Using 8mm movie camera lens in enlarger

Nicholas Lindan · Jul 8, 2021

I like the print dryer...

It is interesting that an 8mm movie film frame has much less grain than this B&W print even when projected on a 60" (1.5m) screen. Though I don't have any 8mm B&W movies to compare it to, the only 8mm films I have are Kodachrome.

The magnification here would translate (if I got the math right, and there is a lot of rounding...) into an 8x10 foot print from a 35mm negative.

Has anyone tried using a slide projector to make a high magnification print?

Donald Qualls · Jul 8, 2021

Single frame? I've been under the impression that movies don't look as grainy as stills on the same film because you're seeing 20-30 of them per second (24 is the standard for 16 mm cine, IIRC). Not to mention cine film is usually either developed to lower contrast (which reins in grain) or reversed (which in my experience greatly reduces the appearance of grain), in B&W -- and in color, you're seeing dye clouds instead of silver grains anyway.

radiant · Jul 8, 2021

Nicholas Lindan said:
It is interesting that an 8mm movie film frame has much less grain than this B&W print even when projected on a 40" screen. Though I don't have any 8mm B&W movies to compare it to, the only 8mm films I have are Kodachrome.

I was actually thinking the same. I have some Super8 Tri-X myself so I could try enlarging single frame from that reel.

warden · Jul 8, 2021

vedostuu said:
If anyone is wondering what the full frame looks like, here is scan from the negative without cropping:

I was about to ask. Thanks!

Nicholas Lindan · Jul 8, 2021

Donald Qualls said:
Single frame?

Yes, of course. Many projectors had a freeze-frame feature, the projector dropped a sieve-filter in front of the bulb so the film wouldn't burn.

8mm ran at 16 fps with a three bladed shutter so the flicker frequency was 48 fps (flickers per second?). The CFF (Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency) is between 10 Hz in very low light and 50 Hz in bright light. Interestingly, to appear instananeous the lag between pressing a key and seeing a response from the electronics has to be 50mSec or less - corresponding, crudely, to a CFF of 20Hz. I think the goal for the restart of a desktop OS from turning a computer on to being fully stable should be that same 50mSec - there is no reason it couldn't be if it weren't for all the incredibly lazy software coding. Kids these days!

Donald Qualls · Jul 8, 2021

Nicholas Lindan said:
I think the goal for the restart of a desktop OS from turning a computer on to being fully stable should be that same 50mSec - there is no reason it couldn't be if it weren't for all the incredibly lazy software coding

I think that's unlikely. It takes longer than that just to load the OS kernel from an SSD without executing anything, at least on current versions of Linux -- that's just for the data transfer. I've seen demonstration video of a Linux-based embedded system (running direct from EEPROM) going from cold to running stable in under a second, that's fast enough for almost anything.

radiant · Jul 8, 2021

@Nicholas Lindan and @Donald Qualls Guys, are you a bit off-topic here, perhaps?

MattKing · Jul 8, 2021

vedostuu said:
@Nicholas Lindan and @Donald Qualls Guys, are you a bit off-topic here, perhaps?

Yep .

Donald Qualls · Jul 8, 2021

vedostuu said:
are you a bit off-topic here, perhaps?

This is Photrio -- is that even possible? Anyway, I'd guess that the film used for this enlargement was probably not one intended for the smallest cine frame. Even Tri-X Reversal is fairly fine grained. This, judging by the full frame, is probably either T-Max P3200 or Delta 3200, or else it's a 400 speed film pushed to 1600 or higher.

radiant · Jul 8, 2021

Donald Qualls said:
This is Photrio -- is that even possible? Anyway, I'd guess that the film used for this enlargement was probably not one intended for the smallest cine frame. Even Tri-X Reversal is fairly fine grained. This, judging by the full frame, is probably either T-Max P3200 or Delta 3200, or else it's a 400 speed film pushed to 1600 or higher.

Hey, you cheated It is HP5 exposed at 1600 and heavily overdeveloped so your last guess was correct. I have to remember to try Tri-X too because I'm in belief that it has the most beautiful grain of all films. Hmm, maybe I shouldn't try and maintain that illusion

radiant · Jul 8, 2021

Nicholas Lindan said:
I like the print dryer...

Nothing beats Finnish summer breeze. It improves the actual photo and increases dMax.

Printed some more, this is fun. These new ones are drying in Finnish sauna. You guys haven't heard of smoke toning?

awty · Jul 8, 2021

vedostuu said:
Nothing beats Finnish summer breeze. It improves the actual photo and increases dMax.

Printed some more, this is fun. These new ones are drying in Finnish sauna. You guys haven't heard of smoke toning?

Smoke hey. must try that.
You can crop a long way and do huge prints, which I find interesting. In the past I had to have the enlarger maxed out with a 30mm lens to do a 50cm x 60cm print and even then it wasnt cropped any where near enough. Think it will be easy now.
Think with intent you could work in a great picture.
Even with fp4 I can get grain.
This is a 5x8 print with the enlarger quarter the way up and at f4 with No.4 contrast filter and about 75 sec exposure on my Durst 1000 with 150 watt globe.

