Ilfochrome Assistance

Hi All,

I managed to secure a source for Ilfochrome chemistry and paper (thank you Eight Elm Photo). However, I am wondering should I consider getting the low contrast paper versus the standard contrast. I want to avoid making masks whenever possible.

Also, if anyone has any experience with Ilfochrome, please feel free to add you input and expertise.

Thank you in advance!

I havent used the low contrast paper very much. IIRC the saturation is less too, and the difference in contrast isnt huge. I think using a lower contrast film might be a better alternative.

It might be eaiser to answer your question if we know what your plans are. As mentioned in another thread the best way to address contrast is in the exposure and film choice. What sorts of images will you be shooting/printing, and what transparency film are you using?


Wayne

Wayne said:

I havent used the low contrast paper very much. IIRC the saturation is less too, and the difference in contrast isnt huge. I think using a lower contrast film might be a better alternative.

It might be eaiser to answer your question if we know what your plans are. As mentioned in another thread the best way to address contrast is in the exposure and film choice. What sorts of images will you be shooting/printing, and what transparency film are you using?


Wayne

Click to expand...

The plan is to use Ektachrome 100 Professional for most of the shooting, with Sensia thrown in (as I have a few rolls). As for the subject matter, I don't really have much in the way of a concrete plan but if history is any measure, most of my pictures will be in city pictures of interesting buildings and farmland.

the low contrast stuff will not buy you much. You can pre-flash your film, that will help some but the best thing to do is mask for Ilfochrome.

Due to saturation levels, there is not a lot of difference in apparent contrast between the contrast grades. Since this stuff is very expensive, and the purpose after all in using it is to get the rich color saturation, I've standardized on the 'normal' contrast (CPS.1K). I try to shoot transparencies that will print well on this. Go for it, and good luck. Post some results.

Bob

Snapshot,
The CF1K, IMO, really has very limited applications. It worked very well with high contrast, limited tonal range closeups, but I could never find another use for it.
But that could be just my preferences.
I assume you got the P3.5 kit in 5 liters.
The new mix works very well with the CPS1K using the starting filter pack, for 2 mins at 86F.
The other poly, CLM1K requires hotter temp, and longer times for the same exposures, but looks pretty good.
If you're good with burning/dodging you might not need to make contrast masks, unless you just want to.
How will you process?
DT

Here is another thought, you can "pull process" your film to reduce contrast.

These suggestions are good. I guess the low contrast paper will not be much use versus the standard contrast. I like the "pull process" suggestion. I won't be doing the processing of the slides at first, I'll let a lab handle it until I get the E-6 kits. I will be using the P3.5 kit but I'm not sure how to make a proper mask. It's my understanding it's a lot of work. Would "flashing" the paper help in reducing contrast?

Flashing will also have minimal effect, in my experience.

Masking isnt difficult, its just a time-consuming extra PIA. I only tried it a couple times before I went on a hiatus from Ilfochrome a few years ago. I used the instructions here:

http://www.bonavolta.ch/hobby/fr/photo/masking101.htm

I dont know what film people are using these days for masking. I think I used Ilford Ortho Lith, IIRC. Maybe Doyle can tell us what he uses.

You'll need a pin register system. http://www.radekaphotography.com/
sells masking kits and pin register negative carriers. There used to be instructions by Dennis McNutt freely available on the web for making your own, but it appears that they are gone now-but I believe they come with the kit mentioned above for a price. They were also published in some magazine years ago, if you can track down which one you could get them that way. I built mine from the web instructions for a few dollars.

But I really wouldnt worry about masking quite yet. Buy a package or two of Ilfochrome and expect to spend some time learning to work with it and get the color balance right, find out if Ilfochrome printing is for you, then think about masking if you still need to.


Wayne

This is the instructional article I referred to:

Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques:
Vol. 10 No. 4 (either July/August 1989 or Sept/Oct): How to make a contrast reduction mask and registration system

Very handy for making a cheap glass pig register negative carrier for making and using masks. Mine cost under $20.

