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Sensitive material, Films |
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Monday, 23 August 2004 |
Finding film is a problem in ULF, and sadly, with the advent of digital, it's one problem that is probably
going to get worse before it gets better.
Currently, Ilford and Kodak provide special orders of film larger than the "normal" 8x10,
but especially with Kodak, there are minimum orders which are usually quite large. One way to go about that is to form buying groups, which is
one of the aim of this site to regroup ressources and people at one place. Smaller alternative companies also offer sheet film in large sizes,
Begger, J and C and Maco offer larger sizes of black and white "standard" films.
Color film in those sizes is not an easy option, unless you do your own processing by hand, since film processors are not usually built
to handle such large sheets. With transparencies that might be possible, but the cost of transparency film this big is prohibitive.
For people who want to shoot in color, one possible alternative is to shoot ilfochrome directly in the camera. The main advantage of this
is that processing is relatively simple and that ilfochrome paper tends to be rather forgiving, having a wide exposure latitude. Shooting paper
negatives is one of the best way to test a new camera, but on the long run, paper negatives are not easy to print, if they are larger than 8x10,
they are not easy to scan either, since few flatbed scanners are made to handle larger that letter-size paper, and they are often very contrasty.
One cost cutting alternative is to use lith film, which, when processed "normally", yield high contrast line-art for lithography, can be
processed in dilute paper developper to yield continuous tone negatives, which also have the useful characteristic that they can be handeled
with safelights in the darkroom.
And then there are, of course, alternatives, as in alternative processes, dry plates, wet collodion, that kind of stuff, this is an area of
historic exporation into little used processes, but ressources like the Photographer's Formulary carry many useful chemicals. One excellent book
in this area is "The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes" by Christopher James, which also covers some of the contact printing processes
that are the hallmark of ULF photography.
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