Paper negatives

[Fr. Mark]

Get pearl paper. It's really obvious under red LED lights.

[photonsoup]

Ha,I put a some in backwards. I told my friends it was a soft focus experiment! They thought that was cool, never did fess up till now.

[Reinhold Schable]

Touch a corner lightly with the tongue.
It'll be obvious which is which...

Reinhold

[tonyowen]

if in doubt, wet your lips and then hold the paper between your lips for a couple of seconds - then open your mouth.... The emulsion side will stick to your lip...

UGH

If you are loading in a darkroom, you can see which side has the emulsion. If you are using glossy paper, it's the shiny side.I wouldn't stick photo paper in my mouth, though. Lick your finger and touch the paper by the corner. Sticky side wins.

Touch a corner lightly with the tongue. It'll be obvious which is which...Reinhold

Get pearl paper. It's really obvious under red LED lights.

I agree with the 'wet finger' test.
I was given the paper, I'm not certain that what is in the boxes matches the box descriptions

Hey Tony, I'd say you are totally wrong. FB curves to the emulsion side, RC curves to the non-emulsion side.

Thanks for info - I've been given both FB and RC paper.
Googling "which is the emulsion side for multigrade paper" only yields the concave answer.
I'm surprised that, to me, such basic information is not on the leaflets in the boxes or on the Ilford website.
>>>>>
Thank you all for your comments
regards
Tony

[Roger Cole]

Multigrade versus graded isn't really important. What makes the difference here is the paper surface. Glossy, both RC and FB, are very obvious under a safelight and the RC is obvious in complete darkness by feel. RC pearl/satin/oyster and such are pretty obvious under safelight too. The only ones in my experience that aren't are some FB matte and semi-matte. The only paper I ever really had an issue with was the cotton stuff Freestyle had Efke coat for them. I forget what they called it though I still have a little in the darkroom. Nice paper for some images, shame about Efke, but it was like heavy weight newsprint on both sides. I resorted to small test exposures under the enlarger then remembering which side faced which way in the package.

[jnantz]

knowing which side is up is why i like to coat my own. it is easy
and if you can mark the non-emulsion side with a pencil or whatever.
it is easy to see which side is emulsion by the sheen too. good luck with
your paper trials !

[Wayne]

Take a piece of unexposed paper out in the light. Look at both sides. Feel both sides with your fingers. They feel different even with dry fingers. Close your eyes and practice a few times. Now you've got it.

[Rory_5244]

Sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread which allowed me to muddle through taking my first paper negative pic. I don't have a safelight so I had to guess the development. I used 4x5 Ilford MGIV RC paper exposed for ISO 3 with a yellow filter. Developed in HC-110 1:9 for 3 minutes. Scanned via transparency adapter in the scanner like a real negative. 'Toned' in Silver Efex. Oh, the pic looked overexposed in PS when I inverted. I presume I rated the paper too low at ISO 3? Would that be correct? I used levels to fix it.

[JoeV]

Sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread which allowed me to muddle through taking my first paper negative pic. I don't have a safelight so I had to guess the development. I used 4x5 Ilford MGIV RC paper exposed for ISO 3 with a yellow filter. Developed in HC-110 1:9 for 3 minutes. Scanned via transparency adapter in the scanner like a real negative. 'Toned' in Silver Efex. Oh, the pic looked overexposed in PS when I inverted. I presume I rated the paper too low at ISO 3? Would that be correct? I used levels to fix it.

Interesting image, well done.

For scanning reflective media like paper negatives it's much better to scan as reflective than as a transparent/translucent "film," because you won't get the internal fiber structure of the paper in the image - unless that's what you specifically want.

~Joe

[Rory_5244]

Thanks, Joe.