I'm aware of the technique of making paper negatives and then contact printing them, but has anyone ever tried exposing paper in the camera, developing it, scanning it on a good flatbed scanner, and then reversing the scan to a positive in an image manipulation program?

What would be a reasonable ISO speed at which to expose paper?

-- Tony Galt (galta@uwgb.edu), April 06, 2002

Answers

Paper is very slow when exposed in camera. EIs of 5 to 10 are normally used. I've only done it with VC paper and the negatives didn't look that good, too much contrast. I've since read that graded papers work better for paper negatives but I haven't tried them myself.

-- Brian Ellis (bellis60@earthlink.net), April 07, 2002.

I tried this using Ilford Multigrade. The results were interesting, though there was way to much contrast even with holding a #1 contrast filter over the lens. The scanning part worked well on an Epson 2450. I think I rated the paper at about 1.5 to 3 with the filter.

-- Larry Gebhardt (larry@gebhardts.net), April 07, 2002.