E-6 for Enlarged Negatives

[David A. Goldfarb]

I have a supply of way past date 11x14" E-6 film (mostly EPR and EPN) that is generally too magenta to use as color film, but I've been thinking of using it for making enlarged negs for albumen printing. Before I embark on testing, has anyone tried using color transparency film for enlarged negs with UV-sensitive processes and found it to be really great or really a dead end or does anyone have any tips on this process? I know that reversal processing B&W film is an option, and I can make interpositives if I want to, and there are methods that are better discussed on other forums, but I have a fair amount of this film, so I'm really just interested in others' experience with E-6 for enlarged negs.

 

[keithwms]

I do enlarge colour slides to b&w, and I like the result, starting from Fuji 64T or astia etc. Velvia is the hardest! Anyway, there are some very powerful things you can do in terms of filtering to manipulate the tones. You will probably want to think about how you expose your chromes; preflashing may not be a bad idea.

So far I have been enlarging to 5x7 tmax. That has worked well for me. If you aren't going to use a pan film then of course you will need to filter as you shoot to avoid tonal oddities in the reds. Whites can be blotchy if you don't dupe to pan film. Ortho didn't work for me at all....

The other thing you can do, of course, is scan and have LVTs made, with whatever curve you like. Chicago Albumen has done some of that for me, with results that I like very much.

(Now, I know that some here will regard LVT as some form of digital, but let me just say, LVT was a tremendous resource for film shooters long before digital, and the result is in an entirely different league than what you get from digital negs. LVT is something that we film shooters should be fighting to keep alive IMHO)

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Thanks, Keith, but that's not what I'm asking about. I want to take a small or medium format B&W neg made with normal B&W film and make a big B&W neg in one step by projection or with a lightbox and an 11x14" camera using a color transparency film like EPN.

Considerations I'm thinking about are--what are the UV density characteristics of color transparency films? Is it hard to get the right contrast range for a process that requires about two zones more contrast than conventional enlarging? What is a good light source for this purpose? Might one layer of the film have more UV density than other layers, in which case might it be good to filter and make a green enlarged neg or an orange enlarged neg, for instance?

 

[keithwms]

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood your question entirely. So you want to dupe a b&w neg with transparency. Sorry, no experience there I'd be very skeptical about UV transmission through the slide; my guess is that UV transmission through dye is very poor. But this sounds like an experiment that needs to be done! Maybe you could skip the colour developer somehow? Ron?

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Yes, on the one hand my thought is that dye can't be as good as silver at blocking UV, but on the other hand, there are folks making negatives for alt processes with dyes and pigments, and E-6 emulsions usually have a high D-max for projection. The main reason I would think that nobody does this is cost and availability of the film, but I have lots of it available, the cost was modest, and those 10-sheet boxes are taking up a lot of freezer space.

Well, if no one's done it, then I'll get some chemicals and try it out and report back. I don't do E-6 that often, but I do it occasionally with the Tetenal 3-bath kit, and I've got some other E-6 to process anyway.

 

[bobherbst]

David,

Forget it. It doesn't work. Several years ago I had a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art who took her 35mm b&w negatives to a local professional lab to have enlarged negatives made. They used 4x5 E-6 for direct positives. They did not work at all - too much UV density to make exposures practical and too flat - results similar to the new TMAX100 with it's UV blockers. If you have ever worked with an Epson 1280 printer (dye based ink) for making colorized enlarged negatives, you'll understand why. Dyes present extreme density to UV light as compared to pigmented inks.

Bob

I have a supply of way past date 11x14" E-6 film (mostly EPR and EPN) that is generally too magenta to use as color film, but I've been thinking of using it for making enlarged negs for albumen printing. Before I embark on testing, has anyone tried using color transparency film for enlarged negs with UV-sensitive processes and found it to be really great or really a dead end or does anyone have any tips on this process? I know that reversal processing B&W film is an option, and I can make interpositives if I want to, and there are methods that are better discussed on other forums, but I have a fair amount of this film, so I'm really just interested in others' experience with E-6 for enlarged negs.

 

[keithwms]

David, I did not mean to imply that the dyes may not be blocking enough- just the opposite. I would expect UV transmission to be very low through the dye layers. This also seems to be the experience that Bob is reporting.

I am guessing that it may be possible to modify the E6 process so that you have developed silver, and all dyes washed out. At that point I guess it might work. But once you have the dye image... I am doubtful... but also curious!

I guess you might severely overexpose the slide to achieve a very thin dye image. Otherwise I'd expect the dye image to be black as lead to UV.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Thanks, Bob, that's what I wanted to know.

So, maybe when I'm doing some E-6 I may still experiment a bit, but I won't be in a hurry to do so.