I'm still playing with paper negatives, the only problem is sky detail, is there a filter I can use to help this?
bob
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I'm still playing with paper negatives, the only problem is sky detail, is there a filter I can use to help this?
bob
Bob,
Paper, like older films, is not sensitive to red light. If you are using a VC paper for your shooting, you are, in essence, using orthochromatic material (i.e. sensitive to blue and green parts of the spectrum only). Take a look at photographs made from the turn of the last century and you will see similar skies to what you are getting.
The problem was so prevalent that many photographers shot negative of just sky and clouds and superimposed them on their landscape photos to avoid the usual blank-white skies that happen when ortho film is exposed correctly for the rest of the image. (That could be one solution for your problem...)
Kodak used to make a paper (Panalure) for printing color negatives in black-and-white that was more red-sensitive, but I believe that it has been discontinued.
On the upside, ortho materials give great shadow detail and wonderful rendition of foliage (I keep a no. 44 filter with me to turn my b&w film into "ortho" for just such uses).
Also, using filters not only won't help much as far as the sky is concerned, rather, if you are using yellow to red filters that block blue and/or green light, you will reduce your already slow exposure index to practically nothing, since you will be blocking most of the spectrum that your material is sensitive to. About the only filter I can think of that would work would be a green filter, that would block the blue portion to the spectrum, but allow the green through, which would also affect contrast if you are using a VC paper. I imagine you may also be able to use VC filters to control the contrast of your paper neg (the Zone System a la variable contrast filters.... maybe worth some experimenting!). As you move to higher contrast, you may get more sky detail, but, I imagine, not much more.
Hope this helps somewhat
Best,
Doremus Scudder
Hello! Oriental Seagull makes a panchromatic B&W paper designed to print B&W from color. The only problem is th elimited dynamic range if used as a negative, only 3 or 4 stops.
I'm experimenting with color paper. It seems to have about 5 stops. It can be developed easily at room temp. The problem is that all color papers have logos on the back, so they cannot be contact printed. They have to be scanned and converted to B&W in the computer, or scanned as a color negative. Best regards.
Michael A. Heald
I used the old Kodak Panalure for a couple of decades to make paper negatives. In the paper's final form, there were three contrast grades, the 'low' being quite qonderful for paper negs. The spectral response was pretty weird since it was not meant to 'see' the orange mask of a color negative.
In the last decade, after testing several papers, I have settled on Ilford Warm Tone Multigrade, shooting through a K-2 filter which not only brings detail in clouds but reduces the contrast immensely. Average bright daylight exposure is f/8 at 1 second.
Russ
Fantastic info, thanks Russ. I've begun making paper negs to use in an upcoming project and the "problem solving" had just begun. I found two old boxes of F2 Kodabromide paper and it had been working fine for still lifes, but daylight landscape was next on the testing... I felt to start a big project with a small quantity (less than 100 sheets) I'd be doomed to (probably get good some results, but) run out of film. This is a god send.
In your opinion or experience, would these negatives be suitable for printing on either salt-paper or albumen?
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Originally Posted by russyoung