Dupe-it-yourself

This may be helpful for those interested in duplicating transparencies...

Always a fan of grain, when Photoshop started to become the norm I wanted to develop something all-analog; I settled on 35mm 320T tungsten, pushed three stops, using a multi-exposure process to get random "analog" shadows and blends that went beyond the control and perfection of Photoshop.

I learned a tremendous amount from this project about partnering with your materials (or lenses, light and color) rather than having absolute control, and I learned huge lessons about leaving space in your plans for creative surprises - gifts-from-the-gods kind of thing. But anyway, I wanted a way to show those images to clients in the mounted transparencies and lightbox days.

I asked the lab if they could dupe on 4x5 Velvia or EPP for even more kick from the colors. They said it was impossible and wouldn't work, and they weren't willing to try (and this was a big pro lab in Dallas!). "Impossible" always gets my brain going though...

My enlarger at the time was a lowly Printmaker 35 with the stock Beseler B&W lens. But I replaced the condenser door with a black cardboard sheet which had a $5 hot shoe flash gaff taped to it (daylight, get it?). Using a 4x5 polaroid back (remember 4x5 polaroid??) I was able to calculate exposure and lighting, and I used ND and color gels in the filter slot to control everything. I managed to create a large portfolio of 4x5 and 8x10 transparencies, duped to Velvia, EPP, and even 64T sheet film.

I suppose these days one would have to make do with Fuji's 100c pack polaroid and do some exposure compensation tests (but even in the days of pro polaroid, there was always compensation one had to memorize on set). Here's a few scans:

Thank you for this - I was wondering if an analogue equivalent to a digital negative could be made (albeit a positive) and what might be involved there.
Did you process the negatives yourself?

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I remember years ago when I had some 8x10 Fuji CDU dupe film and made enlarged transparencies from my 6x7 chromes. That stuff was beautiful.

analoguey said:

Thank you for this - I was wondering if an analogue equivalent to a digital negative could be made (albeit a positive) and what might be involved there.
Did you process the negatives yourself?

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I'm a little unclear on the question, but if you're asking about how to make traditional enlarged negatives (negative to negative), there's a sticky thread on that in the Contact Printing forum--

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Sorry, David, I wasnt clear on it. Here I was talking of making positives on film itself.

That negative to negative is very interesting, I will definitely look it up. It would be like enlarging a 35mm negative to a 8x10 then contact printing, isnt it? That sounds cool too!
I'll look up the thread.

Edit - thats a thread from 2004! I didnt even have a phone camera then! Moretsen's approach is interesting.

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Yes, this was a pos-to-pos process; E6-style slides to E6-style sheet film, basically a transparency-dupe-enlargement??

@Analoguey - the 35mm film was processed at the lab; these were 3 stop pushes, and bracketed 1/3 stop, so snip tests were done on all of this work. I used 64t polaroid when shooting the 35mm, and then calculated exposure for the push based on the 'roids - I think I had a lot of notes on that. (Jeez - can you imagine a time when there was 64T POLAROID???)

The scans above were Heidelberg drum scans I used for print marketing - all these were 4x5's except the shoe which I duped to 8x10 EPP. It's pretty striking on a light box. I love how that grain has an almost pastel-on-paper texture.

The watch shot was my one go at processing E6 (I processed the dupe, not the original slide), 4x5 in a plastic tank. At the time, I was at the lab once or twice a day it seemed, just didn't seem worth the DIY hassle but wanted to do it once - and I still have the tank & stuff.

I'm interested in cross-processing C41 to get positives though, I've seen some info on three-stop push and heavy filtration to kill the orange layer... that may wait til I get better at these damn Bromoils though!!! (I spend my whole day in Photoshop sometimes, interested in all-analog stuff. I don't even want to scan anything...)

Best duping film ever made was Astia 100F sheet film - even better than CDU III (which was basically tungsten-balanced old-style Astia) or Kodak E-Dupe. Of course there are some real tricks to any of this, including the need for contrast masking for the best results. While most of
this kind of thing I did with highly detailed large format chromes to begin with, by contact, over the years I did make a number of enlarged
4x5 and even 8x10 sheet-film dupes from high-speed grainy 35mm color films. Enlarging them from an intermediate large dupe really preserved the color saturation and crisp grain. I wish those classic high speed chrome films were still made. They sure gave a lovely feel to
the image which these pseudo-effects of digital capture merely emulate. My favorite was Agfachrome 1000.

DREW WILEY said:

Best duping film ever made was Astia 100F sheet film - even better than CDU III (which was basically tungsten-balanced old-style Astia) or Kodak E-Dupe. Of course there are some real tricks to any of this, including the need for contrast masking for the best results. While most of
this kind of thing I did with highly detailed large format chromes to begin with, by contact, over the years I did make a number of enlarged
4x5 and even 8x10 sheet-film dupes from high-speed grainy 35mm color films. Enlarging them from an intermediate large dupe really preserved the color saturation and crisp grain. I wish those classic high speed chrome films were still made. They sure gave a lovely feel to
the image which these pseudo-effects of digital capture merely emulate. My favorite was Agfachrome 1000.

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I found that Velvia and EPP really preserved detail, color and grain. Shadows were already pretty intense due to the pushing and contrasty, hard light shooting style, but highlights, transitions, shadow detail - the whole thing was a pleasant surprise that my lab said would be an utter failure. I really didn't need to do anything other than stick things in the enlarger and blast the flash.

I was just using a lowly Printmaker 35, but also found I could dupe onto 64T 8x10 sheet film by sticking some CTB gels in the condenser (since the enlarger lamp was much warmer than 3200k). This allowed dodging and burning - which could get pricey when using 8x10 polaroid to setup exposure! But generally, the slides I shot had been very dialed in for shadows and lighting "design" and just needed duping. I did find the 64T had a really lovely softness to the color that's hard to describe. Still very saturated but a different feel than the daylight films.

I do remember Agfachrome 1000 - I believe I art directed a vintage-look accessories book for JCPenney and we used that for several shots. Kind of freaked the marketing folks out that we had grain in full-page images, but it was really a lovely look and fit the theme perfectly.

Any time you go chrome to chrome you're going to boost contrast, but also potentially lose something significant in the highlights and shadows unless your original is rather flat to begin with. With Velvia you also risk crossover at the extremes. But in this case, if you're happy with the end result, that's all that counts. But in most cases, Velvia is a horrible choice for a dupe film. And in general, both Fuji and Kodak tungsten film were better balanced than their daylight equivalents. The biggest problem with official dupe films in both cases is that they sold slowly and inventory was sometimes already getting old and at risk for crossover when put to use. But now that Cibachrome itself is largely gone, I don't have much incentive to make dupes anymore. Bit by bit I'm turning my attention to internegs instead, but it's not a priority project since I have plenty of color negs on hand to print from directly, when I do get chances to print color.

That's all certainly true... but (as per the attachments above) much of this project's visual theme was grain and color intensity, (along with double and triple exposure techniques to create more organic shadows and glows). I never duped anything where I was trying to hold accurate skin tones or product colors, for instance. I think in hindsight I would have automatically gotten standard lab dupes for images that were more naturalistic, in this case the duping became part of the process and final image.

That said, the dupes are surprisingly consistent with the originals, though the Velvia dupes " go to eleven" as Nigel Tufnel might say (gratuitous Spinal Tap reference).

Here's one with a human being... but the original was 320t, 2 or 3 stop push, Speedotron head with full CTO (with tungsten on the back wall and likely 1/2 second or so exposure to blur the wall). Nowhere near reality, but across a couple years of doing this work, there's a commonality across the images - something I'm generally too ADD to achieve!