MorseBlog

In my last blog post I detailed spooling 35mm film onto 120 film backing paper to achieve a 5:1 aspect ratio panorama. In this one I used the same technique with 16mm film to get an even wider aspect ratio of 9:1. In this case I used some black and white movie film from Kodak called Double-X 7222. I used it in my Minolta spy camera which I discussed in a past post . It is a 200-250 ASA black and white film. I have a small spool of it in my freezer. I exposed it at 200 ASA (also bracket +/-1 stop but box speed seemed best.) I made some test exposures on a bittery cold and windy day. I decided to stay out of the wind and chose as a subject an old quarry wall. It was in a sheltered forested valley so wind was not an issue. I did find that it was getting quite dark. The light made focus difficult. I ended up metering between 3 and 5 Ev. This gave 1 minute at f32. I didn't have reciprocity data for this film so I used TMAX 100/400 values which indicated 1' 24".   I deve...

After a failed attempt to use old Russian 16mm film I decided to get new stock and after perusing ebay and reading up on B+W film the obvious choice was Kodak XX (Double X) 7222 16mm movie film. It  is a proper negative film and has a fan base that admires its speed (200 in Tungsten and 250 in daylight) even tones and low grain. 100 ft (a lifetime supply for my purposes, About 1300 photos.) set me back £42. The subclub  has tons of resources for these small cameras. The loading for Minolta cartridges is covered here . I loaded about 8 inches into one of my film cartridges and took some quick test photos with my Minolta 16PS. I shot the photos at ASA 200. I developed the film according to Massive Dev chart in my normal film developer Ilford LC29. The timing for this development was for ASA 250. For properly metered shots the negatives came out well balanced. Scanning 16mm is difficult as I don't have a proper holder and I could not locate the small glass plate I use for t...

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...

I have spent some time experimenting with old photographic papers. It is a strange preoccupation of mine many of whom would think of as a waste of time. Certainly the results are not as good in many cases as new fresh paper for conventional prints. There have been some exceptions for me though and I look forward to further exploiting some of the things I have seen on some old papers. I recently wrote of my disappointment in a box of unopened Panalure paper. And while an initial disappointment it did turn out to be a good Lumen paper with a nice lavender color before fixing and a retention of some nice salmon color after selenium toning and fixing. Examples can be seen below. Unfixed Panalure Selenium toned (1+19) and fixed Unfixed Panalure Selenium toned (1+19) and fixed I also experimented with using developer and fixer like paint or ink. While I wouldn't say these are art they represent ways to use paper for non-photographic uses. There is a rich history o...

Hmm interesting title. Some time back I outlined in a post ( here ) my attempts to develop an old roll of Kodachrome using black and white processing. While I got a few very interesting images when manipulated in Photoshop all attempts at making prints that measured up fell short. This was due to the orthochromatic nature of the paper and the fact that much of the negative was either yellow or orange which the paper is blind to. I concluded that I needed to find some panchromatic paper. Research revealed that Ilford makes panchromatic paper called Digital Silver for use with laser-based digital printing systems. It is unfortunately only available in 100ft (or longer) roll. Not exactly amateur friendly. However I recently learned that there were at one time other panchromatic papers made. They were aimed primarily at those that would want to make black and white prints from color negatives and render shades of red as something more than white. Unfortunately this stuff hasn't been...