MorseBlog

I have been playing around with Direct Positive Paper (DPP) since Ilford has restarted production. I wanted to see how the paper would work for color slide printing. I started with a slide I used in a earlier post . The original slide I started with a test strip as normal. I had to remind myself that a dark section required a longer exposure which is the opposite from normal paper. I settled on f11 at 22 seconds for the following result. I developed and fixed the print normally as any other print. first print f11 22 seconds One can see the reputation of the paper being very contrasty. The whites are blown out and the shadows are blocked. Because of the red color in the slide I thought that the lack of red sensitivity was part of the reason for some of the contrast problems. Red would appear as blacker. I reckoned that a magenta filter might shift the white sandstone darker. I used a .50 cibachrome magenta filter and increased  the exposure a full stop to 45 seconds. T...

Recently Ilford re-introduced its direct positive paper offerings. After some difficulties in its Swiss plant they apparently recreated the formula and re-started production in Mobberley England. It is available in 4x5 through to 16x20 sizes on doubleweight FB paper. Imago also makes a similar product in RC base. It is considerably more expense it seems at 100 euros vs 75 euros for 25 sheets of 8x10 at the Macodirect website . I bought a box of 8x10 paper from Silverprint ad it arrived yesterday. I cut and trimmed the paper to fit my much underused 4x5 MPP view camera. This I did under my normal red safelight. It isn't too easy as 4x5 film is slightly smaller than 4"x5", the paper is thicker, and has a distinct curl that interferes with the dark slide. This was especially true when I tried putting the dark slide back after my first exposure. It meant I had to take the camera back to my darkroom and remove it under a safelight. I took a single scene in my living room w...