Nicholas Lindan · Jul 8, 2021

awty said:
This is a 5x8 print with the enlarger quarter the way up and at f4 with No.4 contrast filter and about 75 sec exposure on my Durst 1000 with 150 watt globe.

That looks like around a 100x enlargement. And the enlarger head was only 1/4 the way up - what lens did you use?

A projection microscope would make a good enlarger for this sort of work. https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/collection.../?thumbnails=on&irn=6087&TitInventoryNo=67914

ic-racer · Jul 8, 2021

awty said:
Smoke hey. must try that.
You can crop a long way and do huge prints, which I find interesting. In the past I had to have the enlarger maxed out with a 30mm lens to do a 50cm x 60cm print and even then it wasnt cropped any where near enough. Think it will be easy now.
Think with intent you could work in a great picture.
Even with fp4 I can get grain.
This is a 5x8 print with the enlarger quarter the way up and at f4 with No.4 contrast filter and about 75 sec exposure on my Durst 1000 with 150 watt globe.
View attachment 279662 View attachment 279663

Thanks for sharing. This is one of the more interesting threads right now.

ic-racer · Jul 8, 2021

Found an appropriate lens. This one has a filter-holder retaining ring on the front with enough exposed threads to capture a lensboard. So I'll mount it that way, sticking upward from the lensboard.

warden · Jul 8, 2021

ic-racer said:
Thanks for sharing. This is one of the more interesting threads right now.

Ditto. This is the best of Photrio.

awty · Jul 8, 2021

Nicholas Lindan said:
That looks like around a 100x enlargement. And the enlarger head was only 1/4 the way up - what lens did you use?

A projection microscope would make a good enlarger for this sort of work. https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/collection.../?thumbnails=on&irn=6087&TitInventoryNo=67914

Bolex Kern-Paillard 5.5mm F/1.9 Switar
Soft in the corners wide open, very sharp at f4.

removed account4 · Jul 8, 2021

vedostuu
do you know the sept camera ?
https://camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Debrie_Sept
I am glad you succeeded in your project !
John

radiant · Jul 9, 2021

awty said:
You can crop a long way and do huge prints, which I find interesting. In the past I had to have the enlarger maxed out with a 30mm lens to do a 50cm x 60cm print and even then it wasnt cropped any where near enough. Think it will be easy now.
Think with intent you could work in a great picture.

There is now photos inside photos. This is fun!

And the grain. It is wonderful to see real grain, even on really dense highlights there are some lonely grains who have decided to hang around.

ps. jnantz, I didn't know about that camera :O

awty · Jul 9, 2021

vedostuu said:
There is now photos inside photos. This is fun!

And the grain. It is wonderful to see real grain, even on really dense highlights there are some lonely grains who have decided to hang around.

View attachment 279703 View attachment 279704 View attachment 279705

ps. jnantz, I didn't know about that camera :O

Wonderful! Keep going.
Got any big paper?

radiant · Jul 9, 2021

awty said:
Wonderful! Keep going.
Got any big paper?

Thanks Awty! You too!

Yes I have bigger paper but my darkroom is like sauna at the moment. The exposures above were 2-3 minutes so for larger enlargements (8x10" paper) I have to wait for better times. I cannot even escape my darkroom during exposures without getting daylight in..

This is pretty addictive. Something tells about this that I do this in my hot darkroom from my own free will.

radiant · Jul 9, 2021

vedostuu said:
on really dense highlights there are some lonely grains who have decided to hang around.

I have to correct myself. The dense parts have grains who have decided not to stay on the party like 99.9% of the rest of the grains.

Also edit: the previous example is not masked in any ways so the exposure is "full" on the paper. This note referring to the "there is photo inside my photo" - finding ..

Donald Qualls · Jul 9, 2021

vedostuu said:
my darkroom is like sauna at the moment.

Heh. I used to print in an unventilated darkroom at about 40C -- my solution was just to work naked. No one else home, anyway. Of course, if your darkroom isn't near a lake (and obviously no snowbanks left in early summer) it's not enough like a sauna...

radiant · Jul 9, 2021

Donald Qualls said:
Heh. I used to print in an unventilated darkroom at about 40C -- my solution was just to work naked. No one else home, anyway. Of course, if your darkroom isn't near a lake (and obviously no snowbanks left in early summer) it's not enough like a sauna...

There are now two reasons I need a pre-room for my darkroom The other is lith and now this. I could actually manage to do that with few curtains.

warden · Jul 18, 2021

vedostuu said:
I tested 3D printed mount and holy crap that is sensitive to focusing. .

Considering how close your lens is to the negative I imagine if you touch the focus control at all it makes a huge difference! I know my Beseler is not designed for focusing in that minute of increments. And if your negative moves at all (from heat, etc) that will throw off focus more than it would with a normal enlarging lens. It's a fun experiment!

Using 8mm movie camera lens in enlarger

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