Wayne

For a complete reference, try "The Complete Guide to Cibachrome Printing" by Krause and Shull. Although it was published in 1980 and refers to Cibachrome materials it is still relevant today.

PE

The book PE references is a good one - it is out of print but you can still find copies.

Before you get into masking, get comfortable with the Ilfochrome process. Some slides work better than others for Ilfochrome, try to pick out low contrast work and build on your experience doing straight prints. Figuring out color correction and exposure times is a little counter-intuitive if you are used to negative printing (i.e. the print gets *lighter* as exposure increases).

You can almost double your chemistry capacity by using 1/2 used and 1/2 unused developer/bleach/fix during a session. Don't try and save used chemistry for another day, only "freshly used" chemistry will work. By doing this you can get 20-24 8X10 prints from 1L of chemistry rather than 13.

Another tip - resist the urge to increase the amount of water in the first rinse after developer: if you use 75ml developer for an 8X10, use 75ml of rinse. Additional rinse water can create strange (red) colors - I don't know why.

Hope this helps

Doug

Doug;

I suspect that with too much water, the M and Y layers stop development more rapidly and/or the C layer continues to develop a tad. This effect will shift color balance red. At least that is my experience with this type of situation.

Color materials are very sensitive to rinses after development and to diffusion effects.

PE

Before you start going to the trouble of contrast masking it's worth trying to adjust the developer/exposure. This may give you enough contrast control to avoid masking but naturally it depends on the transparency/slide being printed. There are various articles around on using your own home brew developer and I've had good success with them. I have more fun playing around with developers than I do making contrast masks but I do have to do the latter by hand as I don't have pin registration equipment.

Regards,
Roger.

ras351 said:

Before you start going to the trouble of contrast masking it's worth trying to adjust the developer/exposure. This may give you enough contrast control to avoid masking but naturally it depends on the transparency/slide being printed. There are various articles around on using your own home brew developer and I've had good success with them. I have more fun playing around with developers than I do making contrast masks but I do have to do the latter by hand as I don't have pin registration equipment.
Regards,
Roger.

Click to expand...

Have you been doing this lately? I experimented quite a bit with different developers including divided developers and had very little luck with controlling contrast that way. The old versions of Ilfo-Cibachrome were quite sensitive to contrast control in this way (so I'm told) , but I found no evidence that the newer (ca 2001) version was.


Wayne

Photo Engineer said:

Doug;

Color materials are very sensitive to rinses after development and to diffusion effects.

PE

Click to expand...

Thats interesting. I didnt know that. I was always pretty sloppy about how much water I put in the rinse when I used drums, thinking more is better but not knowing the exact amount mattered. I never noticed any inconsistencies in color balance, so maybe I was just consistent enough with the volume.


Wayne

OK here's my experience with Ilfochrome:

1) Only bother making Ilfochrome prints if you are looking for "in your face" colours. This suits some subjects. If this won't suit your subject then stick to RA4 conventional prints from negatives. RA4s are easier to make overall and the result will be more natural and better.

2) The Ilfochrome polyester glossy papers will blow your mind, nothing like it. The resin coated papers aren't quite as spectacular. But fingermarks are very visible on the polyester paper, less so on the resin coated paper. The polyester paper is not suitable for direct handling for this reason.

3) If you use the polyester (plastic) paper then watch out for static electricity. Yep, I fell for this one. You buy a box of polyester paper and what do you do? You take 10 or 15 papers from the box and put them in a black plastic bag and put this bag inside another box so that you have an immediate supply of working papers. The original box you refrigerate and keep refrigerated until you need another batch. Well when you remove a polyester paper from the bag in your working box you get static sparks between paper and bag. After development you get magenta marks on your print and you wonder how they got there. That's why the original bag that the polyester papers come in is made from special conducting material to stop sparks.

4) If you want to reduce contrast you can shorten the time in the developer by up to 25 percent.

5) I experienced another problem. You are just making a test strip and so you think that there's no point in doing a full final wash. You give it a quick rinse and then dry to examine. You then adjust your colour filtration and keep making test strips this way until you get it right. Then you make the real print and you give it the full final wash. Then in horror you find that the colour balance has shifted towards cyan. Ha ha. You've got to wash the test strips for the full specified duration. If you cut the wash duration short you will experience a red shift in your colours. This red shift progressively disappears during the full wash.

