Experimental techniques: Manipulating and 'destroying' film

[bsdunek]

This is where we can get some ideas from Lomography. For instance, put your film in a dishwasher: http://www.lomography.com/magazine/...a-kodak-color-plus-straight-to-the-dishwasher
Or, you can try chemicals, like bleach, making film soup, roasting in the oven, or many other ways to torture your film. http://www.lomography.com/magazine/lifestyle/2011/03/11/chemical-cowboys
I have not personally tried these, but the results are interesting.

 

[Mike Wilde]

Last week I shot a roll of agfa vario 1000, expired 1971, that I had exposed at ei50.

The developer was at 24C, wash water about 22c, fixer about 18C. Non hardening alkaline fixer.

Well non hardening fixer, that was a mistake on this old soft gelatine emulsion it turns out

I got reticulation of the likes that I have only come close to seeing in books on processing errors.

I washed gently about 22C for 5 minutes, go hang to dry, and watch the gelatine at the bottom start to slide off where I go to attach a clip.

Back into a hardener bath that I usually keep around for use before repeated intensifier bath immersion cycles.

Wash again. This time the gelatine has shrunk and stays on the film.

Fogged all to hell, which is really no surprise given the age of the film stock, and that faster films fog faster.

Next stage may be a bath in a weak rehalogenating bleach and then refix, to try to peel off some of the fogging.

I did not start to torture this film, but look what happend.

I think Adox still makes old soft emulsion films if getting reticulation and gelatine sloughing is your thing.

 

[removed account4]

if you learn how to process paper ... you can coat glass plates with liquid emulsion ( not as hard as it sounds ! )
and use non-harending fixer and the emulsion will lift and stretch and if you are lucky fall back down on the plate
all on top of itself making creases and overlaps &c ... a lot of dry plate folks avoid this ( frilling ) but it is a nice technique
to know about if you like to experiment. you could probably do something similar with paper instead of glass ... the first
kodak cameras from what i have read were paper negatives, but the emulsion was slid off onto something else to print ( glass? )
anyhow its kind of like the old-school emulsion transfer polaroid experimenters used to to ...
you can also mix up a weak batch of potassium ferricyanide ( farmer's reducer ) and paint your film or paper with that
(after you have an image ) it will remove layers of the image and lighten it ... just make sure you re-fix (it) afterwards
because it will be light sensitive at that point ... ( or leave it to have an image that might morph into something else? ).

lots of ways to destroy and manipulate film and prints ...
i hope when you stumble upon something else you let us see the fun results !

john

 

[Mike Wilde]

If you are up on coating glass plates, stainlees steel plates, etc. then do a first coat of unhardened gelatin, dry, than second coat of emulsion with hardened gelatine.

Then soak the proceeded plate after development and fixing and cool wash in warmish water, and the unhardened gelatin will release and you can strip the emulsion off and transfer it to almost whatever you want. I the good old graphics art wet layup days there was an actual job called a plate stripper.

 

[Allen Friday]

I realize this is quite an unusual question and I'm not sure how to phrase it in a google search, but if anyone knows what might elicit interesting results, what to shoot with the film etc... I'd love to hear!

Thanks for reading
K

Google "distressing film" and variations. There is a lot of info and examples on the net.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Take a look at this.
http://petapixel.com/2013/05/06/pho...tives-with-gasoline-and-setting-them-on-fire/