Thursday, February 2, 2012

Contact printing

It was suggested to me by Kevin that as I don't have a 8X10 negative scanner, I should put the negative on a piece of photo paper and expose that. BRILLIANT!! I actually rushed home to do this and exposed one piece but as my dark room was being used as a bedroom, I had to leave it and go to bed myself. The next night, David was awake and he helped me expose a second paper, this time using his flash at 1/1 power. I set about developing the papers. This required me to look at paper developing techniques. As I didn't have any Paper developer, and no acceptable alternative my thoughts turned to my always reliable caffenol. Looking up a paper caffenol recipe, I was delighted to find one. The link to the original post is here The recipe was by József and I have summarised it below. 900ml water (József says distilled but I didn't worry) 12tsp instant coffee 6tsp washing soda 3tsp asorbic acid Water temp 20c Develop for 2 minutes (YES ONLY 2 MINUTES) for the 1st paper, add 30secs for every additional paper ( I made 900ml but you only need 250ml tubes of 8X10 not trays so only used fresh for each paper) Throw out your caffenol that has been used for 6-8 papers when the development times exceed 4minutes Agitate continuously. (I use tubes so spin continuously) Wash and fix as usual. I fixed for 3-5 minutes. My first two papers were over exposed. Fully black but inspection of the paper revealed that the developer worked fins and it was only over exposure. So David insisted we try again, I loaded another paper and placed the 8X10 on top. David flashed my paper at 1/128th power. And I developed exactly as above, alas I had only wet tubes.. BUT this time we got an image.!!!! It was now 1 am so we hung it to dry and went to bed. Next experiment will be at 1/64th power. Experiments So a work in progress but this is the first time I have seen David so interested in my film play. So YAY!!!

1 comment:

  1. Yay is right! Please update this post with the 1/64 results!

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