Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/04/27

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Subject: [Leica] Need film and paper recommendations for an "old school" style project.
From: lmc at interlink.es (Luis Miguel Castañeda)
Date: Thu Apr 27 00:02:38 2006
References: <DF77D143-BB70-48BC-854E-5CEE62B52532@xmission.com>

On 27/04/2006, at 3:59, Gerald Homeyer wrote:

> This summer one of my classes is photo journalism, and I'm wanting  
> to shoot images a bit "old school", or retro style, just to be  
> different.  [...]
> Any and all input is gladly welcomed.

I will use any old style film like FP-4, HP-5, Tri-X, foma, forte,  
adox or whatever else I will be comfortable, so T-grain or  
chromogenic are discarded, but, depending what kind of "retro" look  
you are willing to emulate you might want to expose and process it  
differently. If you're going to use pyro I suspect that you're aiming  
to a wide range of tones and perhaps a slight warm tone in the print.

I'd suggest to expose the film 1 stop below the maker's nominal speed  
(100>50 iso) and cut the development about a 20% which will provide a  
lot apparent grain less while contrast will remain untouched [if the  
contrast is normal, if it's low stick with makers indications].

For the print I'd stick with fomatone MG papers, which apart cheaper,  
are slow and warmtone (more ease to dodge/burn) and I'll process them  
with something like diluted Neutol or Eukobrom (I don't use dektol  
but surely it will do the trick too) to keep the warm tone under  
control. Expect very very long development times. An after treatment  
with selenium will give you even more control over the final print.

Those tips should put you on the track of first half of XX century  
look, and if you print on the chamois variant of that paper it will  
provide some photogravure look that isn't common at all nowadays.  
I've posted an example here [ http://tinyurl.com/o95a2 ] if you want  
to check.

Hope it helps, and have fun :)


Saludos
-----------------------------------------
http://imaginarymagnitude.net/blog/



Replies: Reply from kd7olf at xmission.com (Gerald Homeyer) ([Leica] Need film and paper recommendations for an "old school" style project.)
In reply to: Message from kd7olf at xmission.com (Gerald Homeyer) ([Leica] Need film and paper recommendations for an "old school" style project.)