Single Exposure Bichromes, Blurry red slide?

[f/Alex]

Hi Yall, I dont quite know if this qualifies fully as alternative, but,

I've been musing over Kelly Shane's bichrome blog post for about half a year at this point, and suddenly in a peak of inspiration (Or potentially mental illness), i decided i would give it a go two nights back.

https://www.filmshooterscollective....or-kodachrome-process-kelly-shane-fuller-4-21 <- post in question

The first part of this was figuring out reversal processing in b&w, which was little to no problem, a trip to CVS & ACME, A night in the darkroom, and i've got a satisfactory 4x5 slide.

Now for the Harder part
I picked up a package of ilford ortho from b&h, i picked up some thin red light filters. Layering my "cheap" experimentation film of choice (Catlabs 80) behind the red layer, behind a layer of ilford ortho in a film holder was tight, but "fine".

So naturally I took an exposure of the statue of liberty from Manhatten (I'm not ome for that scene, but i had a friend visiting who *really wanted to see it*).

To my displeasure and suprise, my initial thoughts of "will the first layer of film not just wack the second layer out of focus" (which i had ignored) appeared to be fully correct.
So, the question i'd like to pose to the forum is this: how would i keep the second (red) slide from drifting out of focus? Could i get a wet plate holder and slap a peice of ground glass or such between the images? Would that do anything? Am i just stupid?

-Alex

 

[f/Alex]

Side note: Any tips on preventing a softer emusion from chipping under tempurature changes/ high (40C) temps is appreciated, ilford ortho appears to be a rather soft emusion, softer than even my catlabs film which is rather soft

 

[koraks]

how would i keep the second (red) slide from drifting out of focus?

Use a collimated light source. The better the collimation, the better the result. A bare bulb (or enlarger, or whatever) from a large distance tends to work OK. W.r.t. 'large distance', think "all the way across the room".

 

[f/Alex]

Use a collimated light source. The better the collimation, the better the result. A bare bulb (or enlarger, or whatever) from a large distance tends to work OK. W.r.t. 'large distance', think "all the way across the room".

Under studio conditions, this is doable, but under daylight conditions, this is impossible. My test frame was a very long distance frame. The thing that puzzles me, is that i've seen multiple other people use this techniwue without mentioning this issue.

I was shooting at night, would that have an effect?

Would shooting at F/45 changes things versus maybe F/12?

 

[koraks]

Would shooting at F/45 changes things versus maybe F/12?

Yes, certainly. Smaller aperture = much more collimation. That's how this can be solved in daylight conditions.

I thought you were duplicating a slide onto two sheets of negative film, with everything sandwiched together. So I thought you had more control over the light source/illumination. My bad!

 

[f/Alex]

Yes, certainly. Smaller aperture = much more collimation. That's how this can be solved in daylight conditions.

I thought you were duplicating a slide onto two sheets of negative film, with everything sandwiched together. So I thought you had more control over the light source/illumination. My bad!

Nope! Attempting to single exposure bichrome. Shouldnt have done my test exposure at night, it's just it got dark rlly quickly.

 

[f/Alex]

So potentially falling into the same trap as before, but, having taken another test exposure at F/45 and 2.5 minutes, the smallest aperture of my two LF lenses, (under LED lighting conditions), I encountered a much more usable red slide, but it still retains the blurriness. (can anyone tell I only do work in the middle of the night?)

So I'm posing three questions:
Does exposure time affect this at all?
Would replacing my Orthochromatic film (top layer) with something other than ilford ortho+ improve the results?
Is the light type important, in that, LED, Tungsten, Halogen, Daylight, diffused daylight (cloudy grey skies), important here? What'd be the best? Wouldn't the sun have worse collumnation than say a LED of tungsten light just due to something something entropy distance i hate optics?

 

[f/Alex]

attached is a "scan" of a red slide, and the "blue/green" slide (the scan quality is of absolutely trash quality, I can't be bothered to get a nice scan of a crap image, these are done with a $5 nikon lens, a rebel from 2014, and my shaky hands.)

I have a number of chemistry related issues to solve on top of these, push processing my red slide properly is one of them, but those I can work through, and clearly I need to take better care of my negs when 40C liquids are involved.

 

[koraks]

Does exposure time affect this at all?

Not really, ignoring motion blur in unstable tripods etc.

Would replacing my Orthochromatic film (top layer) with something other than ilford ortho+ improve the results?

Only if it's physically thinner.
It may also help to place your sheets emulsion-to-emulsion.

Is the light type important, in that, LED, Tungsten, Halogen, Daylight, diffused daylight (cloudy grey skies), important here?

Not really. In general, blue will diffuse a little more and red a little less, but overall, I doubt if it's all that relevant. Besides, you still need red + at least green.

Wouldn't the sun have worse collumnation than say a LED of tungsten light just due to something something entropy distance i hate optics?

No, the sun is millions of miles away and therefore has excellent collimation at least if it's direct sunlight.
However, forget about light sources because my remark about collimation was about duplicating a slide onto two sheets of film. When making an in-camera exposure, the light is virtually always indirect (unless you're photographing the sun disc itself, which I assume you're not), so it'll be scattered for the most part.

Concerning the 'I hate optics' bit - your interest in this technique puzzles me. It's very much about optics. I get a feeling you're not exactly enjoying this experiment. Why not move on to something you derive more pleasure from?

attached is a "scan" of a red slide (the scan quality is of absolutely trash quality, I can't be bothered to get a nice scan of a crap image.)

Boosted contrast:

Sorry, I don't know what we're looking at.

 

[f/Alex]

Concerning the 'I hate optics' bit - your interest in this technique puzzles me. It's very much about optics. I get a feeling you're not exactly enjoying this experiment. Why not move on to something you derive more pleasure from?

Optics frustrate me because, as someone who only passed high school physics with a lot of 1:1 time with my teacher and a lot of sympathy, I can't even begin to understand the first thing about it.
In general, I enjoy B&W photography, colour chemistry sucks and I hate dealing with that crap in my trashy apartment. It takes too long to go to a lab in the city, the last busses stop running at 12:30, and I live in a fricken wasteland. I want to experiment with colour. I've done a number of experiments into slide developing and c41 negative developing. They don't quite hit what I *want*. Well, maybe some slide i've shot does, but I'd be crazy to buy unexpired ektachrome at those prices.

Only if it's physically thinner.
It may also help to place your sheets emulsion-to-emulsion.

This interests me. I will try it.

 

[koraks]

See how the emulsion-to-emulsion thing goes. Especially if you're ultimately going to scan, it doesn't matter much that one of the sheets will be flipped.
Keep in mind they may both come out blurry unless you adjust the focus for both emulsions not being where the camera expects them to be. If you're recording on LF, you may have to play a trick by shimming the ground glass with some strips of film/paper of a suitable thickness.