Direct Positive Paper (part 2)

I am coming back to direct positive paper tests. As you remember almost two months ago a took first few photographs on that medium using studio lighting.
Everything came out really well. You can have a look at the blog post following this link - ‘Direct Positive Paper’.

Last Thursday I decided to give it a go with natural light. I set camera in UCD campus in the middle of fantastic modernist structures photographed by me many times before (‘Forms’ series for example).
With mentioned in previous post slow speed of this paper (about ISO 3) and aperture f=45 it took about 30s to get proper exposure.
Paper was developed in Ilford Multigrade Developer.

Below are first results.

ISO 3, f/45, 30s expo - 20s dev

This is a second photograph out of two I developed. Dev process about 20 seconds (quite fast) gave the best result. Very reach tonal range  and great details.
Here is the same image developed for much longer time 40seconds. Still pretty fast as for paper dev process. As you can see however it is way too dark and also there is loss of details due to high contrast. That's why I gave it ago once more with mentioned 20 sec then.

ISO 3, f/45, 30s expo - 40s dev

I also took the same photograph on negative film for comparison purposes. It was as usually Fomapan 100 developed in Caffenol-c-m.
...the same place, settings, lens and the same camera :)

ISO 100, f/45, 4s expo - 10min dev in Caffenol-c-m

Of course negative is more versatile and with a little bit of time and experience in darkroom printing will give better result. That's for sure. 

We are focusing here however on new great 'instant' medium :)

4x5 prints

After all it is difficult (if possible at all) to judge such photographs seeing scanned images. Only viewing the print can give real feeling of what is happening with such paper. It is truly fantastic! 

weekend in St. Stephen’s Green

...yes, two days spent in the park, well...almost. That was the first time i took part in Peoples Photography Ireland. For the first time it was not only about exhibiting but about interaction with viewers as well. That’s really fantastic experience to be with people to see their reaction and talk to them.
I am looking forward to next year edition and at the same time i would like to thank all who managed to be there.

...longer exposure

My another approach to landscape photography. Long exposure coastal scapes - the only sort of landscape images which draw my attention. I was trying this before a few times as some of you (who know my flickr stream) already know.

I chose Dun Laoghaire. Very nice, diversified coastline and it’s just a few minutes by Dart form my place. Weather this time wasn’t really helpful. Too much sun, lack of clouds and wind is the first thing to avoid in such situation ;) heh...however that was the only time i could get round to it.

Film i usually use for this purpose is an Ilford Pan F Plus. Wonderful contrast and tonality range. Unfortunately i am not really happy with developing process this time. experiments, experiments... ;)