Efke B & W Positive Paper

[alec4444]

Daniel - pretty nice shots! Did you shoot those in-camera, or were those done with B&W positives? Which positive paper did you use - RC or fiber?

This has some great implications for testing ULF lenses without burning up the more expensive film......


--A

[Andrew O'Neill]

Continuous tones are possible with an extreme low contrast developer such as LC-1B or LC-1. I use it when developing APHS copy film. You should try it with Efke B/W Positive paper.

[jnantz]

No I haven't! I've ready about flashing/pre-exposure for film and paper, but I've never really done it before. Next time I have a chance to shoot some of this paper, I'll give it a shot

i'm looking forward to your test-results

--john

[Scott-S]

Here is a picture I did with Efke Positive paper. Developed in Arista Cold Tone developer which was slightly diluted. This exposure was at night at F5.6 for 40 minutes

[gevalia]

I bought a few boxes in 4x5 and did a little testing. I rated it at 1.5 and developed it in Prescysol EF which is what I use for almost all my B&W film. It certainly is interesting and has a definite look to it. That being said, I have not shot any since.

[PaulRicciardi]

Personally I quite like the stuff, it's let me play around with my images more:

[Glenn Thoreson]

In reading all the responses to this, one thing struck me as odd. I am seeing development times that strike me as too long. This is paper probably similar to standard graded paper. 3 to 6 minutes would give you high contrast on regular graded paper, would it not? Higher than the grade rating, anyway. Seems awfully long, to me. Have you tried less time in the soup? I think the advice about using ripened Dektol is good. That and water bath development should turn out some nice prints. I use a mixture of old (ripened) Dektol and fresh to help warm up prints on Ilford Warm Tone Fiber that look too cool for the subject matter. It works better than adding Bromide sometimes.

[PaulRicciardi]

In reading all the responses to this, one thing struck me as odd. I am seeing development times that strike me as too long. This is paper probably similar to standard graded paper. 3 to 6 minutes would give you high contrast on regular graded paper, would it not? Higher than the grade rating, anyway. Seems awfully long, to me. Have you tried less time in the soup? I think the advice about using ripened Dektol is good. That and water bath development should turn out some nice prints. I use a mixture of old (ripened) Dektol and fresh to help warm up prints on Ilford Warm Tone Fiber that look too cool for the subject matter. It works better than adding Bromide sometimes.

Glenn, I never even bothered with paper developers as I figured there would be too much contrast

I just went straight to Diafine at the normal 3+3...works fine as you can see above

[Glenn Thoreson]

I would have never thought of Diafine for paper. I guess it's easy to get stuck in the rut of conventionality.

[PaulRicciardi]

I would have never thought of Diafine for paper. I guess it's easy to get stuck in the rut of conventionality.

It was kind of one of those "Hmmm what if...?" sort of moments

I had some Diafine kicking around along with Dektol, Rodinal, and D76. The Dektol was too contrasty for my tastes, Rodinal left this nice brown tint to the prints but the prints were severely underdeveloped...the brown print above was Rodinal followed by Diafine. D76 didn't really do much.

But the Diafine works a charm! I'm about to finish my first pack of 25 sheets (8x10) and from my limited experiences, it seems like development time is not an issue. The positive paper appears to react to Diafine the same way as film would-3 minutes A+B doesn't seem to be any better or worse than 6 minutes A+B.

The Diafine is working so far, and the positive paper has let me explore ideas of photography as a painting made with a camera. I've been pushing my work in a more abstract and pictorial direction and all of my prints/plates (tintypes) are 1 of 1. Thus, the positive paper is a very nice tool in this body of work.

I'm sure if you wanted to get super sharp, very realistic prints from the positive paper with a good range of tones Diafine could do it. Personally I'm not too interested in that sort of thing, been done before, but most large format photographers seem to be.