See the image above? Ok, good. That is a paper negative. It is using photo sensitive paper in order to record an image, same as film. Why am i using paper as a negative? Just exploring and experimenting. To be honest i had no idea one could do that. In pinhole photography, it is common to use paper to create a negative. And it is through image transfer that we can obtain a positive. All of these processes are just great. The more involved i get into pinhole, the deeper i get myself using chemicals and stuck under red lights. Of course, the example above is a perfect example of a bad negative and reciprocity failure. Apparently, light shifts after a certain amount of time and the effect it takes it through color. The colors start to shift from their original. Since this is black and white, no colors per se are involved but the grays and blacks all start to shift as well. In order to make up for this shift, i had to calculate the amount of extra time of exposure the paper needs in order to correct the shift. WARNING: Do Not Ask Me if there is a formula for this because although there is i figured out mine through trial and error. Below is the scanned paper negative and turned positive.
Ok. So as aforementioned, it's not a great example of a good exposure but i did say i was experimenting. I turned this negative into a positive electronically through Photoshop. But the old school way to do it is to place an unexposed paper right under the paper negative, emulsion facing emulsion and squeeze these two between glass sheets. Lastly, you'd have to expose the glass to light for about 3-5 seconds and the light would have to be opened as much as it can. (~f/2 on some enlargers?) This image transfer fascinated me but i've yet to do it since time has been of the essence for all of my other classes. I can always do it electronically so i have been saving as much time as i can.
To give you a better idea of what the image really looks like, i have drawn a sketch. But be warned, i am no good at drawing.
As you can already tell, this was not the only paper negative i tried to produce. I tried at least 5 and only 3 gave me results and two which were unacceptable and 1 which is the one i decided to show.
So now you found out what my room looks like. Believe it or not, but because the shutter in the pinhole camera i was using is f/250, the amount of light entering was almost microscopical. So i had to do loooong, i mean looooooooooooooooong, exposures. The most successful one was that of 15hrs. It was under incandescent light and i opened the shutter at about 7pm until 10am of the next day. The other exposures i did were of 2 hours and 8 hours but the negatives produced not a single microscopic reactive silver crystal. So for the third one i decided to double the last exposure and see if it makes up for reciprocity failure. And low and behold, it did though the image produced still sucks. Well i learned my lesson but i do not believe i will be employing this method for any future series. At least, not for inside shoots. I will keep them for outside shoots where hours exposures are reduced to minutes.
