Using a "cloud filter" with Instax monochrome

Jimskelton · Feb 1, 2023

I thought I'd try making the sky darker by using a Polaroid cloud filter (orange) with Instax monochrome film and here's what I got:

it seemed to basically lower the contrast a lot. Has anyone else tried an orange or red filter with Instax monochrome? I understand Instax monochrome isn't truly b&w, but colour negative film with dye couplers which are monochrome (correct me if I'm wrong). I'll have to try this on Polaroid b&w film...

xya · Feb 1, 2023

You are perfectly right about the "monochrome" film. I tried the same and I had similar results. It seems as if any Instax film, colour included, has different ISO depending on the amount of light. It's 400 ISO in low light, 800 ISO in average light and 1600 ISO in sunny situations. Getting close to the right exposure increases contrast. A slight under-exposure helps sometimes. A red filter was slightly better than an orange one.

Jimskelton · Feb 1, 2023

xya said:
You are perfectly right about the "monochrome" film. I tried the same and I had similar results. It seems as if any Instax film, colour included, has different ISO depending on the amount of light. It's 400 ISO in low light, 800 ISO in average light and 1600 ISO in sunny situations. Getting close to the right exposure increases contrast. A slight under-exposure helps sometimes. A red filter was slightly better than an orange one.

Your observations regarding ISO in different lighting situations is interesting. I shoot a lot of photos in low light, and also find I have to meter at a lower ISO.

blee1996 · Feb 2, 2023

Maybe compared to real film, the Instax/Polaroid has a much shorter dynamic range that is linear, and quickly hit the reciprocity failure. So we need to compensate for that either in low light or very bright light.

ic-racer · Feb 2, 2023

Can you post the comparison picture; the one without the filter.
If there is no color component it is a true B&W film. I use it too and get true B&W images.

Jimskelton · Feb 3, 2023

ic-racer said:
Can you post the comparison picture; the one without the filter.
If there is no color component it is a true B&W film. I use it too and get true B&W images.

Here's a comparison:

The whites are grey and the blacks are grey. Almost like filtering out the orange prevented the full picture from developing. The wispy tree near the center almost disappears.

Here's an article with other comparison photos: https://emulsive.org/reviews/film-reviews/fuji-film-reviews/fuji-instax-mini-monochrome-worlds-first

My impression with Instax monochrome film is that the blacks aren't as black as they could be and aren't a true black but have some tint to them. And I thought I read somewhere that it isn't a true monochrome--that instead of using singlular panchromatic halide crystals, it uses separate R G and B sensitive halide crystals which all develop "black." Problem is I can't find where I read that so if anyone has any info on this, that would be great.

Paul Howell · Feb 3, 2023

A polarizer might work better.

ic-racer · Feb 3, 2023

That filter is probably 50 years old. Are you sure it is clear and clean? I'd give more exposure and try again, looks under exposed.
Even the one without the filter looks low contrast. What camera are you using? Is the lens clean?

When I compared the color to the monochrome, the monochrome did not seem to have rich blacks. So maybe that is as good as the film gets.

Donald Qualls · Feb 3, 2023

blee1996 said:
quickly hit the reciprocity failure.

I just had that thought the other day, too -- it would explain so much about the way the film loses shadows in good light as well as the above-mentioned phenomenon of film speed varying based on light level. I've understood from reading and examples that the reciprocity limit on Instax is no longer than 1/10, but what if it's actually 1/100 or 1/200?

Jimskelton said:
instead of using singlular panchromatic halide crystals, it uses separate R G and B sensitive halide crystals which all develop "black."

So essentially just a mix of color couplers in each layer instead of only the ones that match that layer's sensitizers. Makes some sense in terms of minimal line changes between color and monochrome. I wonder how Polaroid handles this?

I've seen that the monochrome prints look much better when the exposure is "just right", too -- more so even than the color material, at least in my Mini 9 camera. Looks like I'll have to try a pack or two of monochrome in my LomoGraflok.

Jimskelton · Feb 3, 2023

ic-racer said:
That filter is probably 50 years old. Are you sure it is clear and clean? I'd give more exposure and try again, looks under exposed.
Even the one without the filter looks low contrast. What camera are you using? Is the lens clean?

The 50-year-old cloud filter works fine with 400 speed b&w film and does what it's intended to do. I used a converted Polaroid 450 (with clean glass all around) to take the picture. I can be reasonably certain that increasing the exposure with the cloud filter will probably make more trees disappear. The blacks are already not very black with the filter.

If you take Instax monochrome pics, maybe you could try yellow/orange/red filters to see what kind of results you get and post them here. Although the reviewer in the emulsive article wanted to be enthusiastic about Instax monochrome, you could tell his enthusiasm was muted, especially with the pictures he took with the orange filter.

Jimskelton · Feb 3, 2023

Donald Qualls said:
So essentially just a mix of color couplers in each layer instead of only the ones that match that layer's sensitizers. Makes some sense in terms of minimal line changes between color and monochrome. I wonder how Polaroid handles this?

