Re: Camera film for enlarged negatives?

Robert wrote:

> Does the speed of regular camera film make it a big problem
> for use in making enlarged negatives?
> Would I be better off using the Freestlye ortho film?

The high speed and panchromatic sensitivity will make life difficult, but
not impossible. First, your exposures will be very short. Just finding a
timer that accurately resolves these short times is not easy. Also,
enlarger lamps don't come on instantly. The on and off times of
incandescent lamps may be longer than your exposures, making exposure times
hard to determine and erratic. Cold-cathode lamps take a while to come on
and stabilize -- maybe longer than your exposure, and quite variable. So,
what you'd really like to do is use a lens with a shutter and leave the
enlarger lamp on (all of my enlarging lenses are shutter-mounted because I
used to do a lot of masking work). But this has its own problems -- the
enlarger needs to be completely light tight, because the film is so fast
that ANY light leakage will fog it. You also need to use a flat black
backing on the easel to prevent halation. These are not insurmountable
problems, but it is definitely more effort than using copy film.

Kodak used to make several products that were perfect for this use --
essentially, paper emulsions coated on film stock. Sadly, these are long
gone and the current crop of ortho films, which aren't nearly as good for
this purpose, are all we have.

Best regards,

etienne
Received on Sat Aug 28 14:34:17 2004