OT: PolaPan?

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Does anyone here have any experience using/processing Polaroid's PolaPan B&W slide film? I understand the emulsion is very delicate, but can produce beautiful images.

-- Chris Chen (Wash., DC) (furcafe@NOSPAMcris.com), April 16, 2002

Answers

Breathe on PolaPan or look at it sideways and it scratches, but it can give some beautiful results. The problem then becomes reproducing those results into prints without damaging the film. I'm still in the Stone Age when it comes to computers and PhotoShop, but they may just be PolaPan's salvation after all these years. I used to shoot that stuff all the time for models and just give them the slides. I still have quite a number of slides that I've never done anything with because the emulsion on them has always been so damn fragile and delicate. By the way, I used to shoot that stuff rated at one-half the normal ISO, but that will depend mostly on your equipment. Good luck with it; it's a royal pain.

-- Cosmo Genovese (cosmo@rome.com), April 16, 2002.

Cosmo:

Thanks for sharing your experience. If I do decide to give it a try, & that's a big "if," I was thinking of leaving the developed slides unmounted, cutting the emulsion into strips of 6, & scanning in my film scanner as if they were negatives. Would I be correct in assuming that the stuff is so delicate that it can't be stored in your typical PrintFile, etc. negative sleeves? If so, then I guess I'll have to mount individual slides.

-- Chris Chen (furcafe@NOSPAMcris.com), April 16, 2002.


I'm not sure about this, but it was my understanding that Polariod is discontinuing this stuff in the near future, if they haven't already. Of course, as with most discontinued products, it'll still be available for a bit as they sell off the old stock of it. Does anyone have an inside at Polariod, or more information on this?

-- drew (swordfisher@hotmail.com), April 17, 2002.

Polariod? Sheesh. It's late.

-- drew (swordfisher@hotmail.com), April 17, 2002.

Are you looking specifically for the characteristics of PolaPan, Chris? Or, are you interested in B&W slides? If the latter, consider the dr5 process, which develops numerous conventional B&W films into slides. Either neutral tone or gold/sepia tone development processes are available. Pardon the non-Leica image, but this is Tri-X in dr5 (scanned directly from the chrome):



-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), April 17, 2002.


Oops. Forgot to give you the site URL for the dr5 site.

You'll find samples of various B&W films (mouse over the images to see the alternate process tones), along with exposure recommendations. It's only processed at their NYC lab.

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), April 17, 2002.


Chris,

If you leave those babies unmounted or mounted . . . doesn't matter; thinking about them scratches the emulsion. Your best bet, I would think is to scan them immediately into your computer, then mount them and save them in Print File sleeves. Whaddya gonna do; they're fragile. Many years ago I shot some beautiful white-on-white, high- key PolaPan shots of a former girlfriend that came out just beautiful. I've kept them in Print File sleeves separated from everything else so they don't rub against anything and scratch. I imagine now you can repair any damage with PS, though, so my warnings are probably outdated to a certain extent, except that you do have to be careful handling this film after development.

I love Polaroid and use it as a "prime" film on a lot of occasions. A few years back I was going through the posi/neg stuff like there was no tomorrow (which, in hindsight, was probably smart insofar as there's some doubt about whether there's going to be any more tomorrows for Polaroid, the company, and Polaroid, the film). I've still got about 50 boxes of the PN 665 in my fridge. I shoot it almost exclusively in the npc 195---less often in my Hasselblad.

Auguri,

-- Cosmo Genovese (cosmo@rome.com), April 17, 2002.


if you are interested in b+w slides the answer for you could be the ELDIA by leitz. it is a copying device to produce 1:1 copies of your b&w negatives. just by chance i have one for sale on ebay. take a look:ELDIA

i never used it, but there is information on the web about it.

-- stefan randlkofer (geesbert@yahoo.com), April 17, 2002.


i tried to do a clickable link, didn't work. look here:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1346306769

-- stefan randlkofer (geesbert@yahoo.com), April 17, 2002.


Thank you very much, guys, for all the input. Ralph & Stefan--I'm actually more interested in the specific characteristics of PolaPan, having heard & read about its reputedly unique look. Since my output is strictly to prints & computer screens, I'm not really that interested in B&W slides per se (& I've heard about dr5 & Agfa's Scala & will continue to keep those possibilities in mind).

I'm not too worried about Polaroid's corporate problems since I could always buy a big batch of the film & refrigerate it. The biggest barrier to me using PolaPan is simply the start-up costs. I would have to purchase a used or new Autoprocessor gadget, which run about $75-110 (on top of the $12-18 cost of each roll, which includes chemistry).

-- Chris Chen (furcafe@NOSPAMcris.com), April 17, 2002.



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