as i have been making long exposures again
here is another one on kodak tmax 400 film
this is a very long exposure, reversed negative tweeked levels and color removed and then tint added in photoshop
multi hour retina image
reversed tinted with photoshop
i had a mini project with cups and saucers and bowls and plates. all taken with a large camera on sheet film, processed in coffee and print developer .. scanned and colors added by me .. all sort of green and red, some better than others, all just fun and playing around.
the bottom cups and handles were not taken at the same time, and just sort of fit together and noticed after the fact …
hand colored
you read it right.
i made myself a close up attachment for my graflex slr. i did this a handful of years ago because i wanted to do macro work, or at least “magnified” photographs and couldn’t put a long lens on the camera because of bellows extension. so what did i do ?
i took one of the handful of old junk lenses i had lying around, and assembled something that i could stick in or on or over my camera. i have done this with a few different lenses i use with the slr, and it is fun. the depth of field is nearly gone so you have to be careful what you focus on. you also need to realize that depending on where you have the bellows cranked open to, your lens to subject distance will change, and the magnification will change as well … so the image might end up looking normal not magnified.
this is something i made exposures of last week and assembled as a tri chrome moments ago. i know the colors are a little weird, i kind of like this sort of charm, like a bad fotomat print 😉
because i had excessively expired film and developer i decided to stop down a little bit and make very long exposures.
i am not sure what F-number i stopped down to, my sunshade blocks the numbers, so i will just say 1/8 a turn ..
and the film was exposed for around 15seconds each exposure.
home made close up lens, expired film, and developer
my last entry i mentioned i had finished exposing about 36 sheets of film. it was more than that .. 4 bag-mags filled with a variety of tmx ( 100 ) tmy (400 ) and some mystery film that was bad enough that it never exposed. maybe 10 sheets were as clear as unexposed film when it came out of the developer. they were some of the first sheets i processed to test the developers. i increased the times and added a little more dektol to my mix. originally it was about 1:8 but i added so it was more like 1:6.
i hadn’t ever processed film in dektol before, only heard about it, and i have to say i was happy with the results. i have to fine tune my dilutions and times but for the most part everything looked good.
i exposed in a variety of different lighting conditions, room light, weak window light, bright light and i exposed my film well. sometimes developers need a little encouragement. i go against convention.
here are 2 from my 39 sheets.
dektol and sumatranol test
dektol test
about 15 years ago i used a can of what was called GAF UNIVERSAL DEVELOPER. it was propping up a broken window sash in a loft i was renting. it was an old can, a red can and it seemed to be full of developer powder. i mixed it as it said on the can and made 5 gallons of developer. it was a HOT summer that summer, and i had to do my best to use up the developer before it went bad in the summer heat i didn’t have AC, it was a brick building, and my space was under a black membrane roof, so i shot hundreds of rolls of film and processed+printed as often as i could, usually in the middle of the night because it was the coolest time of the day. the bricks retained heat, but that was OK at least the sun wasn’t up.
i had never used a universal developer before. i had only really used dektol, selectal (soft ) and sprint print developers. and for film, well, i had used sprint film developer ( which i still use on occasion ) DK50, and Tmax RS. i used the DK50 when i was the darkroom person for a portrait photographer in providence that was a few years before, and i had used tmax rs a, a few bottles worth, but i didn’t like it, not to mention it stained my film with a green metalic fog. so i used this GAF stuff. it said “1:6 films 6 minutes, 1:1, 1:2 prints” so i used it, and used it, and used it. and eventually ran out of developer. it made nice films that some told me were “snappy and crispa friend and printer told me about xtol soon after i ran out of the GAF stuff, but it wasn’t the same. it didn’t really give me contrast i liked, and was kind of BLAAAH. so i went back to sprint developer for a few years after that. i used to talk to jc welch at equinox photographic on the phone once in a while when i was buying oddball photo things and he suggested that the GAF universal was probably ansco130. its kind of a long story but agfa turned into agfa ansco after ww2, and eventually just ansco, and eventually gaf , so it seemed like it might be true. the problem is that the developer numbers were not the same between agfa, ansco-agfa, ansco and gaf, so it is still to this day a mystery what this developer might have been. i was happy to use ansco 130 though, and it became one of the only developers i would use for the next 10-15 years. i started small and only purchased a gallon at a time, so i could process film with it, and see how it seemed to work. the films looked good. i was still using the dilutions on the can of GAF UNIVERSAL because the ansco 130 packaging said nothing about being a film developer.
i wrote in a few threads on apug.org and maybe photo.net about it. and might have converted few people here and there.
