MorseBlog

Marloes Sands I have read some very good advice when making a print by David Kachel . Make a range of exposures and contrasts beyond what you would expect to create an acceptable print. The idea is a corollary of learning from mistakes and serendipity. Sometimes you discover something you didn't understand about the negative or the image and this can take you down an entirely different path in the image. This is difficult though to follow through on as it sounds like a waste of time and material. The answer is somewhat determined by the purpose of the work on the spectrum from documentary to art. (If you are new to the darkroom like me I recommend David Kachel's monographs as they are instructive and insightful.) David insists this be used to get the local contrast right on the point or points of interest in the print. Towards this end I made some explorations on a couple of images from a short break on the Pembrokeshire coast late last year. The first is a rock on Mar...

My saga of printing Kodachrome processed as a black and white negative continues. I had posted my earlier efforts to process an old roll of exposed Kodachrome film here . I was stymied by the high orange content due to the orange filter base. Normal photographic paper is insensitive to red and it frustrated all attempts to print it. I thought that if I could find panchromatic paper I could have better results. In another post I reported on using some old panchromatic Kodak Panalure I bought online. Alas the paper was too fogged with age to give any satisfactory answer to my idea. I had found out about Ilford Digital Silver paper which is meant to be laser exposed and is panchromatic. It is only available in 100 ft to 500 ft  rolls. Not affordable for a little experimentation. Eventually I ran into a company in the US that sells boxes of 8x10 sheets of the stuff. It is aimed at pinhole camera users.  Photo Warehouse  sells a lot of old-school and different photographic...

The problem with using old photographic paper is it fogs with age. Fogging means that an unexposed paper when developed will not be white, instead it will be some shade of gray. This reduces contrast and makes for muddy indistinct prints. The degree of fogging depends on age and the paper. In this blog I have reported on a range of old papers I have tried. As a word of warning old papers are in general a false economy except perhaps as a first time learning tool. The results are almost always disappointing. The exception for me was some obscure Spanish a paper I found last year. I was interested in making large prints 16x20" but new paper is expensive. I took a chance on one box and got pretty good results. There is some light gray fogging in the white borders however. (This paper is graded not variable contrast.) In another post I experimented using Potassium Ferrocyanide (pot ferri) bleach to rescue some old and very fogged Agfa paper . This was met with some success but it w...

Recently my wife's workplace was getting rid of some old darkroom equipment and offered it up to anyone who would cart it away. I told her I was interested but someone beat us to it. However for some reason they declined to take it in the end. I suspect it was due to the size of it. I call it 'The Beast'. For the last year I have been in possession of some of my grandfather's (he was called Cushy short for Cushman) 4x5 negatives. He was an avid photographer and made a living from cameras and photography. I remember his interest while I was growing up and still have his Nikon F. He is part of the reason I took an interest in film photography back in 2009.As a result of this I wanted to print some of his negatives but I lacked a 4x5 enlarger. This is where The Beast comes in. So since last summer I have been perusing ebay looking for a 4x5 enlarger. They are not common, often expensive and very big. So finding one cheap less than £50 and close enough to pickup (shippi...

One can find old large format film on ebay for some pretty good prices (£4 -25 sheet 4x5). The question is, is it any good? I had accumulated some Plus-X (ASA 125, expired 1968) and some Tri-X (ASA 320 Expired 1985). I compare the Plus-X  to unexpired Fomapan 100 which is a very economical choice for B+W film. I find Fomapan to be a bit contrasty compared to Ilford Delta the only other large format film I have experience with. I ran this through my MPP MKIII large format. This is a camera I bid on but did not expect to win. I find it is rather intense and time consuming to use and as such is not good to use when you are out with others. Consequently it has seen limited use. The lens is a Fuji 210mm f5.6 which is a joy to use and reasonably priced. I took identical photos with each film to compare. I rated the Plus-X at 2 stops slower to compensate for age. This gave me ASA 30 for the Plus-X. I stop it right down to f64 so exposures got out to 1 second on the Plus-X in dayligh...

One of my pet peeves about shooting 35mm is that film is only available in 36 exposure rolls. While this is economical I seldom shoot an entire roll in a day out. This usually means it sits around in my camera before it gets developed. My normal medium format cameras have 12-16 exposures which is just about right for my style of shooting. So a while back I bought a bargain reloader and found a huge stash of old 35mm canisters as well. I also bought 17m of Ilford FP4+ 35mm film. This is the smallest quantity I could find. I started reloading 12 exposures per roll. This works out as I expected and I get through a roll in a few hours out shooting. I get home and develop it the same day and 12 exposures fits in one scanning run. Very nice and a success from a use standpoint for me. 35mm now makes more sense for me. Of course this is not the most economical way forward as you use up 3 exposures for leaders on each end of the roll. So 6 wasted exposures for every 12 useful ones. In the fut...

To try out my  Minolta 16 camera (£5 on ebay). I bought some Russian (Soviet 1982) 16mm B+W film. The 65 number refers to the Soviet film speed which elsewhere on the box is translated to 80 ASA and 20 DIN. Russian 16mm film Loading the film onto old cartridges is simple enough in a changing bag after a little fumbling around. The first roll of film I exposed using a flash  on automatic mode with a speed of 100 (The Russian film is actually ASA 80). I also developed using semi-stand development with a solution of 1+100 Ilford LC29 developer. Stand for 30 Minutes, invert and stand for a another 30 minutes. Stop and fix per usual. The results were under exposed and grainy. The film had some fog as well. The scan below shows one result and this is after optimizing for levels in Photoshop. Stand Developed Russian 16mm scan. I thought the development was not good for this film and wanted to see where the film speed was best set for. I loaded and shot a new roll. This time...