Enlarged Negatives for Contact Printing

[bmac]

How would you go about producing an 8X10 negative for contact printing from a 4X5 or 6X7? I am thinking it shouldn't be too hard to do with my enlarger and an 8X10 film holder. Any suggestions?

 

[Jorge]

Ed Buffaloe has a couple of good articles in his site. Look them up and if you have any questions ask him, I beleive he has tried both mehtods.

 

[edbuffaloe]

I recommend you give the reversal method a try, as outlined in my article Less is More at http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/NbyR/nbyr.html. I have found this to be a very cheap and effective method, with many fewer steps than the interpositive method.

There is also the traditional interpositive method, as evinced in Bob Herbst's article Enlarged Negatives using APHS Ortho Film and Pyro Developer at http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/EnlargeN...enlargeneg.html. This is probably the ultimate way to go, but it is much more time consuming and expensive. He sent me an original 4x5 negative, the enlarged 8x10 interpositive, and the final 8x10 copy negative he made from it. I was astounded at the precision and perfection of his work. All negatives were absolutely free of dust and finger marks. It was obvious to me that he is a meticulous worker who has very carefully worked out the details of the process.

There is another interesting technique that I'm still experimenting with. An article by William L. Jolly in the Jan/Feb 1992 issue of Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques describes making direct positive transparencies (effectively, interpositives) using Kodalith or any standard film by giving it a flash exposure part way through development. This is essentially a form of solarization (the Sabatier effect), but it can be controlled in such a way that the flash exposure produces very subtle enhancements of various portions of the positive image. For instance, dull greys can be made to appear white, or you can obtain total sabatier reversal of some areas if you desire. You can then contact a negative from this positive. The technique has a multitude of creative possibilities, and I'll probably write an article about it in the next six months or so. So far, I've only done some preliminary experiments to verify that I can get sabatier reversal with the APH ortho/litho film. There may be other films that work a lot better, but the nice thing about the ortho film is you can use it with a red safelight, so you don't have to work in total darkness.

 

[bmac]

Thanks for the tips folks, I plan on reading the articles soon.

Brian

 

[LD Horricks]

There's also Dan Burkholder's method if you've got the gear for it... I didnt really say the D word. Also some info on the Bostick and Sullivan site, if Ed's wealth of info isnt enough.

www.danburkholder.com

Larry D. Horricks
Prague, Czech Republic

 

[bmac]

Thanks for the link.

 

[Kerik]

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (edbuffaloe @ Dec 6 2002, 04:33 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>There is also the traditional interpositive method, as evinced in Bob Herbst's article Enlarged Negatives using ...(snip) &nbsp;It was obvious to me that he is a meticulous worker who has very carefully worked out the details of the process.

</td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'>
I just have to comment here that Herbst learned this approach from Stuart Melvin who pioneered it. Stuart is the one who figured out how to apply Pyro to APHS film to make stunning enlarged negs. Why Herbst hasn't given credit to Stuart in the articles he's written is a mystery to me. He doesn't seem to be aware how relatively small the world of alt-photo is.

Kerik Kouklis
www.Kerik.com

 

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