6) If you do f-stop printing you need to do your test-strips in 1/2 stop intervals as opposed to 1/6 stop for RA4. Also changes in colour filtration are more severe than with RA4 to get the same shift in colour. This makes fine adjustment easier with Ilfochrome.

7) Your exposure times will be at least 2 stops greater than with RA4. This gives you more time for dodging and burning which makes things easier. Burning lightens, dodging darkens.

8) Problem with dust spots. This is a big one. They come out black on Ilfochrome rather than white as on RA4. So you have to bleach them first rather than just use a spotter dye. But when you use bleach you often find yourself bleaching into the base and there is no gelatine left to absorb the spotting dye. It is doubley important to check your transparency for dust when doing Ilfochromes.

Mark

Mark;

I can add to or address some of these.

4. Shortening development time can cause crossover due to the diffusion sensitivity of a multilayer color product.

5. The final wash helps adjust the final pH of the print. Too short and it is acidic and the longer the wash the more towards neutral it will tend thereby shifting dye hues to the 'correct' value.

6. The contrast of negative papers is about 2.5 while reversal papers are about 1.0, therefore apparent speed and color shifts are about 2x more evident in negative printing than in reversal printing.

7. Ilfochrome paper has dyes already in them which reduce speed and increase grain. At the same time they increase sharpness. Therefore, the paper is very slow, sharp and grainy.

Thats about all I can add.

PE

Wayne said:

Have you been doing this lately? I experimented quite a bit with different developers including divided developers and had very little luck with controlling contrast that way. The old versions of Ilfo-Cibachrome were quite sensitive to contrast control in this way (so I'm told) , but I found no evidence that the newer (ca 2001) version was.

Wayne

Click to expand...

Hi Wayne,

I was using a Metol developer (not divided) about a year ago (when I last had ready access to a darkroom) and it worked for perhaps a paper grade or thereabouts. It's not a complete cure but I found it was sufficient for the majority of slides I printed. I haven't worked with the older papers so can't comment on how much, if any, they've changed.

Roger.

This has been a great education. Ilfochrome is expensive when compared to RA-4 printing so I'll use everyone's experience to avoid costly mistakes. I get the impression there are "home brewed" chemistry formulas for Ilfochrome printing. Is that correct?

Thanks in advance.

The bleach formula is the hardest to duplicate. It is discussed in another thread here.

PE

Ilfochrome developer is just B&W print developer with a little hypo (sodium thiosulfate) incorporated. Fix is just rapid fix. But you have to buy the bleach, and the bleach comes in kit with the developer and fix, so unless you are looking for special effect it doesnt make sense to make your own developer. You can (or could a few years ago) buy the P3 bleach seperately, but its a different animal from the P30 bleach and I wouldnt recommend it for starters. It comes with its own set of problems, though none are insurmountable.

Which Ilfochrome "paper" were you using, Roger? When you say you used a Metol developer I presume you mean Metol-HQ, because in my experience the HQ is necessary.

Wayne

Just so everyone knows, Ciba is back in the USA pipeline!
I just got 4 P3.5 kits from Rainer Photographic, and CPS1K paper from B&H. Stock up, and lets keep Ciba alive!
DT

Dave - We were having an interesting discussion over at the LF photo board about which paper to use. Have you standardized on CPS1K or do you mix paper types based on subject matter, exposure, or masking requirements?

Doug

P.S. Glad to see you are using Rainier Photographic. They are a great collection of folks to work with. They moved to a new location that is not as convenient for me, but it is totally worth the trip to go see them.

Hi Dug,
Well they quit making the CPM1M, the RC fiber stuff, and that was my most profitable. It was also the easiest to mount without getting the "orange peal" effect that I hate so much. I've still got some left but can't get it to work as well with the new P3.5 chems.
So since the CLM1K is now selling for about the same price, I just print all on the CPS1K now.
I have tried every paper they make, but most customers like that super glossy, very rich look.
DT