#direct positive

Large Format Direct Paper Positive

The other day, I shot the last of my Harman direct positive paper, and it turns out that it’s on back order. So, I went on a search and found some nice Ilford multigrade paper, pre-cut to 4x5 inches, on B&H. Fortunately, where the Harman stuff was $18 for 25 sheets, this stuff is $175 for 1000 sheets, so a major price cut. I’ve also figured out ways of reducing contrast, namely filtering the light via colored filters, to reduce how blown out the sky gets, and with pre-flashing the paper. Pre-flashing is a technique used in producing paper negatives, in order to reduce contrast. I’m going to give it a go when I get my paper in at the end of the week. These are the last three, and a pretty good representation of my overall success with this medium so far. About a third have been really nice, a third have been a bit off but okay, and a third have been pretty poor. I think the main issues have come from the difficulty to control contrast because of the paper being mostly sensitive to blue and green light, and that I haven’t diluted my developer enough. So, round two of this experimentation will hopefully prove to be more successful. But either way, it’s cheap enough to shoot that even with a 1/3 success rate, it’s still cheaper than 35mm film.

regards croisés, horseman 970 [harman direct positive], photography by aurélien boyer.

testing Harman direct positive paper today, it’s better than i expected to be honest with you..

on the curb, horseman 970 [harman direct positive], photography by aurélien boyer.

I gave my Calumet 4x5 a go today, and it worked! Except…. I’ve read that the Ilford paper I decided to use was 6 ISO, but it’s definitely 3 ISO, or my developing time is too long. But when you’re developing for 60 seconds, it’s a bit hard to gauge. On the next run, I’m going to meter for 3 ISO and shoot that, and see what it gives me. So far though, I REALLY like the results. The sharpness looks pretty nice on RC paper, and once I get the exposure times figured out, I think it’ll look even better. I’m still working on how to clean up the prints, as the Dektol developer I’m using tends to leave little bits on the prints (as it comes powdered). I’m thinking I may switch to a liquid developer. We’ll see as time goes on, for now the experimentation will keep going.

Perseverance is key, right? Well, these didn’t really come out like I expected, all except for the photo of the truck. The first one of the tree branch ended up being very overexposed (I made it look a bit better in Lightroom but the print itself is a bit too bright). Then the last two are very underexposed. The problem this time was the light conditions I was shooting in; high contrast environments don’t work too well with high contrast film (sometimes they do, but not this time). Still, the clouds are nice. Next time I shoot, I’m going to try to not go out half an hour before sunset. That might help a lot. It’d also keep my exposure times under 10 seconds, which would help a lot, too.