From what I understand with how Polaroid colour film works, exposed silver halide crystals block the dye underneath, preventing it from migrating to the surface where it forms the picture. I don't think they work like regular colour film with dye couplers. This alleviates the need for a bleach/fix step. So, for example, exposed red-sensitive silver halide would block its complementary dye colour beneath it (cyan) from diffusing to the receiving layer, allowing both yellow and magenta dyes, which form red. I presume Fuji Instax colour film works the same (though it's exposed from the rear).

So with Instax monochrome film, instead of having yellow, magenta, and cyan dyes underneath the different layers of RGB sensitive silver halide, it would only have black dyes. I'm not sure if that's how Fuji does it, but maybe that's why filtering one colour out lowers the contrast, and especially dmax. I'll have to load my SX-70 with Polaroid b&w and try out the cloud filter to see whether it reacts the same.

Polaroid b&w instant pack film worked quite differently. Exposed silver halide developed fairly quickly and became metallic silver, preventing it from dissolving. The unexposed silver halide dissolved in fixer (the gel reagent was essentially a monobath) and diffused to the receiving layer, which was coated with the right chemicals to turn it back into metallic silver.

ic-racer · Feb 3, 2023

Jimskelton said:
The 50-year-old cloud filter works fine with 400 speed b&w film and does what it's intended to do. I used a converted Polaroid 450 (with clean glass all around) to take the picture. I can be reasonably certain that increasing the exposure with the cloud filter will probably make more trees disappear. The blacks are already not very black with the filter.

If you take Instax monochrome pics, maybe you could try yellow/orange/red filters to see what kind of results you get and post them here. Although the reviewer in the emulsive article wanted to be enthusiastic about Instax monochrome, you could tell his enthusiasm was muted, especially with the pictures he took with the orange filter.

450 is nice, I have a 250 but don't have the orange filter. Though I expose instax with my Horseman in which I do have orange and red filters, but have not tried them with the instax monochrome yet.

Donald Qualls · Feb 4, 2023

Jimskelton said:
I presume Fuji Instax colour film works the same (though it's exposed from the rear).

it seems to me that Fuji (and formerly Kodak) instant films couldn't work just the way SX-70 and later Polaroid integral films did, by blocking dyes -- because they'd have to expose through the dyes. That would give a film speed more like the old Cibachrome/Ilfochrome dye destruction process (hint: the paper was black before development) rather than even faster than Polaroid's "600" films. I'm sure they use some kind of dye migration (through the white opacifying layer), but I don't think it's the same. Everything I've read suggests that the only reason Kodak lost the patent suit to Polaroid back in the '80s was because the judge (and jury?) didn't have the technical knowledge to understand how the Kodak/Fuji process completely avoided the Polaroid patents. Exposing from the back was an effect, not a cause.

I'm not sure if I'm remembering this from reading it somewhere or just thinking this is one way it could work, but I think Kodak/Fuji instant films work by dye binding -- colorless couplers in the emulsion form dyes with the developer, but the dyes bind to developed silver; where they aren't bound, they migrate through a few layers to wind up in the final receptor layer to form the image we see. Or maybe that's what you meant in your description of the way the Polaroid materials work...

Jimskelton · Feb 6, 2023

Donald Qualls said:
it seems to me that Fuji (and formerly Kodak) instant films couldn't work just the way SX-70 and later Polaroid integral films did, by blocking dyes -- because they'd have to expose through the dyes. That would give a film speed more like the old Cibachrome/Ilfochrome dye destruction process (hint: the paper was black before development) rather than even faster than Polaroid's "600" films. I'm sure they use some kind of dye migration (through the white opacifying layer), but I don't think it's the same. Everything I've read suggests that the only reason Kodak lost the patent suit to Polaroid back in the '80s was because the judge (and jury?) didn't have the technical knowledge to understand how the Kodak/Fuji process completely avoided the Polaroid patents. Exposing from the back was an effect, not a cause.

I'm not sure if I'm remembering this from reading it somewhere or just thinking this is one way it could work, but I think Kodak/Fuji instant films work by dye binding -- colorless couplers in the emulsion form dyes with the developer, but the dyes bind to developed silver; where they aren't bound, they migrate through a few layers to wind up in the final receptor layer to form the image we see. Or maybe that's what you meant in your description of the way the Polaroid materials work...

Ok, that makes sense. This would be a much simpler solution since you could theoretically do this all in one layer. I think Polaroid integral film had 6 emulsion/dye layers.

So, in trying to conceptualize why an orange filter reduces contrast like the above photo, maybe because filtering out orange reduces the amount of black in the picture overall.

Donald Qualls · Feb 6, 2023

Jimskelton said:
you could theoretically do this all in one layer.

Not for a color image, but for B&W you could (like XP2 doesn't need three or more color layers). I was thinking they'd run the line the same as for color, just switch the dye couplers in all the color layers to "all", so every layers produces black. That would be the smallest change in the line, hence why the lower-demand monochrome doesn't cost several times more than color (only about 30% more, as I recall).

Using a "cloud filter" with Instax monochrome

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