Autochromes...

J 3 · Aug 20, 2020

VesaL said:
Yes indeed. I have used kids night vision goggles with success in the darkroom when coating materials.

Is there any special trick needed to keep light from the the eye cups leaking out, bouncing around, and fogging the emulsion ?

Donald Qualls · Aug 20, 2020

J 3 said:
Is there any special trick needed to keep light from the the eye cups leaking out, bouncing around, and fogging the emulsion ?

Don't try this if you wear glasses and the goggles don't have diopter adjustment...

ThePhotoChemist · Aug 21, 2020

J 3 said:
Is there any special trick needed to keep light from the the eye cups leaking out, bouncing around, and fogging the emulsion ?

I'm not really sure. I bought a pair two years ago for working with panchromatic materials, but I found it too uncomfortable and disorienting to work with, and the screen was quite bright so I worried about light leaking out and fogging the plates.

Even with me slowly creeping up my emulsion speed with sulfur/golden sensitizers, I still get absolutely zero fog on the plates when using a dim red light. And even if the plates get a small amount of fog, it gets bleached away in the dichromate bath anyway so it's ultimately not even noticeable. Personally, I wouldn't worry about getting night vision goggles until you actually need them.

ThePhotoChemist · Jun 7, 2021

Woah, hey, I'm still making these! I took a bit of a break over the winter, but now I'm getting back into the swing of things and experimenting again!

Here are some of my first real successes with fine-grained screen plates. I'm struggling a bit to get to the same degree of color saturation as my large-grained plates, but I'm making some progress. In the meantime, these look much better than any other small-grained plate I've made yet! The "resolution" of these is right on par with original Lumière plates. The speed... is still quite lacking. About 2 minute exposure with all of these, with a 50Y filer over the lens!

Donald Qualls · Jun 7, 2021

What underlying emulsion are you using? The screen plate is surely costing you three stops or so, and then the 50Y probably another stop. That brings ISO 100 film down to about EI 6 (give or take a stop) -- which should still be hand holdable in full sun, even at f/8 or so...

ThePhotoChemist · Jun 7, 2021

I make my emulsions from scratch, and it's a custom recipe. They're usually about ISO 1 or so, though I don't actually know what it is because I don't shoot it as conventional negatives. This batch came out really slow though, for some reason. Usually an unfiltered plate takes about 5-10 seconds to expose, but these are closer to 25s right now.

It is a bit crazy though. In between using an AmBr and Steigmann's solution, I'm really not seeing nearly as much of an increase in speed as I would have thought. I'm not sure if I'm seeing any at all, tbh.

kb3lms · Jun 7, 2021

Very pretty! I've been out of the emulsion business for a while but I've had luck with Sodium Thiocyanate as a sensitizer. Steigman's solution never gave much of a result for anything I tried.

Minolta93 · Jun 7, 2021

I haven't completely read through this thread, but would simply using a high speed existing film stock solve the issues related to the emulsion itself? Would it be possible to tape or otherwise secure something like an 800ISO sheet film to the glass plate?

NedL · Jun 7, 2021

I love seeing these and those look great. Thanks for continuing to post here. It's really impressive that you had the patience and perseverance to pull this off so beautifully.

removed account4 · Jun 8, 2021

thanks for letting us feast our eyes on your successes !
these are wonderful
John

Andrew O'Neill · Jun 8, 2021

Amazing results!

ThePhotoChemist · Jun 16, 2021

Thanks for the kind words, everyone! Here's a few more from this past Sunday. I backed it off to a 40Y filter, which seemed to balance the colors out a lot better. The plate with the purple flowers was exposed pretty well, and seems to have the most vivid colors yet. The others were a bit underexposed and needed some reduction, but I'm happy with how those turned out too. Now that I'm seeing decent colors are obtainable, I'll probably really start cranking out more fine-grained screens to play with.

Bronson Dugnutt · Jun 16, 2021

ThePhotoChemist · Sep 9, 2021

Some more plates! These were all shot at f/5.6, 2min exposure, with a 50Y filter. I only made a small run of experimental small-grained screens, and I'm gearing up to really start cranking these out. After an alcohol wash, the starch mix looks quite a bit more... yellow now. But still close to neutral gray. I'm hoping this naturally decreases oversensitivity to blue, so I can back off the yellow filtration and decrease the exposure time.

