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Another print in this series of digital images made into negatives for conventional silver gelatin prints. You can find earlier incarnations here ...  Blog Post Image This time I decided to experiment with a warmtone paper. The genesis of this was that I noted, and Andrew Sanderson master printer prints exclusively on Ilford Warmtone paper. I have a bias towards neutral tone papers and developer, and I typically use Ilford MGFB Classic with a very white baryta paper base or Ilford Art 300 paper with a cotton rage paper that is slightly warm in tone. I use Moersch ECO 4812 developer which is a neutral developer on these papers.  I do not know the reasons for Andrew Sandersons choice but there are some printers that prefer a slightly warm tone and will add a barely noticeable sepia tone to a finished print. It is also possible that it provides more opportunity for toning generally. So I thought why not?  I do not have a warmtone developer however so there is a limit at this...

Another print from this series that emphasizes negative space using film negatives created from a digital image.  I made a series of images on the same foggy morning on Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho. There was some ice on the lake and a shifting fog obscuring and revealing the far shore.  I find foggy images exceedingly difficult to print and there can be many interpretations of an image as a result. ( Here is an example of one such exploration of the range of a print's possibilities.) The difficulty stems from the lack of ability to manipulate the contrast using multi-grade paper. There is a limited contrast range achievable even from the highest contrast filter. The negative itself has a very compressed range of tone due to the subject matter. (This is perhaps where digital can excel however the limited range is inherent in the image and even digital can create visible quantization effects unless one is careful in post processing. ) There are other techniques to improve the con...

This is a series of prints made from my 'Lower Sand Creek in Winter ' project that I worked on last winter. The images were taken on my Fuji GFX 50s ii digital camera using a Fuji Acros film simulation. I also restricted the cropping to Xpan (65:24) aspect ratio and I used a Tokina 70-210mm f4 zoom lens on an Olympus mount for their 35mm cameras. I further twisted the methodology by making film negatives from these digital images. (A series of blog posts here ...) I made some conventional prints in the darkroom. Now I am making some lith prints from these negatives. Some of the images work better than others as is typical with lith printing.  For this project I broke out an old batch of obscure paper from Agfa called Rapidoprint. This paper was used in newsrooms to make fast prints on a special machine. It is a single weight paper and may have incorporated developer. I first used this paper in 2015 and though very fogged it did lith reasonably well. I am using Moersch EasyLith ...

I was reading Lafcadio Hearn and was recollecting back to one late night’s walk this past winter. The air was cold and dry and the sky cloudless and moonless with bright stars piercing the sky like bright shiny nail heads. Above me were the familiar shapes of Orion, The big dipper, Cassiopeia, Taurus, the Pleiades. These constellations sat lower on the horizon as I thought back to my younger days in Flagstaff and remembered looking at them on many a similar night so many years and miles away. In the moment I was struck with a sense of connectedness not just with my old hometown and my youth but with everything. It was as if my mind, for a moment, expanded and took in everything. Rather than being terrifying or overwhelming it was calming and satisfying. Then as quickly as it came in a few minutes the feeling was gone. I have returned to the same place at a similar time of night and gazed at those same heavens and have not felt moved in the same way. Still, I feel reassured that I can l...

On my pursuit of negative space images, I find these are hard to plan for and one must try and be alive to the idea when they happen. This one I captured on my regular winter walks through town. I was shooting in a black and white mindset with my Fuji GFX 50s ii digital camera set to a 65:19 aspect ratio. This is my favorite setup to use. Presetting the camera in this way mimics some of my film exploits and lets the mind settle on a certain style by removing choices. Fixing the aspect ratio forces a compositional dynamic that opens up possibilities for me as much as it forces a constraint. In this case the low cloud and fog between the screen of winter trees and the mountain created this veil of mystery and lets one's mind imagine the whole scene. The screen of trees provide some tonal weight to help ground the image.  I had this image converted to a 6x7 medium format negative using the services of Gammatech. This allows me to put it in my 4x5 enlarger. I set the condensers for the...

