Thin Negatives
When my father was in hospital for open heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic I took out some time one afternoon to look around downtown Cleveland. I took the bus down and brought along my Gevabox 6x9 box camera. I had nice walk around took a number of photos. The Gevabox only has a couple of apertures and one shutter speed.
I found a mural on a building of a cowboy and cattle herd. I was across the street and the light was poor being in a shadow between buildings. After I developed the film in my hotel the negative was disappointingly thin. Indeed so thin as to almost not hold an image.
Here is scan of the negative. I know... not much to see here. .
I tried to print it but it was very difficult. Very little contrast it was a disaster.
Recently I was reminded in some reading about intensifying negatives, Now you can buy commercial intensifier based I think on Chromium and since I had none is why I hadn't tried it. However I learned there are other methods using Sulphide (Sepia) toner or Selenium which I do have. I so took my 1+3 selenium dilution and placed the negative into it. It darkened immediately. Still very thin but noticeably darker. I dried the negative and proceeded to print it. The results turned out quite good. I had to print with solely a #5 filter. The consequences of the poor exposure are evident as there is no more contrast to be had. The negative had to be extremely clean and dust free as any small spec showed readily. A scan of the resulting print is below.
I found a mural on a building of a cowboy and cattle herd. I was across the street and the light was poor being in a shadow between buildings. After I developed the film in my hotel the negative was disappointingly thin. Indeed so thin as to almost not hold an image.
Here is scan of the negative. I know... not much to see here. .
Recently I was reminded in some reading about intensifying negatives, Now you can buy commercial intensifier based I think on Chromium and since I had none is why I hadn't tried it. However I learned there are other methods using Sulphide (Sepia) toner or Selenium which I do have. I so took my 1+3 selenium dilution and placed the negative into it. It darkened immediately. Still very thin but noticeably darker. I dried the negative and proceeded to print it. The results turned out quite good. I had to print with solely a #5 filter. The consequences of the poor exposure are evident as there is no more contrast to be had. The negative had to be extremely clean and dust free as any small spec showed readily. A scan of the resulting print is below.
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