Direct positive on normal photographic paper

Based on the recipe described by Donald Qualls here, I tried to make direct positive on paper. I had not the recipe present and did the test just by remembering the principle. The essential is to make a first development which gives negative, wash the silver (bleach), exposure of the reminding silver halides that form the positive image and develope again. So I did and I have got some pictures. I need to make some more work, Adjusting exposure and times of the baths. Also I skiped the clearing bath because I didn't remember of it.

Underexposed

Less underexoposed

I used as developer the homemade Parodinal and the bleach as described by Donald Qualls. I can't say why the well exposed pictures remained negatives and only the underexposed suffered inversion. I was just playing a little by feeling with the times and so on. Next time I will follow the original recipe and I might get better results.

The last one looks like a daguerreotype, I like it!

I have a feeling...

When I decided to restart making traditional photography, the first think I did was to buy a 5 liter jerrycan of ammonium thiosulfate, the so called rapid fixer. I intended to use selfmade developers, but at the time I thought there was no way to overcome the use of the fixer of ammonium thiosulfate, other than the unfashionable hypo (sodium thiosulfate). When I was young, I have used hypo and I knew that the time to fix was about 10 minutes. Then the brands start offering rapid fixer (ammonium thiosulfate) and hypo was forgotten.

Now, for a while, when I was still using commercial developers like R09 and Ilfosol 3, I had no problems with the fixer. But since I am using coffee (and vit.C) based developers, I am getting some annoying white spots in the positives which corresponds to opaque deposits on negatives. I discovered that washing very well the negative after the development with caffenol, there were less spots but still some.

To be sure that the combination coffee&ammonium thiosulfate was to blame about the spots I decided to not rinse in between and I had pictures like this:

Coffee+Vit.C developer + Ammonium Thiosulfate fixer

At last, I decided to use the old hypo (sodium thiosulfate) instead of ammonium thiosulfate. The time makes no difference to me. First I had to prepare the sodium thiosulfate boiling a solution of sodium sulfite with sulfur and filtering the product.

The results were very nice, no spots at all, very clean negatives, like this one

Coffee+Vit.C + Sodium Thiosulfate fixer

Going a little more professional

Yesterday I have been replacing the bellows of a Horseman 980 I bought at ebay not so expensive. The bellows were announced at ebay as fitting the horseman but they were a little too large, I hade to use some tricks but finally it is working and no light leaks were found.

The lens I am using is a Wollensack 135 mm f/4,7, in a selfmade lensboard. This lens are very good but I didn'y succeed yet to get the image totally sharp. The lens for horseman need a foccusing cam to let you use the range finder, but this one hasn't and at ebay they sell these small pieces of iron for a lot of money. Someday I build one myself.

So, before going outside, I lost a certain time to find the right position for the focus at infinity. I failed a little, the images could be better.

The horseman takes 10 pics with a 120 film loaded in the back, it may also use film sheets with the right holders.

I used this time my last developer, Caffenol Super Strong (CSS), with splendid results. No fog and no spots and very little grain too. Definitly the spots were a problem with the fixer of ammonium thiosulfate. This time I used sodium thiosulfate and the negatives are completely nice.

A hill of houses

Small expensive bridge

Along the river Lis

Adox, CSS, Shangai and Hypo

As I already told in this blog, I discovered by chance a superaditivity between Caffenol Strong and the color developer CD-4. To the new soup I called Caffenol Super Strong, or simply CSS. I prepared 500 ml of the stock solution and this is enough for 50 films, each using 10ml for a 500ml batch working solution. I am going to add this recipe to the page of recipes of this blog later on.

Looking for cheap films, I ordered some 120 films of the brand Shangai to be exposed in one of the new acquired ADOX Golf 63. I did expose the film in the camera, it was a clear day, I used the f/16 rule. With the shutter speed at 1/200s I used apertures between f/6.3 and f/11. The camera needs an adjustment in the focusing system, the photos are not very sharp.

Using the CSS, I developed the film for 15 minutes in semi-stand, then stop bath of 20% vinagre and finally a fixer made from sodium sulfite and sulfur boiling for half an hour in a glass jar. This is the Sodium Thiosulfate, it is much softer tha Ammonium Thiosulfate and it does not produce the well known white spots that I already reported before.

I think the film was a little underdeveloped (the amount of KBr is critical), instead of 15 minutes, maybe extending to 20, 25 or even 30 minutes. Next time.

Due to bad focus, some spots caused by accident handling the film and so on, I used the software to create some pieces of photoArt. Here are some:

Abandoned house

Milagres, Leiria

Reflex

Shooting against the sun

West Line II

West Line I

My first photobook

Recovering a camera for lomography

I can't reproduce the story of this camera since I bought it at ebay. I don't even know how much it costed. I think it was cheap, I am always looking for bargains. For some reason I had to take the lens out and try to repair something. This something was, perhaps, related to the reload of the shutter. But I came to the conclusion that it was not possible for me to repair it and besides a small special spring that cares about the Iris diafragm to keep closed or opened was missing or felt down as I took the lens out. I still had it working with its lens but not always. Other features like light meter or range finder where also not working. The camera stood there until...

Travesti camera

...I bought at ebay a Vario shutter for an Adox Golf 63 camera. But looking the same it wasn't, the screws for the lenses were different. But, because of the same mechanical construction of the shutter I could use the spring to repair the old shutter on the Adox. For my surprise, the new shutter could work almost well, I say almost because the speed is only one, the fastest, or in B position. And this shutter served very well the Konika body lying around. I needed only a lens for the resulting focal lenght and I had a working camera. I looked in my box of lenses and I could find a very lomographic lens but giving more or less focused images at the center. And I decided to experiment...

Bar at the beach

Portuguese fishing boat

Sunset at the beach

Surfing waves

Like a desert

Empty beach

Bridge to the beach

Collecting shells

A view to the housing at beach

'Zoom effect' of the lens

Seaguls to the waves

All 8 pictures

In the last post, I was trying to establish the formula of my new developer, Caffenol Super Strong, or just CSS. Well, I am not completely satisfied, not with the developer,  the last attempt gave a satisfactory result, but because I still can see some awful points there. I have to find the responsible.

The spots in film can have several origins, from durty baths to unwanted incompatibilities. Sulfite is a silver halide solvent but also a silver solvent. If your developing tank has silver deposits due to prior utilizations, sulfite contained in the developer may dissolve that silver which may precipitate on the film lather, at least I think so. Cleaning the developer tank with a bleach bath to remove silver is a good practice on my point of view and this will be done next time I use the tank.

At the present, I am quite sure that Ammonium Thiosulfate is also responsible for some spots, mainly when using Caffenol and Vit. C developers and bypassing a good wash between developer and fixer. I joined to my previous developer Caffenol Strong, very little of CD4 and some water (50%) and this led to the concentrated solution:

0,5% Sodium Sulfite
0,6% CD4
10% coffee
10% Vit. C

This solution, to be added to the basic bath,  is stronger than Caffenol Strong, and has half the content of coffee and Vit. C, due to the superadditivity already found. For the basic bath I used, last time, following mixtures:

4% Sodium Sulfite
4% Sodium Carbonate
0,1 % Potassium Bromide

The presence of sulfite is to lower the pH and get less grain, I aimed!

For the working solution I used 2% of the concentrate in the basic bath. I already developed a Ilford FP4 120 film, using 30 minutes at 18ºC. All 8 pictures are given below, made with my new selfmade camera with Leitz Elmar 50mm lens:

Church in Amor

Center of Amor

Falling down

At the rear side

View from the church

Another view from the church

Falling down again

Passing by, 1/200 shutter speed estimation