Ansel Adams put a photo in his book, "The Negative", called "Black Sun" (at least I think that's the name). This showed actual solarization on the film.

Has anyone tried to get solarization of white objects, with other things in the scene being at least semi-recognizable?

Thanks.

-- Brian C. Miller (a-bcmill@exchange.microsoft.com), July 21, 1998

Answers

Yes, I've tried, with no success. Film characteristic curves used to have a nice toe, straight line, nice shoulder, and then fairly rapidly go down again. Nowadays they have a much longer straight line, which then levels off, and only eventually starts to go down again, and then only gradually. The result is that 20 stops over-exposure is now nothing like enough to give solarisation; it need orders of magnitude more, and even then isn't effective because the characteristic curve doesn't drop enough to give a decent contrast.

Mind you, I haven't tried very hard, and perhaps there is some magic film/developer combination that does work.

-- Alan Gibson (gibson.al@mail.dec.com), July 22, 1998.