Major props to the subjects who were willing to hold still for two minutes!

Andrew O'Neill · Sep 9, 2021

These are so cool!

LeoniD · Jan 27, 2022

Minolta93 said:
I haven't completely read through this thread, but would simply using a high speed existing film stock solve the issues related to the emulsion itself? Would it be possible to tape or otherwise secure something like an 800ISO sheet film to the glass plate?

Second this.
Also, would it be possible to dye the starch cyan, magenta and yellow, make a gelatine emulsion with it and coat on top of an existing negative film to get a color negative?

Craig · Jan 27, 2022

Ilford also makes coated glass plates and sell bottles of emulsion, maybe worth a conversation with them about making higher speed plates for you?

ThePhotoChemist · Jan 31, 2022

LeoniD said:
Second this.
Also, would it be possible to dye the starch cyan, magenta and yellow, make a gelatine emulsion with it and coat on top of an existing negative film to get a color negative?

Are you saying you would have the starch present during the exposure, and then separated before processing? You would still want to go with RGB since you're dealing with transmitted light, and not reflected.

Craig said:
Ilford also makes coated glass plates and sell bottles of emulsion, maybe worth a conversation with them about making higher speed plates for you?

That's certainly an option that would probably work very well. However personally, it's a lot more fun to me to have full control over the process from start to finish. I'll never feel like I've mastered autochromes if I'm outsourcing 50% of the work to someone else.

My current goal is still to dedicate some time to increasing emulsion speed, though I haven't had much time to do this in the last couple of months. I'm nearly finished redoing my entire darkroom and labspace, so hopefully I will be able to jump into that again soon!

I also need to rethink much of my methodology with the "first varnish". A number of recent screens I've made have experienced large failures, with the starch/second varnish spontaneously peeling off. The first varnish seems to lose its adhesion to the glass, creating a sort of foggy looking artifact. This doesn't actually affect exposure or viewing much at all luckily, but this behavior isn't present in any of the original Lumière plates. I'm still not entirely sure what the cause is exactly. It's not a showstopper by any means, but it is annoying to deal with.

Nodda Duma · Jan 31, 2022

Besides, there’s someone closer to home than Ilford if he needs help with emulsions. Not that he does… Jon knows what he’s doing!

-Jason

Andrew O'Neill · Jan 31, 2022

Amazing results!

Kino · Jan 31, 2022

Very impressive!

NedL · Jan 31, 2022

Really enjoy seeing these. Thanks for posting!

Nitrous · Mar 15, 2022

Photo Engineer said:
Donald, FYI, I have tried coating emulsion on ink jet paper and am going to try to coat on ink jet film to test your hypothesis. The same idea has not escaped me.

GMTA!

Anyhow, the coatings on baryta / mordant work well, but on micro ceramic the results are crappy. Some mordants develop a dark orange stain as well. So, what you describe is theoretically possible, but may be difficult due to the sensitivity of the emulsion to the 'digital' chemistry.

I'm working on the idea though. Keep in touch. Maybe there is a viable route to Autochromes by another methodology - a fusion of techniques unavailable 100 years ago.

PE

This is an old thread but I wonder if any progress was made using ink jet technology? One thought I had was to make the high resolution color grid on an acetate, in the light and put the emulsion on afterward in the dark. Obviously, the film would have to be exposed through the base.
The emulsion would also potentially protect the matrix layer. A dye sub printer with clear overcoat feature just might do the trick...
Doug

Ranieri · Apr 5, 2022

Good morning, let me narrate my experience, not knowing anything about this thread I decided to try autochrome myself. I printed a cyan/magenta/yellow dot matrix on transparent adhesive paper and put it on the base side of a small strip of fomapan 100. I then shot it "redscaled". Once developed I scanned the negative but there wasn't any significant colour data although the colour printed on the adhesive paper remained unchanged.
p.s. the adhesive paper has never been removed of course.
Ranieri

Donald Qualls · Apr 5, 2022

I presume there was a negative B&W image on the film? There's somewhere between 3 and 5 stops of filtration due to antihalation layer when shooting modern films through the base. At least 35 mm Fomapan doesn't have the deep blue/green base dye found in 120 and large format stocks, as that would obviously mess up your color rendition beyond repair...

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