ortho, not pan film

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i know for a long long time orth-based film emulsions were king.
roll film, plates, and sheet film were all ortho.
now, unfortunately there are only a small handful of ortho films out there ...

would it be less expensive ( not b/w dyes needed ) to have ortho film made
rather than now-traditional pan-film?

i really like the look of orthochromatic emulsion, and would love to have choices
other than lith film, or paper negatives.

i have coated film base with bottled emulsion before, but my efforts
were not very successful.
 

Ian Grant

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Ilford still make Ortho Plus, it's an excellent film and gives the same quality as FP4, except it's spectral sensitivity, it's available as sheet film.

Ian
 

George Collier

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Michael suggested a blue filter, I'm thinking along the same lines, but Cyan, as the true complement to Red (Blue being the complement to Yellow). I don't know if the difference would matter, but the Blue filter should hold back some yellow, which the Cyan should pass.
 

Q.G.

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A blue filter will do. It's not about being the complementary colour in a colour wheel, but about excluding that part of the spectrum ortho film is insensitive to.

Remember, Jnanian, that ortho was King because there was nothing better.
In the country of the blind, and all that.
 

Mike Wilde

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Did ortho not have some dyes?

jnanian said:
were all ortho.
( not b/w dyes needed )
Click to expand...

I thought that ortho was some dye, but not a full pan dye set.

Of course getting my mom to talk about lovers prior to dad is easier than to get a film manufacturer to talk dye sets.
 

frobozz

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There are some Kodak intermediate/print/lab films in 35mm that are orthochromatic. Yeah, you need to buy 1000 feet of them, but they are out there. I have one 1000 ft spool I picked up cheap and need to play with when I get some time...

Duncan
 

Sanjay Sen

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What EI do you normally shoot the Ilford Ortho Plus film at? Just curious, I have never shot any Ortho film and would like to try some and see the difference. The Ortho Plus Fact Sheet states "Daylight sources ISO 80/20°" and "Tungsten sources ISO 40/17°".
 
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i'd rather use the real-deal instead of filters,
i never use filters ( except for a center filter )
and i can't stand filters ...

maybe i will look into ilford ortho plus it seems to be what i am looking for ...

mike:
i don't think that ortho films had dyes in them, it is kind of like liquid emulsions you get in a bottle
or a home brew emulsion ( bromide / iodide ) ... maybe i am wrong ? ( i am wrong a lot )
 

ntenny

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I also really like the Rollei/Maco film, though I haven't done a head-to-head comparison with the Ilford or anything. It's a little bit high-contrast, though nothing like litho film---I tend to shoot it at EI 50 and develop it in Diafine, which produces an interesting combination of high midtone contrast and highlight compression.

-NT
 

totalamateur

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I've gelled strobes to get the ortho look w/ Tri-X, but if you don't like filters, I'm guessing you don't like a bunch of strobes with Gels. I've had some luck getting continuous tones out of Ortho Lith, but (because I'm fairly inexperienced) I'm not sure exactly how or why one negative will have mega high contrast and some will not, I use relatively similar dilutions of Rodinal pretty much in every batch.
 

hrst

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"Ortho" film usually means it IS spectrally sensitized (with sensitizing dye) for green wavelengths, in addition to blue. Non-sensitized emulsion is blue-sensitive only. Those are also available for some special purposes such as copy films as mentioned before in this thread.

All emulsions are UV sensitive also, unless there is UV absorbing overcoat.

If you like the "look" of ortho film, you can use cyan filter with pan film, but of course you still lose the ability to develop in red safelight.

But why bother as there are ortho films available? What we really lack is a medium-speed ortho film (ISO 200 or 400), but OTOH those were not available "in the old days" either.
 

Photo Engineer

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RobertV said:
You have also Orthopan films, Acros 100 (Fuji), Efke 25, Retro 100 TONAL (Rollei-Maco). At least iso 100 and in daylight you can use the TONAL for iso 200 speed with a speed enhanced developer.
Click to expand...

This has come up several times. People have posted the spectral curves of the film and my observation is that these are just poorly sensitized pan films with low red sensitivity. They are red sensitive, just not as much as other films, so the manufacturers had to come up with a name to describe them.

PE
 
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i didn't realize there were differences, i had thought that photo paper,
was "orthochromatic" generally speaking because it was not panchromatic.

hmmm, i guess i was calling blue sensitive "ortho" without realizing there was a difference ....
so does this mean that photo paper is "ortho" and sensitive to green
as well as blue, or is it only blue sensitive or something different altogether ?

early photographic processes that just use silver nitrate ( like wet plate, dry plate ( some ) &C
would they be considered something else besides "orthochromatic"

thanks in advance !

- john
 

JPD

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The ADOX orthopan-films were called "revolutionizing" when they came out in the late 40's because of their sharpness and extremely fine grain. Dr. Schleussner Fotowerke (later called ADOX) was founded in 1860, so they should have had the knowledge about sensitizing film?

Old german photography books tells about orthochromatic, panchromatic, orthopanchromatic and superpanchromatic emulsions.
 

JPD

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That should be why the swedish flag looks like the finnish one on really old photos, taken with blue-sensitive plates (blue went light and yellow dark), but look swedish with modern ortho film. Green has some yellow in it.
 

CBG

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VC paper has two different emulsions for a different intention than widening the spectral sensitivity.

VC paper is like having two papers in one, the first a high contrast emulsion, the second a low contrast emulsion. The two different response curves are designed to be complimentary to each other and only exist to give the user contrast rendition choice.

The prototypical orthochromatic film has just one emulsion layer that is sensitive to a wider spectrum -blue and green and UV - to give a more natural rendition than the plain emulsion that is sensitive only to blue and UV.

I suppose that with modern technologies, there's nothing I know of that would intrinsically prevent film makers from making a more complex ortho film with multiple layers, but the essence of an ortho film can be expressed with a single layer.
 
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