Paper Negatives

[Reinhold]

I needed to check the light fall-off on my 285mm Wollaston Meniscus lens when used on an 8X10 camera.
I had no 8x10 film, so I shot a test photo on a paper negative.
Worked fine, told me what I wanted to know.

Then I thought...
Why don't folks talk much about paper negatives?
It's a great way to explore photography with minimum cost.
A quick search for "Paper Negatives on APUG yields only a smattering of posts buried in random "negative" hits.

How about a dedicated forum on this simple old process that goes almost unnoticed?

Here are three paper negatives (scanned and inverted, just for a quick test)...

The Fence gates were shot using my 285 Wollason on a dull Pacific Northwest day.
The bookshelf photos were done using my soon-to-be-anounced 335mm Wollaston Meniscus lens.
Both were shot using a beat-up 8x10 Kodak 2-D
On paper negatives, of course.

Reinhold

www.Re-inventedPhotoEquip.com

[zumbido]

Everything in my gallery is a paper negative, except the oldest two which were on the Ilford direct positive paper.

Paper negatives do get some treatment over in the pinhole forum, one of these days I should get a large format lens and try my hand at crossing over.

[jnanian]

hi reinhold

i would rather shoot paper negatives than film
as you said, it is a great way to explore photography !

i am looking forward to running out of film completely, selling off everything
but a LF camera and just shooting paper ...

great pix by the way !
john

[tomalophicon]

Hi Reinhold,
here is a link to the APUG paper negative group page.
http://www.apug.org/forums/groups/paper-negative.html
Tom.

[daniel2002]

hi reinhold

i would rather shoot paper negatives than film
as you said, it is a great way to explore photography !

i am looking forward to running out of film completely, selling off everything
but a LF camera and just shooting paper ...

great pix by the way !
john

Yeah that's what I do as well, I just prefer it that way.

[gandolfi]

I use it often - loving it.

there's a thread about it on LF forum... not to chase people away from here, but at least it is really analouge....

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...aper-negatives

[himself]

I've been thinking about trying it recently and noticed that there does seem to be little information floating around.

anyone got any good tips for cutting it to size?

[delphine]

hi reinhold

i would rather shoot paper negatives than film

John, I am curious, why would you rather so?

Best

Delphine

[jnanian]

hi delphine

for me at least, paper negatives are as close to "old" photography
that we can get in the modern age we live in ... that is without reverting to
an alternative process like wet plate &c. the look and feel of a paper negative image
just speaks to me more than film images ... and when making long exposures
it almost feels like ( looks like ) you are capturing the souls of your subjects ...
with portraits .. landscapes &c ..
besides all the kind of artsyfartsy stuff i just blurted ... film is VERY expensive compared
to old maybe fogged paper that people want to sell for pennies on the dollar.

john

[vpwphoto]

I worked on a thesis project with nothing but paper negs in my 4x5 back in 1990.

BTW... do not use a yellow contrast enhancing filter with paper... silly mistake I made... It's the same color as a safe-light.