Polaroid Chocolate Technique ?

[C.A]

I've recently seen some wonderful prints with a strange tonal quality, I tracked it down to a process called Polaroid Chocolate. Does anyone know how the technique is done, all I can find it bits of info rather than the whole process. I was hoping to try it on a small scale (4x5) to see the effect before I go larger.

[Steve Hamley]

Sure, just search this forum on chocolate or polaroid chocolate.

http://largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/428381.html

http://largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/496647.html

AFAIK, you can't do it with 4x5 because it takes the neg from one type film and the receiver sheet from another, and processed in the 8x10 processor. Get ready for $20 a pop, because you buy 30 pieces and get 15 shots.

Steve

[Jonathan Brewer]

I've used this in 8x10, exposing the image w/809, and 'sandwiching' that with a 804 receiver sheet, and running that through the Polaroid processor. If memory serves my right, Bill Jefferson recommended a 15 sec. processing time.

Although this process is all over the place, particularly since I buy out of date stuff in 8x10, it's great and unique when it works, it might be different for somebody else, I find the 8x10 process similar to Polaroid sepia 56 in 4x5, I'd suggest trying the 56 first to see if that does anything for you. There are some examples somewhere on the net, you might ask Tracey Storer where.

[Tracy Storer]

I have posted on this a couple times here and there...here's a link to one such post.
(search here and at photo.net.....maybe at APUG as well)
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=004BLH&tag=
All images in John Casado's gallery page and one of the close up portraits in my gallery page on my website are also Chocolate.
Best,
Tracy Storer

[C.A]

Let me see if I've got the basic idea right, a black and white positive is projected onto colour polaroid through a Polaroid processor, would a Polaroid 10x8 model 81-02 do the job ?

[Jan Van Hove]

Not exactly...

You have to use an 8x10 positive and a negative in order to get the chocolate effect...
The chocolate comes from matching an 8x10 black and white negative with a color positive...

It needs polaroid material with separate positive and negatives, such as 8x10 and 20x24 systems, and it gets expensive very fast since you cannot do it the other way around (using color negatives and black and white positives...)...

So you expose the 8x10 B&W neg (like a 804) either through a view camera of a daylab, and you run it through a polaroid processor with an 8x10 color positive (a 809...)...

hope this helps...

PJ

[Jan Van Hove]

Sorry I might have read you wrong, here... The term "projected" is not really appropriate here, since it's a contact, pigment migration process...

PJ

[David A. Goldfarb]

According to Tracey's earlier posts, it's the other way around, Patrick--Color Neg (809) with a B&W positive sheet and developing pod (803 or 804).

By the way--check out Patrick's new gallery on the Polaroid website (no chocolates there, but still interesting)--

www.polaroid.com/global/detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441764315&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302023929&bmUID=1139845179774&bmLocale=en_US (http://www.polaroid.com/global/detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441764315&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302023929&bmUID=1139845179774&bmLocale=en_US)

[Jan Van Hove]

Thanks for the correction, David, and for the publicity! :)

I knew that it worked only in one direction, just got which half with which wrong...

PJ

[C.A]

So let me see if this is right, I contact a sheet of black and white positive film onto Polaroid colour 809 and then run it through the processor, which will give me a type of mono toned print?

[David A. Goldfarb]

It's not that you're "contact printing" where you expose a negative to a positive with light. What you're doing is more like cross processing.

Normally when you shoot 8x10" Polaroid, you put the negative half in a Polaroid filmholder, expose as you would normal film, and then you slide the positive receiving sheet into the holder (for the earlier type of holder, which serves both as a filmholder and loading tray for the processor). The positive side contains the developing chemicals in pods just like smaller format Polaroid. When you run it through the processor, it breaks the pods and spreads the chemicals, just like when you pull a sheet of Polaroid out of a 4x5" holder. So what you're doing with Polaroid chocolate is using a color negative and processing it in B&W chemistry. The color dyes developed in B&W chemistry migrate from the negative side to the positive side, and form the brown image on the positive receiving sheet.

To do this with 4x5" would involve disassembling color and B&W Polaroid sheet film in the dark and reassembling them in the same way. 8x10" is designed in such a way that the positive and negative sides are separate to begin with, so it's easy, but expensive, because you have to throw away the unused color positive and B&W negative.

[Jonathan Brewer]

809-color film.........................................804-B&W..........................................both have a negative that you expose the image w/in the camera, and both have a 'receiver sheet' that you sandwich together w/the negative and you run this 'sandwich' through the processor and then peel apart giving you a print from the receiver sheet.

Polaroid Chocalate- insert a 809 color negative in the polaroid back and expose in the camera................................then take a 804 B&W receiver sheet and then 'sandwich' the 809 color negative w/the 804 B&W receiver sheet together, and run that through the processor.

[C.A]

Thanks for everyone's help in discovering how to make a Polaroid chocolate, hope to give it a try soon. Wonder if Polaroid ever thought of actually producing a ready to use Pol choc.