ansco 130 is a simple formula but a great developer
water ( 750ml )
metol (2.2g )
sodium sulfite (50g )
hydroquinone (11g )
sodium carbonate (78g )
potassium bromide (5.5g )
glycin (11g )
water to make 1L
i’ve used it as a film developer lots of different ways … replenished it, used it as a stand and semi stand developer in a unicolor drum, in trays, in small tanks … it really never let me down. it does work with sheet film the best though. with roll film i have to dilute it instead of 1:6 usually to 1:10. and instead of 6 mins as recommended on the can of GAF i usually extend development to around 8-8.5 mins. years ago i was in touch with the good folks at the photo lab index ( morgan / morgan )
and when i asked them about the developer, they put me in touch with their chemist, a person by the name of jerry katz. jerry and i were going to do the same sort of work up with ansco 130 as he did with nearly ever developer in the index. together we were going to work on an article for publication with text and photographs of grain structures &c, but unfortunately jerry passed away a few months later, and i was never able to follow through with our plan.
a few photographs
35mm film ansco 130 1:6 @72ºF for 8mins
120 film, mamiya folder (post war), ansco 130 1:6-8mins
tmx, 4×5 sheet, 1:6 tray shuffle 8.5 mins,
currently i use ansco 130 to make prints, and i have reverted at least half way back to using it for films. for 7 long years, or maybe 8 years i converted my film processing to using caffenol c film developer. i have always put in a small amount – 15-20 cc – of stock ansco 130 developer to boost the contrast and smooth out the rough grainy patches i used to get by using straight caffenol c. but these days, instead of developing in straight ansco 130, or straight sumatranol 130 …
i developer for half the time in ansco ( so it is 4 mins ) agitate normally, and then 4 mins constant agitation in sumatranol 130 … it is my own version of a split developer, and it seems to work great
rolliecord + expired film + split develop ansco 130 + sumatranol 130
so far i have posted a handful of trichromes i have made but using digital technology
… that is making b/w images using a digital camera ( not film ) and assembling them
in photoshop. none of them have been using film which would just be a few added steps
exposing / processing and scanning .
the results are pretty much the same as with a digital camera, except you get the signature of the lens.
so, instead of my nice sharp nikon glass, i get soft german glass from my ancient 1930s rolliecord.
and instead of an instant image, you get a film made image processed in coffee and print developer .
grain, tonality film base, stuff people love to try to emulate with a variety of digital programs, instead of
just breaking down and exposing the film in the first place ( something that i think is kind of funny)>
thrichrome fun
trichrome fun
in addition to the 3 views 3 negatives approach i have fiddled around with just taking 1 negative scan
and making 3 duplicate files each with 2 color channels removed for the most part …
and i assemble the 3 black and white images in PS again to make a tri chrome
i did this and posted it on DPUG.org and someone mentioned that i was sort of just toning the
image using the color channels, which i had never thought of like that before …
trichrome fun
making trichrome color images is a bit addictive
it is so easy and fun with a digital camera, it almost makes you feel guilty how much effort
is spent when film or plates are used. and it makes you feel even more guilty and in awe of
people who spent a long long time mastering this process with color paper, or making dye transfer or gum prints.
i have film i exposed ( haven’t processed it yet, shame on me ! ) which will be almost as easy as using a digital camera
instead of files that are immediate, i’ll have film that i expose with the colored filters.
that’s about as difficult as i will let this game get, i won’t be making contact prints onto color paper,
or matrix sheets &c, i’ll just scan the negatives, get files to merge in photoshop which will take barely longer than it takes to scan the
files with a scanner.
the last few uploads were made in bright sunlight, or kitchen light ( bulb )
i took some portraits but since my subject wasn’t nailed+taped to the chair and the expression glued on their face
and it takes 3 separate exposures, well, my results were a bit sub-par … i have some ideas how to fix that …
these uploads are soft afternoon overcast light. 
can’t not take photographs of my favorite drink
went to the lighting supply guy today
east coast lighting, nice folks !
i got some gels to match the swatchbook numbers i had
and took a few more b/w images with my digital camera
i tried a few color ones as well, converted to greyscale but they didn’t work …
just a little fun before i start using film
decided to make my first tri color image today
this was made using a digital camera
but i plan on using up my film making color images from black and white
its a lot of fun
there are handfuls of tutorials on the web that show this
the main trick is the images have to be exactly the same size and align perfectly or it will look
a bad …
you take each image with a red green and blue filter
and drop them into a color file’s channel’s
and after each negative is dropped on ontop of the other
you have something that looks like this
( or better, this was taken with filters that didn’t cover the lens, of a terribly backlit subject )
