MorseBlog

As I started to write my post on Chromogenic film I realized I was digging deeper into the whole subject of printing C41 negatives and the reason why Chromogenic black and white film exists. It just so happens I had finished a couple of rolls of film in my Mamiya 645 Pro.  These rolls violated one of my rules of mixing color and black and white shooting in the same session. The great thing was I had some photos of the same subject taken back-to-back on both black and white film (Ilford HP5+) and color negative (Kodak Portra 400).  Here is the color version.  When I first got into film photography (over 10 years ago!) I preferred reversal (slide film) over color negative film. I had struggled to get good colors with scanned negative film. Eventually I learned enough to know how to get good color correction on color negative scans. After I came back to color negative f...

A while back I was reminded of chromogenic film such as Ilford's XP2 Super and Kodak's BW400CN No longer available) and Fuji Neopan 400CN. These are based on C41 color film principles except that they only have dyes for black rather than Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. They also lack the orange mask layer found in color c41 films. (Kodak retained the orange mask in their version intended to make black and white prints on color paper.) The rest are meant to be printed on black and white paper generally and so can offer C41 benefits with the ability to print on black and white paper.  Printing C41 color negatives on black and white paper can be done however the colors and mask limits the effectiveness of variable contrast filters. Because the film has color in it you get different amounts of contrast filtration inherent in the image negative colors. This ultimately influences the amount of contrast control achievable. Another limitation is that most black an...

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...

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...