Diffusion Transfer Printing ("Polaroid" peel-apart) recipes

alecrmyers said:

Really impressive. Really.

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Thank you. the images really remind me of tintypes.

really cool. thank you for posting all this info!

analogwisdom said:

This weekend I traveled to Seattle to attend a gallery event and demonstrate this process. I shot, processed, and gave away over 100 photos. It started off iffy with no transfer for a reason I'm not sure about, but I skipped a few social outings to lock in and figure it out. I had to switch back to Ilford paper for the negatives.

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It's so cool to see someone doing this type of photography at an event. Well done.

thinkbrown said:

It's so cool to see someone doing this type of photography at an event. Well done.

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Thank you! I would say I took about 60% of the people that got their photo taken into the Ilford darkroom tent to show them how it was processed as well. It was a lot of fun.

alecrmyers said:

Have you tried slowing the roller by hand to see if it improves your print density? What was the result?

It seems premature to go to a lot of trouble reengineering the drive when it's so trivially easy to verify if roller speed makes any difference.

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I tried this a while back, but sadly, the machine jitters (stops and go), there doesnt' seem to be enough torque at the slowest setting.

Analog, when you shoot ilford paper, what lighting are you using?
And congrats on the demonstration. Your work is excellent!
What chemical mixtures did you end up settling on?

Thanks to both of you!

Qebs said:

Analog, when you shoot ilford paper, what lighting are you using?
And congrats on the demonstration. Your work is excellent!
What chemical mixtures did you end up settling on?

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Thank you. The lighting from that shoot was a 4 light setup, with speedotron packs, a vflat reflector, and a catch light reflector for the eyes.

The paper used various heavy metal sulfides in silica hydrosol (Lead, Nickel, Copper, Zinc, Palladium), I didn't keep track which is which for the photos. The developer was extremely similar to the one you're using now, I believe.

Experiment with the levels of the various components, you'll eventually find a combo that works well for you.