Another Paper Negative

  I have made images of these two howitzers in Albuquerque's Plaza Vieja with several of my old cameras.  This picture is from the Bob Eggers pinhole camera loaded with enlarging paper.  The pinhole is the sharpest I have ever come across.  

Unfortunately, I can't seem to adapt my vision to the ultra-wide view produced by the short distance from the pinhole to the film plane, so I have had to crop the image a bit to get closer to what I was intending.  I may go back with my last film holder to see if I can do better with the framing.

The exposure of the paper in the. camera was. 1.5 minutes.  Processing was in HC-110b.  

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While. watching the weekly episode of New Mexico In Focus on Youtube I noticed over in the right column of the screen that there was a video about paper negatives using an old Kodak folding camera.  Of course, I had to watch it.

The presenter, Borut Peterlin, is an entertaining guy who seems to be quite a competent photographer.  He starts out with some useful information about what kind of enlarging paper he likes and points out that film developer performs better in making paper negatives because paper developer tends to produce images that are too contrasty.

Much of the rest of the presentation was rather general, providing information applicable to standard photography techniques rather than specifically to paper.  I suppose that is useful to someone who has not done much actual darkroom work.  For those with more experience, if you know what a good negative or positive looks like there will be little problem in recognizing those desirable qualities in paper negatives,  including appropriate contrast and good detail in both shadows and highlights.

One  important factor which was omitted in the presentation. was the brief pre-flashing of the paper which seems a pretty standard step by most paper negative producers. 

Peterlin's demonstration used a camera with a lens rather than a pinhole.  That meant that he had a lot more latitude in the kind of scenes that he could easily shoot.  His full-sun shots could be accomplished with an exposure of a couple of seconds, which meant that open shade shots would be possible with around a ten to twenty second exposure.  Shooting with a pinhole on paper under those conditions requires thirty to sixty times more exposure. 

Peterlin "scanned" his. paper negatives by hand-holding a digital camera and illuminating the negative with an. overhead light, the same as me.  His end results were quite comparable  to results one would get from shooting on film.

The Paper Alternative

 I mentioned in a recent blog post that I regretted not getting around to making pinhole photos in a large format.  A day later my friend, Bob Eggers, showed up at my place with a finely crafted pinhole camera he built which accepts 4x5 film holders.  

Bob had loaded a couple holders with pre-flashed printing paper normally used for making enlargements in the darkroom.  Behind the pinhole he had installed a yellow-green filter for the purpose of moderating the paper's tendency to produce overly contrasty images.  So, nothing left for me to do but go out and make the shots and then see what would turn up in the darkroom.  What could be simpler?

Well, making a couple shots in Old Town went well enough, but the long time that had gone by since I was last in a darkroom sabotaged the outcome.

I set up my trays with developer and fixer,  switched on a red light, opened the film holders and popped the exposed paper sheets into the developer.  At which point I realized that I had neglected to turn off the little bathroom nightlight !  

So a couple fogged negatives as a reward for my bumbling effort.

When I got up the next day I noticed that the morning light on the historic Henry Mann house across the street was very nice.  Trial Two went off with no self-inflicted injury this time.  

 

 

I was pleased with the outcome.  The one minute exposures in the camera seemed about right.

I used HC110, dilution B, for the developing. The negatives were dark and somewhat contrasty as expected, but they scanned pretty well using my iPhone.  I put the paper negative into the film holder from my old Epson flatbed scanner to hold it flat and lit it with a table lamp.  That worked well enough, but I also decided to try backlighting the negatives and did that by placing the holder on top of my large LED panel. 

The backlit image may be a tiny bit sharper, but I really saw very little difference from the overhead lamp light.

This was actually my second time for shooting on paper.  The first was about three years ago, also with Bob's considerable assistance.  That endeavor seemed a lot easier as I was using a No.3A Folding Pocket Kodak with an actual lens, a Rapid Rectilinear, which permitted an exposure of just two seconds at f/16.

I may not do much more with paper negatives, but this experience has been fun, and I certainly recommend giving it a try if you are looking for something out of the ordinary in your photographic journey.

San Ignacio

 I took two cameras to photograph the interesting little San Ignacio church about a mile from our home.

The No.3A Folding Pocket Kodak was again loaded with a sheet of postcard-size photo paper.  I made an eight second exposure at f64 under a lightly overcast sky.  I developed the paper negative in HC110b, stopped in some water with a little vinegar and fixed for about five minutes.

I also shot a roll of Fomapan 400 in my Bentzin Primar Folder.  I was pleased with the results from the film and the sharpness obtained from the Meyer Gorlitz Trioplan lens.  However, the open frame viewfinder on the folder will need some adjustment so that it more closely shows what will end up on the film.

Update

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I have made some small changes to the images in this post, increasing the contrast slightly.  I recently got my old Dell XP computer running again, so am getting back to using my preferred CS2 and Silverfast programs.  I have also made an effort to better match the screens on my Windows and MAC computers. 

The Rip Van Winkle of My Collection

This folding camera has been sitting on a shelf since it was given to me about fifteen years ago.  It is a No.3A Folding Pocket Kodak; this model was built from 1903 to 1915.

Although the covering over the aluminum body is in poor shape the bellows had only a couple small holes requiring repair.  The shutter works well and the lens, a Bausch & Lomb Rapid Rectilinear, is clear except for a little separation at the outer edge.

The swiveling reflex viewfinder flips the image horizontally, but it is big and bright compared to those on later Kodaks.

The "Pocket" part of the camera's name is a little over-optimistic as folded up it measures 9½ x 4¾ x 2 inches.

The Kodak Automatic Shutter is self cocking and features speeds from one second to 1/100 plus B and T; it is actuated by a lever or by a pneumatic bulb remote.  Aperture sizes using the Universal System are marked 4,8,16,32,64 and 128.  Those values translate to the current conventional f-stop values of 8,11,16,22,32,and 64.

The most immediate impediment to making pictures with a working 3A Kodak these days is the unavailability of 122 roll film which Kodak stopped making about fifty years ago.  It is possible to use simple spacers to fit still available 120 film, but that will not produce the 3¼×5½ inch postcard-size images the camera was designed for. I decided to go for the one-shot alternative of making paper negatives with a piece of photo paper cut to postcard size.

120 vs. 122

Since cutting of the light-sensitive photo paper and negative processing must be done in the dark, some sort of darkroom is a requisite.  The 4' x 4' floor space of my bathroom seemed not a good candidate, but fellow film photographer and craftsman extraordinaire, Bob Eggers, offered the use of his nicely equipped laundry/darkroom.

In fact, Bob took care of the paper cutting and negative processing, and I really only had to load the preflashed paper in the camera, set the aperture to 16, aim at my favorite subject and press the shutter release for about two seconds.

Voila !

Bob sandwiched the exposed paper with an unexposed piece in a contact frame and exposed it briefly under the light of his enlarger.  Then it was a nice experience to watch the image slowly appear in the developing tray, something I hadn't seen happen in fifty years.  The process was repeated on the spot to produce a positive pint.

Not my best portrait of Margaret, but a fine reawakening for my old 3A Kodak.

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Update

I turns out that a camera like my 3A Kodak was part of the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic.  The story was pieced together in the Flickr photostream of SBA73.