MorseBlog

I moved on from my previous post to try some more ideas I developed as I worked on those prints. I decided to try and make a higher contrast film and a toned film. New Film Versions Higher Contrast: Expose f8 11 seconds full development 3 mins Eco 4812 Bleach 1+10 for 5 minutes. Fix 1 minute.  Selenium toned: Expose f8 11 seconds develop 45 seconds. Selenium 1+3 tone about 1 minute for purple tone.  The trouble I soon find is that I have a lot of combinations that are possible now as I can mix and match papers and films. Below is the comparison matrix. The bottom row is the same from the previous blog post. A map is offered below to help describe what the variations are.  Summary Table Legend for Image Matrix Thoughts on the Results A couple of things come out from this. 1) The higher contrast film allows more of the underlying image tone through. 2) A toned mask tends to dominate the overall color. This is in part because the negative is high contrast and as such the ma...

Introduction I have long been a fan of split filter printing where you expose the paper with a low contrast (soft) filter and then a high contrast (hard) filter. The balance of exposure times give the degree of contrast one wants. I find it a more intuitive and easier system than hunting for the right filter value. It also allows more dodging and burning control.  Recently I have been exploring toning and there is a split idea here too. Toning with two different toners to change the warmth and character of the image.  Thirdly a few months ago I stumbled upon a technique I called Lith-Lith where I developed a Ortho Litho film with lith developer aiming to get a higher contrast image. This failed, however I did get a sepia colored transparency that I mounted in front of some aluminum foil to produce a spectacular result.  This led me to think about how to combine these techniques. I had run out of my original Orth Litho film from Photowarehouse in the US and with no prosp...