Ultrafine Ortho Lith Development
Having built an 8x10 camera I am now exploring making images. The great expense is the cost of film. Below are some examples...per sheet!
Ilford FP4+/FP5+ £5.20
Ilford Delta/Ortho+ £5.50
Foma 100 £1.90
Foma 200 £2.90
Fuji Provia £17.50 (Colour)
Ultrafine Ortho Lith £1.15
Ultrafine Continuous Tone £1.20
Some reading reveals that in addition to paper negatives (use of photo paper for negatives) another cheap alternative is ortho lith film. Like paper is it insensitive to red light and this renders the same problems/effects one sees with paper negatives like white skies as it is very blue sensitive and darkened reds. It is also comparably slow (hence ortho). It is also very contrasty being made to render high contrast text and graphics.
I had some 8x10 Ultrafine Ortho Lith I bought for other projects. I had to read up on how to tame the contrast and also needed to find a good ASA to use. Photo Warehouse says ASA 10 and there is very little published on the Ultrafine brand though much is available online about the Arista brand.
Basically one can buy a low contrast developer but I opted for one I had HC-110. First however some test exposures. I made the first at 1 stop intervals assuming ASA 8 bracketing the metered exposure. This I metered to f45 at 16". So the test was f45 at 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 seconds. I then developed it in Kodak HC-110 at 6ml syrup to 1000ml water (1+165). Very dilute developer slows the development and ortho film can be inspected under a red light. On Massive Dev Chart I found a formula for 1+200 HC-110 for Arista ortho film and it recommended 14 minutes. I watched the development progress under a safe light and it seemed to stop after 5 minutes. So I cut off a strip and used a water stop bath while I let the rest of the film develop for a full 10 minutes. The results are below. The portion I pulled first is on the right,
The development clearly continued. The negative was thin and had tone but looks contrasty still. I had taken a second image with metered exposure of 16" at f45 for my assumed ASA 8. This I developed in a fresh batch of developer for 15 minutes.
I got an image but it is really under exposed; probably by a full stop. That says I should consider it to be ASA 4 for this development. (The apparent light leak on the left I think is due to me opening the daylight tank before my water stop bath.) I may try and print this one next.
Ilford FP4+/FP5+ £5.20
Ilford Delta/Ortho+ £5.50
Foma 100 £1.90
Foma 200 £2.90
Fuji Provia £17.50 (Colour)
Ultrafine Ortho Lith £1.15
Ultrafine Continuous Tone £1.20
Some reading reveals that in addition to paper negatives (use of photo paper for negatives) another cheap alternative is ortho lith film. Like paper is it insensitive to red light and this renders the same problems/effects one sees with paper negatives like white skies as it is very blue sensitive and darkened reds. It is also comparably slow (hence ortho). It is also very contrasty being made to render high contrast text and graphics.
I had some 8x10 Ultrafine Ortho Lith I bought for other projects. I had to read up on how to tame the contrast and also needed to find a good ASA to use. Photo Warehouse says ASA 10 and there is very little published on the Ultrafine brand though much is available online about the Arista brand.
Basically one can buy a low contrast developer but I opted for one I had HC-110. First however some test exposures. I made the first at 1 stop intervals assuming ASA 8 bracketing the metered exposure. This I metered to f45 at 16". So the test was f45 at 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 seconds. I then developed it in Kodak HC-110 at 6ml syrup to 1000ml water (1+165). Very dilute developer slows the development and ortho film can be inspected under a red light. On Massive Dev Chart I found a formula for 1+200 HC-110 for Arista ortho film and it recommended 14 minutes. I watched the development progress under a safe light and it seemed to stop after 5 minutes. So I cut off a strip and used a water stop bath while I let the rest of the film develop for a full 10 minutes. The results are below. The portion I pulled first is on the right,
The development clearly continued. The negative was thin and had tone but looks contrasty still. I had taken a second image with metered exposure of 16" at f45 for my assumed ASA 8. This I developed in a fresh batch of developer for 15 minutes.
I got an image but it is really under exposed; probably by a full stop. That says I should consider it to be ASA 4 for this development. (The apparent light leak on the left I think is due to me opening the daylight tank before my water stop bath.) I may try and print this one next.
Comments