I want to do some experimentation with a distressed look for certain RA4 prints without having to create or destroy negatives. My initial thought was to make straight print and then use that to make a paper RA4 negative which I could distress, but to contact print that I'd need an orange mask, among other problematic procedural issues. Surely someone has done this sort of thing before and can save me a lot of time. I could distress a straight print and photograph it and print it but I'd like to find a way do this within a couple hours from start to finish, if its possible.
Printing from RA-4 paper negatives
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- Thread starter Wayne
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Overhardening a print and then crumpling it will cause cracking and crazing of the surface giving it a distressed look.
I have not done this in years though, so added humectants or newer gelatin may prevent this from happening.
It is done with a formalin, aluminum sulfate hardener.
PE
I have not done this in years though, so added humectants or newer gelatin may prevent this from happening.
It is done with a formalin, aluminum sulfate hardener.
PE
Paper negatives would be easiest to distress, but I wasnt really sure how to go about it. I took a straight RA print of white clouds and blue sky and made a paper negative of it on RA4 paper using a mask of unexposed, processed Ektar. I developed the paper negative normally (it came out oddly monochromatic, see below) and then I contact printed the paper negative onto RA4, again using the orange mask. I wasn't sure so I just used my normal filter pack 55y/60m for both the negative and the print. The final print, surprisingly, came out with somewhat blueish sky and whiteish clouds. Far from perfect but better than I expected. The final print picked up a lot of texture from the paper, which is OK, and i couldn't see any printing from the paper back, which is even better than OK. All in all it shows some promise. I searched but didn't find much on RA4 paper negatives other than this thread on in-camera paper negatives, but surely its been done.
I also tried it without using a mask to make the paper negative, but the final print came out way too blue.
What could I have done better? This doesn't look like a correctable color shift, although i havent tried.
The final print is in the middle, the paper negative on the left and the original straight print on the right. No attempt made at correction so wysiwyg
I also tried it without using a mask to make the paper negative, but the final print came out way too blue.
What could I have done better? This doesn't look like a correctable color shift, although i havent tried.
The final print is in the middle, the paper negative on the left and the original straight print on the right. No attempt made at correction so wysiwyg
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David A. Goldfarb
Moderator
Title updated per original poster request.
Not really as far as I know. Also, part of the orange mask exists of dyes, so you'd end up with an off-spec mask anyway (which may or may not work for the intended purpose). Fix out a piece of unexposed and undeveloped c41 film to see the difference with a normally processed piece of unexposed film.
Wayne, take an undeveloped piece of film and bleach and fix it using the C41 tail end instructions including wash and stabilzer/final rinse. This will give you a piece of film with only the masking dyes.
PE
PE
Ah, muchas gracias. I was wondering if that would work. I have a donor sheet coming to me.
For future reference, will doing the tail-end process with an exposed sheet give the same result as normal processing of an unexposed sheet?
Yes, except for any fog that might be present on the film and which would be revealed by the development step.
PE
PE
As luck would have it, I have Blix but don't have any stabilizer on hand. Should I try to substitute it with something (Photoflo at least?) or just not worry about it, since I'm only going to process one sheet for now and its blank anyway? I'm not worried about long term stability. I'll have several sheets in reserve for later when I restock my chemicals
If you do not intend to keep this for a long time, Photo Flo will be fine.
PE
PE
No it can´t but you can actually just BLIX a C41 film and skip development. It will result in a blank orange base. I know this because i recently insisted on trying 20y old AGFA C41 chemistry against my better knowledge. CD was trash, only the blix worked, so I got an undeveloped but blixed blank roll of orange base.
Yep, thats what PE mentioned too and that's what I did. Worked like a charm, even with very old blix.
oh, right. Sorry, i didn´t read further downwards before commenting.
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Thats alright! Its always good to see more personal experience with things that few people ever do. Its another data point.
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