Anyone out there with experience in using color print paper instead for film? A negative color picture without the orange mask should be easy to scan and the en d product could be a lambda or lightjet print. Searching the right filtration sh ouldn't be any hard to do. I think shooting a white cardboard and using the dark slide to form an eg. fourstepped greyscale would reveal any crossovers. I suppo se there could be a problem with too little contrast. Am I right?
there was a recent thread about this. most thought it was a bad idea if i remember correctly. color paper is slow and made for exposure with tungsten light. filtration might be hard to determine. unlike color film, color paper is not balanced box to box, so you would have to redetermine filtration with every new box, not just new emulsion. all in all it sounds like a lot of work.
Jan... The big problem I see with this strategy is the very poor resolving powers of paper. If you shot 8x10 paper and scanned it, the biggest print you could make on LJ or any printer is 8x10 without severely compromising image quality. Paper can resolve about 5 lpmm max, while color film is around 50 lpmm, to allow for a 10x enlargement factor. If your goal is reproducing the same image size you are shooting this should work but it still would not work as well as film in my opinion. As the previous poster mentioned, be prepared for some long exposure times... I hope these are not landscapes you are considering, its hard to keep the leaves still for 2 minutes!
I remember that polyester based glossy print material like Fujiflex and Ilfoflex should have a resolving power about 60 lpmm. I can't confirm it, but I have 8x10 contact prints from Portra 160 film on Ilfoflex, and with an 8X loupe it is possible to see the film grain. Just thought that paper could be a substitute for film, specially in ULF where color film availabity and costs are often hard to overcome. The filtration should be no bigger problem if you buy several boxes from the same batch. The speed is slow of course, but could be used in landscape and some still life works. Just thinking....
i would think that even if you had the same batch you would be lucky to match filtration well enough to not notice the difference. in my color printing experience i have been lucky to maintain constant filtration box to box even within batches. it's been my understanding the manufacturers do not make paper to the same tolerances as film. also, i would doubt any paper could acheive anything close to 60 lp/mm. paper negs seem to always look like paper negs, that is, nowhere near as sharp as film. i have never seen results from what you want to try, but i have heard the question many times. as always i could be very wrong. why not try it if you already have the materials? i'd like to hear what happens.
I've played around with this a bit and it does work, but you can't expect the results to be the same as from a neg film. paper is much slower, start with an iso of about 3. filter as if shooting a tungsten film in daylight to start. i think using a polyester base material is a good idea. if you are scanning these then some color correction can be handled in photoshop. Pinhole folks do this all the time and get some very interesting results. If you have access to an RA machine you can see whats happening pretty quickly. give it a shot and see what happens!
Gee, maybe I'm just dumb, but wouldn't it be easier to just shoot film and ENLARGE it??? Oh, no, I'm sorry, I forgot, we all have to go through twisted contortions to make sure we inject something digital in the process, whether it's higher quality or not. . ..)))
Jan - As usual, most replies are from people who haven't done it but want to warn you off because "in theory, it won't work." There was a similar post recently about using Ilfochrome in-camera and a similar bunch of non-empirical theorists chattered on about why it won't work. Turns out some people are (and have been for a while) doing exactly this with Ilfochrome, and getting some pretty nice results in the process. I queried Ilford about it recently and they sent me copies of some articles showing how it was done. When I have time I'm going to cut some 16x20 sheets to fit my holders and try it (and I won't ask anyone's opinion as to whether or not it "should" work before I do it). Anybody who's actually DONE it, I'll listen to very attentively. But ignore the armchair naysayers and see for yourself.
Fred Picker had to reply to so many similar letters (asking if this or that would "work") that he had a stamp made up. Whenever anyone wrote him regarding the possible results of some new process, all they received back was their original letter with big stamped letters across the bottom reading: TRY IT!
Good luck!
Bill: If colour paper only has a resolving power of 5 lppm, then how come the grain is clearly resolved in all the colour prints I've done? The dye clouds in the film are about 2 or 3 microns in size, and they're easily revealed in a 10x enlargement. This is at least 25 lppm by my calculation.
I've only exposed enough Ilfochrome in my 12x15" camera to know that it leaks light badly, but I have talked to several people who once had a friend who knew someone who had a dog which once peed against the tripod of a bloke who had tried it once with ok-ish results.
Papers expect a tungsten light source, so in daylight it is best to use an 85B filter, which has a small filter factor so it's not a big deal.
Negative papers expect an orange mask, but you can use a scrap bit of unexposed but developed film as a filter, or take a reading through such a scrap with a colour meter if you want to use filters with better optical characteristics. People quite often treat the in-camera paper as a negative, making contact prints onto another sheet so as to avoid mirror imaged text and faces in the final print. That way you can adjust for small colour casts and only need to get into the ballpark with the in-camera exposure. With negative printing papers you then have the orange mask problem all over again, but it's in the darkroom where it's easier to tame.
The biggest problem seems to be controlling contrast. Negative papers expect a low-contrast original, and a daylit scene will blow out highlights long before you've got anything in the shadows. Positive papers are better since they expect a higher contrast original, but the problem is still there to some extent and can't be worked around. Contact printing onto another sheet doubles the problems.
The end result has a definite look, which may or may not agree with what you want to convey, but I disagree with those who say that prints are inevitably soft. If you have a darkroom and a sheet film camera this is easy enough to try, so I'd say give it a go (and report back).
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