Extreme expansion

[Ian Leake]

I have a subject with an SBR of about 2½ stops. Ultimately I want to make a pt/pd print, so the negative will require extreme expansion. At the moment I'm thinking that perhaps using copy positives/negatives may achieve this. Do you have any advice on how I could go about this? Any [sheet] film and developer combinations that could help? Thanks in advance.

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

Perhaps Adox CMS II overdeveloped in Adotech III? Heck, with a subject brightness range that minimal, you might be able to develop CMS II in a standard developer... that should bump up the contrast.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Ilford Ortho+ claims that a G-Bar of 1.8 can be obtained if developed in Phenisol, at least according to the box in front of me. I've tended to stick to PQ Universal or ID-11 with O+ - though PQ or similar paper developer might be worth a try (at higher than normal concentration?) before going to specialist developers. FP4+ might be amenable to similar treatment.

 

[jeffreyg]

Have you tried adding potassium chlorate to your pt/pd sensitizer mix to increase the contrast of the print? You might also consider scanning the negative, producing the desired positive result and then printing a negative version or photographing the result (although you might lose something having more generations) on whatever film you use. Rephotograph the subject and over develop the film?

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

 

[greg zinselmeier]

go to unblinking eye and read "less is more" for inner negs.

 

[Ian Leake]

Thanks for your ideas everyone. I think I will park this while I do some research and experiments.

 

[Jarin Blaschke]

John Wimberley's WD2H film developer was designed for expansion up to +4 with FP4.

 

[Ian Leake]

Thanks - I will add this to my list of experiments.

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

A million years ago when I worked for a B&W pro lab with copying services, I fine-tuned exposure/development to use Kodak Technical Pan run through the same machine as everything else. For extremely faded images, it worked a charm. Of course, Tech Pan is NLA but current options will work just as well.