porch it is iso 5.. it isnt the volume of light because a light meter measures that, it is the intensitiy of it which nothing can measure.

Which may account for why print paper reacts differently when exposed at different fstops on the enlarger regardless that they might have equal amounts of light.

anyway I made a quite satisfactory negative earlier outside at about iso 20 but couldnt do it again cause, the sun has been playing hide and seek all day. Under the studio lights the pre exposure had no effect whatsoever. You see what you get though. I am curious to see if it is the same...

JamesD · Aug 6, 2006

What kind of studio lights are you using? Color temperature will absolutely affect exposure, since VC papers are not sensitive to warmer colors, ie red, orange, and yellow. Household tungsten bulbs are notoriously lacking in greens and blues.

It's interesting, though, that exposures are longer than metered in shadows and when its overcast. Those types of light are generally quite blue-heavy I'll have to try it, as well, see if I can figure out a logical explanation.

Even so, you've found a technique that works, and that's excellent. Anyone else reading here who decides they want to try it will have that essential baseline starting point. Me, though, I wanna know why. I'm probably just too intellectual for my own good LOL.

mysteryscribe · Aug 6, 2006

shot under household lighting... trouble lights with 100 watt bulbs 5iso

paper negative of course

JamesD · Aug 13, 2006

I always do stupid things when I'm running experiments. Seriously, it never fails.

I loaded the "120" paper strip into the daylight tank and dumped in the Dektol. After the appointed time, I dumped it out and set to rinse. Then, I poured in the fixer--only, halfway through, I looked at the bottle, only to realize that I wasn't pouring in fixer, I was pouring in TMax.

So, what can you do? I poured the TMax back out and re-rinsed, then put in the fixer. This was an ISO determination test, so... The only salvageable thing I got from this test strip is the excess before the first frame. I now know exactly where to tape the paper to the 120 backing paper for correct positioning. That, at least is useful.

Now, to load up the second roll and try again....

JamesD · Aug 13, 2006

Okay, near as I can figure...

Using household tungsten lighting as the sole light source, Ilford MCIII RC paper can be rated at about ISO 3. ISO 2 if shadow detail is required.

This was the setup I used to arrive at this conclusion:

On a black cloth background, I set up an 18% gray card and a sheet of white paper. I aimed a 60-watt tungsten light bulb in a bowl reflector at it at a range of about two feet (60 cm). Incident light meter set at ISO 6 indicated an exposure of 1/8 seconds at f/2.8. I verified this with my SLR's TTL meter on the gray card. I shot five exposures, all at f/2.8: 1/8", 1/4", 1/2", 1/15", and 1/30". The exposure at 1/4" showed a nice density for the gray card, and at 1/2", the black background was beginning to show.

I processed the paper is Dektol 1+4 for 90 seconds at 75 degrees F (24 dec C). Normally, I use Dektol 1+5 for 120 seconds, but I elected to use my standard print process this time. At some point in the future, after I've established good baselines, I'll vary dilutions and development times.

Not the most scientific of tests, but I lack a densiometer, so it'll have to do. It should be accurate enough for general usage. Tomorrow, I'll spool up some more and run the same test outside in the sunlight. After that, I'll run the same set of tests using VC filters to check out contrast variations, since this is VC paper.

So, this can serve as a starting point for those interested in this process.