I haven't had chance to mess much lately, so I've had nothing to post
And I still haven't done anything exciting, but I can offer a lesson to learn. If you've ever read anything on darkroom work, you'll probably have read that you should leave it a few minutes between putting the lights out and opening any light-sensitive materials. The rationale is pretty obvious - your eyes are adjusted to the bright light you've been in, so you won't notice small light leaks. I set my darkroom up a couple of years ago and have been pretty comfortable about how light-tight it generally is (not perfect, but never been a problem).
Anyway, I've just bought an old Olympus OM2 and took it out to run a test film through it. Suffice to say, I was eager to see the results, so I put the blinds up, opened the canister and started loading the reels (I'd got another film that needed doing as well) without the customary wait. Developed the film as normal and it comes out with a fairly heavy base fog. Oooops! The films should still be printable, might just lose a bit of contrast.
So the moral of the story is - don't get cocky! Best practice is there for a reason!
Monday, 19 September 2011
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Lantern Slides
Whilst on holiday earlier this year I went into a shop in Totnes where I found some lantern slides on sale. I bought a few, thinking it would be interesting to have a go at printing them.
Lantern slides are intended for projection and so are positive images. As such, they generally can't be printed directly (although Harman do make a direct positive paper). Since I have no regular need for positive prints, that isn't viable. So I'm going to need a negative.
Fortunately, I also shoot large format, so I have a supply of 5x4in sheet film so I can make an intermediate negative.
First step is to contact print the lantern slide onto the film:
Exposure was about 1s on Ilford FP4+, ISO 125 and developed in R09 oneshot, 1+25 for 9 mins @ 20C (68F). For the purposes of the photo above, I've used an existing negative and moved the enlarger head up so the picture is clearer. Since the structure of the slide means the emulsion won't quite contact the film, I stopped down to about f16 and focussed the enlarger as accurately as possible to collimate the light source as much as I could to minimise focus problems.
From this point on, it's simply a case of trimming the negs and printing as normal.
I think the waterfall has come out particularly well:
The focus isn't great here - not sure if this was my mistake or the original:
And the Greek temp I think was a bit thin to start with:
But not bad results really, give it was my first try at mak
Lantern slides are intended for projection and so are positive images. As such, they generally can't be printed directly (although Harman do make a direct positive paper). Since I have no regular need for positive prints, that isn't viable. So I'm going to need a negative.
Fortunately, I also shoot large format, so I have a supply of 5x4in sheet film so I can make an intermediate negative.
First step is to contact print the lantern slide onto the film:
Exposure was about 1s on Ilford FP4+, ISO 125 and developed in R09 oneshot, 1+25 for 9 mins @ 20C (68F). For the purposes of the photo above, I've used an existing negative and moved the enlarger head up so the picture is clearer. Since the structure of the slide means the emulsion won't quite contact the film, I stopped down to about f16 and focussed the enlarger as accurately as possible to collimate the light source as much as I could to minimise focus problems.
From this point on, it's simply a case of trimming the negs and printing as normal.
I think the waterfall has come out particularly well:
The focus isn't great here - not sure if this was my mistake or the original:
And the Greek temp I think was a bit thin to start with:
But not bad results really, give it was my first try at mak
Thursday, 28 July 2011
Digital Negatives
I've long been a fan of traditionally printed photos but don't always have a film camera with me. It seemed reasonable that you could produce negatives from digital photos. A quick Google search confirmed that people are really doing this, so I thought I'd have a go.
I found a useful howto here which is based around using GIMP, but with a focus around making cyanotype prints rather than silver prints. But it gave me a starting point.
As for the picture Steve Ellerton took a brilliant picture of the interior of Bath Abbey and with his permission I used this as a basis.
So the first step was to convert to negative and print onto acetate:
Which can then be contact printed - in this case onto Ilford Multigrade IV paper. I used the enlarger as a controlled source of light - exposure of about 3s @ f5.6:
The paper is then developed as normal with the following result:
I found the tonal range here to be rather lacking and the contrast quite flat. One piece of advice I gleaned from the cyanotype howto was using a red-toned negative rather than black. I thought I'd give it a go, reasoning that variable contrast papers are insensitive to red light and so the red light would expose the paper less than the dim white light that is passed by the black negative. As was recommended, I tried hue 15, saturation 100 and lightness 30:
Producing a much better print:
final tweak was to print at a higher contrast:
The one big problem I found it the surface on the inkjettable acetate caused a pattern to print through onto the final image. I may have to look into to different acetates to see if they have a less profound surface effect. If anyone has tried this and has any suggestions, I'm all ears!
I found a useful howto here which is based around using GIMP, but with a focus around making cyanotype prints rather than silver prints. But it gave me a starting point.
As for the picture Steve Ellerton took a brilliant picture of the interior of Bath Abbey and with his permission I used this as a basis.
So the first step was to convert to negative and print onto acetate:
The paper is then developed as normal with the following result:
I found the tonal range here to be rather lacking and the contrast quite flat. One piece of advice I gleaned from the cyanotype howto was using a red-toned negative rather than black. I thought I'd give it a go, reasoning that variable contrast papers are insensitive to red light and so the red light would expose the paper less than the dim white light that is passed by the black negative. As was recommended, I tried hue 15, saturation 100 and lightness 30:
Producing a much better print:
final tweak was to print at a higher contrast:
The one big problem I found it the surface on the inkjettable acetate caused a pattern to print through onto the final image. I may have to look into to different acetates to see if they have a less profound surface effect. If anyone has tried this and has any suggestions, I'm all ears!
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