polaroid

[JohanHB]

A beginner’s question. What is the quality of a negative from a Polaroid Type E55. Worth wile the money?

[Christian Olivet]

It is quite amazing, but there is no chance to control contrast like in regular black and white materials. It seems to respond like transparency materials, meaning that the latitude for exposure is small. Type 55 also gives you a very decent print.

[John D Gerndt]

If you do a search within this forum you'll find much information on the Type 55.

I have seen some absolutly beautiful prints from these delicate negatives. Even with their lack of lattitude, with practice you can determin from the paired print (which will look overexposed) how well the negative will print. This is a distinct advantage when the capture of the scene is of the utmost importance. Patience and practice will get you there.

Cheers

[Carl Schofield]

I'm also a large format newbie and Polaroid type 55 is all that I've been using so far. I scan the type 55 negs with an Epson 3200 flatbed and print to an Epson 4000. The negatives appear to have a very long tonal scale and hold shadow and highlight detail well without blocking or blowout. Here is one of my first attempts with this film on an outing in a local gorge:

The negative was scanned for a 16x20 inch print size at 360 dpi, but downsampled for presentation here. Exposure was 1 sec @ f/32 based on incident light metering and shot using a Tachihara 4x5 with a Rodenstock Sironar S 135mm lens. Relatively high contrast scene but highlight and shadow detail were both well preserved.