MorseBlog

No I'm not being redundant. Introduction I was experimenting with making contact prints for some masking I want to try. Along the way I wandered into using lith film and then got led to Lith paper developer as I tried to achieve more contrast. This gave me some interesting results in their own artist way. I ended up making a lith print on lith film. The tons are wonderful and I have always liked the way a transparency lies on a sheet of white paper and looks somehow very different than a print. I am not it will translate well online but here it is. I have tried to match the exposure and color from the original. f8 45 sec exposure I went for a extra stop of exposure and got this. This has lower contrast and greener color to it. f5.6 45 sec exposure Here they are all photographed together (daylight light source) along with a version developed on the lith film with Moersch Eco4812 conventional print developer on the left. Displaying Transparencies When displayi...

In the quest for more consistent 4x5 film development I have taken a few steps outlined in past articles. The next 'criticism' of might setup might be the use of a Cibchrome drum rotation system that only rotates in one direction. Looking at Jobo and other solutions I would like to target 25 RPM as a lower bound of speed and reverse every rotation or two. I timed the rotation unit and it already achieves the lower bound at 25 RPM. I looked at the power supply and confirmed this was a DC power supply (12v on the nameplate) so I knew I could control the direction with polarity. Next I opened the motor base by carefully prying it apart with a table knife. The two parts of the housing are held by interference fit of the 4 holes that hold the rods in place. Once inside I could measure the voltage and current (18v peak, 200mA peak). I also saw there was lots of room for electronics. My approach which is simple, but massive technological overkill, is to use a small Arduino Pr...

Probably the biggest hassle of printing on fiber-based paper is how to flatten a print. I went through this conundrum a number of years ago and settled on something that works for me. I started with an  8x10 version and then made a 12x16 version . This method was adopted by at least one commercial outfit Cahute who is doing portraits  (though I get flat prints in about a day not two). Cahute also uses two sheets of acrylic with the print clamped between them after drying for storage until they are mounted. This is a nice extra as despite the best efforts the differential absorption of moisture between the emulsion and the paper back means there is a tendency for the print to slightly curl over time. Without this technique I have not had a problem mounting the prints however. As for drying time I find that it usually takes an all day session before I have one print I am happy with. If I expect to have to dry more than one I make more setups like this. They are relativel...

Introduction In other posts I have documented my use of Cibachrome drums which are designed to develop 8x10 sheets of Cibachrome color print paper. Cibachrome has not been made since 2009 so these come up often. I also found the motor unit that rotates the drum. Cibachrome Drum  Drum with Motor Unit I originally bought this to develop Cibachrome from expired paper and chemicals ( See link here. ).  Eventually I made us of it to develop 8x10 film as a cheap developing tank. For 8x10 you roll the film up emulsion facing inside so that it lines the inside of the drum. This is done of course in complete darkness. The lid is then screwed on and after that the rest of the operations can happen in normal room light. The lid has a small reservoir that holds about 250 ml of chemistry. You fill the reservoir with the developer while the drum is upright. The the drum is laid on its side and rotated. (I would roll it along the kitchen countertop until I got the motor unit.) ...

Introduction This first section is meant as background to justify why I chose to do things the way I do. You can skip ahead to the developer mixing section to get to the gist of the article. In an earlier post I describe the re-purposing of Cibachrome drum s for 4x5 and 8x10 sheet film development. One-Shot Developer Part of that was my determination to use HC-110 developer as one-shot. I have come to understand that I am not a consistent enough user of film developer to keep bottles of it lying around. The result is that I worry about whether the developer is fresh.  I do not want to risk my images on possibly expired/old developer. You then get into the problem of tracking of how much film has been through the developer and possibly extending developing times depending on how much film has been through the developer. Eventually I realized there is a certain amount of developer that is used each time and so there isn’t really an idea of ‘saving developer’. This all lead m...

I while back as I headed deeper into committing to large format I was looking into a range of subjects and came upon staining developers. These developers not only reduce the silver ion to metallic silver but also incorporate a staining effect around the film grains. There are claims of high accutance and some swear by the effect the colored stain has on VC papers when printed from staining developers as the VC papers have spectral sensitivity. Better gradation of tones is one highlight of this. These developers started out based on pyrogallol back to 1851. There are a number of formulas available among them are Pyrocat-HD, ABC Pyro, Rollo Pyro, PMK, and WD2D+. A few articles here for the interested. 1) Introduction to Pyro Developers 2) Staining Developers  I went to my usual source for darkroom sorcery Wolfgang Moersch to see what he had to offer. He has Pyro 48, Finol, Tanol and Tanol speed. I decided Tanol looked best to try out first. (The new Pyro 48 looks interesting...

I have noticed a small trend of a couple folks I follow that are film users. They are moving more to digital. Steve O’nions here and here  discusses a partial switch over due to cost. Justin Lowery has a new project that he uses digital on. Neither of these are full conversions to digital and their choices are their choices. Driven in large part by cost though it is a concern. Fuji and Kodak have both put up their prices in the last year. Color has become much more expensive especially in large format. This lead me to contemplate if I should consider moving to digital for part of my work. It didn’t take long to realize how difficult this would be for me. I enjoy film for the same reasons many do. The slowness and deliberate nature. There is an aspect of connecting with my grandfather and my late brother who were avid photographers as well. However the thing I would miss the most is the tangible nature of film and the sense it has because of that as a craft. Now I don’t want to ...