Category: Film
A stolen camera
Tacita Dean on Film
Large format photography with paper negatives
I get a lot of questions about how this large format photography thing works. Here’s a short explanation of the process. The photography that I do with these large format cameras is very similar to the way photography was at it’s invention (minus the corsets and top hats.) Cameras that look like mine first appeared...
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MQ Base, a flexible black and white photographic print developer
MQ Base is a three-part photographic paper developer based on metol and hydroquinone (MQ). The developer is in three parts to maximize its flexibility. Follow the instructions below to mix the stock solutions. Then combine varying amounts of MQ Base, carbonate, bromide and water to make these tray-strength developers: Separating the accelerator (carbonate) means that...
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Is perfect scene reproduction necessary?
Today I’m looking at images from The Mobile Darkroom, a project by Shane Arsenault and Natalia Barberis. They’re shooting Harman Direct Positive, a photograpic paper that produces a positive image directly without needing a negative, in a 16×20 view camera. (Their site is down currently, it was at https://www.themobiledarkroom.ca). Arsenault and Barberis have me thinking...
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Laurent Girard, master printer, dropping science like beat poetry
Laurent Girard is a master black and white printer based in NYC. I just discovered his astonishing blog, A Printer’s Life. I’m not going to try to tell you who he’s printed for. The list is too big to comprehend. He writes like beat poetry. It’s frantic. Here’s a taste. “then the developer, i don’t...
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Characterizing Instax Mini, part 1: the setup
Inspired by Steve Yedlin‘s work with cinema film, I’m going to try to characterize the look of Instax film. I’ll then apply the look of that photochemical process to digital photographs. This project will be ongiong as I dig through the data and build a model to simulate the film. In order to understand how...
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Steve Yedlin and display preparation
Cinematographer Steve Yedlin has been doing some super cool work on how to prepare digital images so they look like they were captured with film. Maybe you’ve heard of him, maybe you haven’t. I knew his work from Brick and Looper even though I didn’t know his name until recently. I’m very much looking forward...
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