Slow and Steady

Post-Script: This optical print was a bit too dense in the shadows for my taste, there being details in the eyes on the negative not visible herein; tomorrow I'm going to make several more prints from the same negative with a more pleasing tonal rendition, and get one off in the mail for my friend. I am pleased with the out-of-focus background, as the lens was set to f/8 for 1/4 second exposure for the negative. I've also changed my contrast filtration for the print paper from 5 to 3.5.

One possibility for the inconsistency in my printing was the camera being located under my north-facing porch, pointed toward the house, with the printing easel pointing toward the north light; I was standing adjacent to the camera, with my arm in the camera's sleeve, and might have been blocking some of the light from reaching the paper negative on the easel. Tomorrow I must remember to close the inner door, remove my arm from the sleeve and stand behind the easel while exposing the print, thus not blocking the light. The newer Fuji lens is also being used with a shutter release cable, which should make this easy to manage.

In this test image above, the thin white border on the inside of the oval opening is from the dark gray rubberized magnetic sheet. The dark gray tones in the matte seen in the print are from a white adhesive paper covering this side of the magnetic sheet (all the tones being reversed during the printing process); were I to flip the matte over, I can get a much lighter tone on the border area from the dark gray rubber on the back side.

Here are two more test prints, whose paper negatives were made a week or two ago using the older Kodak Ektar 127 lens stopped down and multi-seconds long exposure times, today printed optically using the newer Fuji lens and the magnetic oval matte. I do like how the oval matte isolates the subject from the background while lending a classic 19th century appearance to the image.





Typecast via Smith-Corona Silent.