I received another set of negatives from Gammatech the other day. This time I I had the negatives made on 6x7 medium format film. I was partially following my reasoning from another post on the subject where I concluded that medium format would probably yield good images at a more reasonable cost than 4x5 film. Unfortunately, I opted for 6x7 as it maximized the fit of some Xpan (65:24) aspect ratio images but I continued this onto single 4:3 aspect ratio (native Fuji GFX ratio) images and of course I cannot fit these completely in my 6x6 enlarger.  I decided to make a couple of prints cropped square anyway. The print turned out pretty well.  I started with a square 8" x 8" crop from 9 1/2" x 12" Ilford MGFB Classic paper. For some reason that I don't recall I have two unopened 50 sheet boxes of the stuff. This gives generous 3/4" borders and a large blank border on the bottom which lends a kind of balance to the print. So, I retained this 3 1/4" botto...

I got to thinking about how to create images that incorporate this Japanese concept of 'Ma'. The idea that what isn’t visible is as important as what is. The Wikipedia entry for 'ma' gives this image by Hasegawa Tohaku as an example. It can be hard to find images that incorporate this idea so I thought how I could achieve this in the darkroom.  Pine Trees by Hasegawa Tohaku Inspiration for this process. I took a recent print... Example print of starting point. I had made and then exposed a fresh sheet of Ilford MGRC paper with this same image. I placed this exposed paper in a tray and added enough water to keep it just under the surface.  Next, I took a pipette and loaded it with about 5ml of developer (Moersch ECO 4812 1:10) and dribbled the developer over the exposed paper. In this first example I tended to focus on the first pass along the long central axis. One wants to be careful not to disturb the water bath too much as the objective is to keep the developer conce...

In this update I attempt to print a couple of the images from the composite negative I made with Gammatech. I will discuss the pitfalls and potential issues with this approach.  Eight 65:24 Images on one sheet of 4x5 film In the original post I made a composite 4x5 negative from 8 different 65:24 aspect ratio digital images from my Fuji GFXs ii camera. Each of these has the Fuji Acros film simulation applied as well as a 'strong small' grain simulation. Each image is virtually full resolution, being scaled from the native 8256 pixels width on the camera to 8192 pixels to fit two across on the film at the Gammatech full resolution (16,384 pixels). Each image is 58mm wide so could fit (just) in a 6x6 enlarger. Challenges with Multiple Images on Same Negative This many images on one negative while very efficient in terms of cost does present some challenges in the enlarger. There is not room in the 4x5 negative holder to center the desired image. This means I am printing off cente...

This is a continuation of a series of posts on making film negatives from digital files. (The previous post is here ... ) The purpose is to allow me to print the images in my darkroom. In summary, so far, the experience has been quite good.  My next print from film made from digital images uses the film made by Bayeaux in London. This was made on Kodak LVT equipment at RES40 or 40 dots per mm or 1016 dpi. I combined two images on a 4x5 image per their instructions. They returned 3 copies on an 8x10 sheet of film. No matter, I cut one copy away and loaded it into my 4x5 enlarger and started the process of making test prints. The negative is actually two images with a 65:24 aspect ratio. Image for Bayeaux Version I started at f22 as with the previous image and confirmed my suspicion that this negative was denser than the previous image and ended up at f16.  Soft Filter Test (#00) Hard Filter Test (#5) My first stab after basic test strips was soft filter at 11 seconds and a hard...

I am getting a lot of use out adapted Mamiya 645 lenses on my Fuji GFX 50s ii. I have considered getting into DSLR scanning for my film work. It is supposed to be better than a flatbed scanner and faster but I find that hard to believe. My understanding anyway is that it is best to have a true 1:1 macro lens. There are two choices for the Mamiya 645, the 120mm f4 and the 80mm f4 macro with extension tubes. The 120mm gets great ratings in terms of lens quality and the extra trouble of extension tubes ruled out the 80mm f4 lens. I may have some trouble with scanning as a longer lens which will mean my copy stand will have to rack up higher but not far as the minimum focus distance is about 16 inched (40cm).  Mamiya 645 120mm f4 Macro Lens The other factor I began to consider was that this could be a new general use lens. I already get a lot of use out of my 150mm f3.5 Mamiya lens. It is great for intimate landscape and can be coupled with a 2x teleconverter for a longer focal length....