looking for cheapo ortho film.

Can anyone recommend an affordable ortho film that I can definately process with safelight? I plan to glue this film onto glass plates and use in an old FKD 13x18. I don't have a shutter on this camera so I'm looking for a slow, blue sensitive film.

Thanks

Hmm ... I'm not sure why you'd want to glue it to glass plates, other than that all you may have is a plate holder.

First, I should explain that Orthochromatic & Blue sensitive are [very] different things: blue sensitive is only sensitive to blue, while Orthochromatic is sensitive to blue, green and sometimes some yellow. Both can, however, be developed by inspection under a red safelight.

If you're looking for ortho. film, J&C sells some under "ortho film" at jandcphoto.com ; I don't know if they have any in 13x18 though.

If you're looking for blue only film, that might be tougher; all that I know of in Blue only is imagesetting film, and maybe some microfilms. I've had moderate success with single emulsion X-Ray film that is blue sensitive only. The issue with all of these films is taming the high to extremely high contrast.

Without a shutter, you're talking exposure times of a second or more, because its going to be really hard to time anything else.

I don't personally know of any film that'd be that slow, unless you were to coat your own plates with liquid emulsion.

I've tried Efke OP12 / Adox Print film with little success. Speed was less than ISO 6. Even at ISO 6 and extreme minimal agitation in Rodinal 1+200 (or something) contrast was too high.

I just recieved a two boxes of Adox Ortho. It's on a film base, and to be used with Maco/Rollei Low Contrast developer. I'm hoping for a nice old skool look from this film.

Thanks Guru,
Yes - I've only got glass plate holders for my camera. I plan to coat my own plates, but will only be able to produce small batches, so having film as a backup will be great. I'm not that worried about film size, as I should be able to glue any size smaller than 13x18 onto the plate (unless film thickness is an issue) + I could use an ND filter to slow things down, I suppose. It's just that I've read that some ortho films can be slightly red sensitive (forgive me I'm new to all this)

So I'm after a B&W film 13x18 - 4x5, Orthochromatic - red safe, affordable and available in the UK/Europe

X ray film?

I use Ilford Ortho+ as well as APHS, an ortho-litho film from Freestyle.
By using appropiate developers the final images are all but indistinguishable. Of course, the litho is very cheap, and on a very thin film base.

I've used some old Agfa Gevarex I got cheap a while ago - in 9.5x12", cut down to whichever size I need. Developing by inspection in dilute print developer turned out to be the best way to control contrast.

I also got a pack of Tasma litho film with my 30x40cm camera; that seems to have lower inherent contrast and works fairly well with "normal" developers. The lower contrast could possibly be due to age? Anyway I bought it from blyatnikov, he usually has some film in stock. I think that's about the cheapest usable, slow, ortho sheet film you can find. 100 sheets of 24x30cm film makes 400 sheets of 12x15cm...

Blast! Went and bought some Adox Ortho 25, didn't I. Now what do I do?

Can anyone recommend a cheapo low contrast film developer?... And maybe where I can see examples of LF ortho photos(?)

cynan said:

Blast! Went and bought some Adox Ortho 25, didn't I. Now what do I do?

Can anyone recommend a cheapo low contrast film developer?... And maybe where I can see examples of LF ortho photos(?)

Click to expand...

I used Maco ORT 25 in 35mm, which is similar to Adox Ortho from what I've heard. You can see one in my gallery (the fire hydrant). Rodinal 1+100 for 11mins was plenty soft enough for it.

Maco Genius film is dead cheap and will give normal contrast in a suitable low contrast dev-eg Rodinal as mentioned above.