Anyone thats been around my new apartment lately knows that I’ve been shooting 8×10 with some unusual materials for negatives. For those of you whom aren’t quite sure what that means, I guess you’ll have to come over and have your portrait taken! Its a great process with a camera from the 50s, paper and x-ray negatives and lenses from the same era. I may even ask you to stay in the same place for, oh ten minutes if we’re running low on light or try to blind you with a huge strobe. All kidding aside, the results are spectacular.
I shot this image of my friend Eric on our back deck on a sunny day. Its exposed on Kodak Full Speed x-ray film, which is only sensitive to blue light. The tones came out well, though I need to invest in a real film scanner as opposed to hanging negs on my venetian blinds! One caveat with x-ray film is that scratches extremely easily and has an emulsion on both sides – so its not quite as sharp as single emulsion films. But hey, when your negative is as big as a sheet of paper, its not too much of an issue!
I’ve also been shooting paper negatives, more on that later.