1961's Ilford Cine Pan Film

After using a few rolls of film it seems I've found a way of exposing and processing this very old Ilford film. 

I've been compensating one stop on camera, and processing as if it was an Ilford Pan100 on my homemade Parodinal at 1+25 dilution through 9 minutes /20 degrees. Results has been very consistent, the images below were all made with a pinhole camera.

Afghan Box Camera at the Open Doors in Sao Paulo

On December the 12th and the 13th, I had the honour in participate at the first "Open Doors" event held in Sao Paulo at the beautiful Casa Ranzini. The event, which is quite popular in Europe, has started to happen in Brazil only this year and quite a few sites were open to the public view. 

I was invited by my friend, who has a photography lab at this magnificent house, to take my Afghan Box camera and make some portraits from the visitors. He gave pinhole workshops to whoever got interested in play a bit with some photo papers and chemicals.

I had some quite nice results. It was the first time I was using a graduated filter (n2) behind the lens to help getting a better contrast on the negatives. I also used his lab to produce the positives in contact print. I made exposures of 20", 30" and sometimes 40", depending on the negative density.

 

Afghan Box workshops and demonstrations

Last September was a very busy month regarding my Afghan Box Camera. I spent a couple of weekends demonstrating how the camera works to the public and making portraits. I also gave a two days workshop where I could explain in details how the camera works, a bit of the history and the most important of all...leaving the guys do some portraits by themselves. I got some really nice results!

Lambe-lambe / Afghan Box Instant camera

Last month I did quite a few tests using my Afghan Box camera, which is known here in Brazil as lambe-lambe. I'll be ministering a small workshop this month about this type of instant cameras and I'll also be doing some demonstrations with the camera so I have to be confortable when using. And nothing like hiting the streets of São Paulo with the camera and getting strangers to pose to you for a good portrait!

The pictures were all processed using my homebrew PaRodinal and fixer.

Salt Paper

I've made a couple of experiments at Sesc with Salt Paper process using the recipe of "The Keepers of Light" book (starch, sodium citrate and ammonium chloride) It's reasonable simple to make and the results are satisfatory considering the negatives I had in hands. 

These two copies below were made using digital negatives treated in Photoshop, I adjusted the curves aiming to achieve some contrast but more needs to be done. I might try too adding few drops of Potassium Dichromate onto the formula as its known to help increasing the contrast on salt papers. 

Cyanotype

Another couple of cyanotypes made from digital negatives. The first image was printed onto Hahnemuhle proof paper, the second one onto Filiperson. The developer used was acetic acid at 1% solution to work in the midtones, then I left the images in a bath of hydrogen peroxide to increase the blue tones.

Cyanotypes from digital negatives

I've just set up a bulk ink system on my cheap Epson printer because I was fed up on spending so much money on cartridges. The conversion is relative simple to make and the guys from the shop repair said that sometimes it can be done while you wait. 

Once I got my printer running, I decided to print some digital negatives so I can make a few alternative process. The task isn't really easy when it comes to cheap inkjet printers... although the costs of my prints has been reduced drastically, having a bulk system which is not from the same manufacturer means that you can't easily make a color profile. I'm having a really hard time printing in black in my case, all my prints are coming with a dark blue tone.

I've decided to try some cyanotypes couple of days ago and they came out ok... I've lost some details on the highlights and the prints had to be left in a solution of 5% hydrogen peroxide (10% volume). 

All prints were made on Hahnemuhle proof paper with a solution of 3% gelatin (leaf) average 5 - 8 minutes on artificial UV light.

Hand-titing ambrotypes

So yesterday I spent the whole doing some ambrotypes at my friend's lab for an exhibithion that's about to come to celebrate the 2015 wet plate day, which will happen in May.

I wanted to do some tests hand-tinting ambrotypes, I've seen many examples that were made at the time and as well some contemporary artists and I thought they're stunning. I know ambrotypes and ferrotypes looks fantatisc already just by themselves but I wanted to try anyway. As seen on Mark Osterman video, I added some dry pastels powder with pencils just before the varnish stage, got rid of the excess with the air blower and varnished. 

This is the result!

Pinhole images - Pinrette

A few shots taken in my hometown with the Beirette camera, which was converted into a pinhole camera. The film used is a very expired Ilford (hence the noticeable grains) I bought years ago and it was processed using the homemade PaRodinal developer.

A few shots taken in the city of Paraty, Rio de Janeiro. They're done with my Gakken Stereo Pinhole camera using the panoramic mode. I had a some problems to wind up the film and for that reason I couldn't finish an entire roll of film. At least I could get these shots taken at the local cemetery using a very expired Ilford film from the 60's.

Paraty Photography Festival 2014 - Afghan Box Camera (lambe-lambe) results.

So, these are a few results with my Afghan Box Camera (also known in Brazil as lambe-lambe) from few weeks ago at the "Paraty em Foco", a photography festival that happens every year in the Estate of Rio de Janeiro. We've set up the camera at the central square in the very pictoresque town of Paraty and the results are great, but more than that, we've interacted quite a lot with the passers by that were really interested on how the camera worked. We've had few volunteers!

Afghan Box Camera

I've spent a couple of very busy months on building and testing my Afghan Box Camera, a sort of "instant camera" from the past. The camera is basically a light proof box where, besides working as a camera, it also works as a darkroom. That's because all the  image processing is made inside the camera soon after the shot it's been taken. For this, a tray with a developer and fixer is placed inside so the photographic paper can be processed.

I've followed the brilliant work of Lukas Birk and Sean Foley from the Afghan Box Camera. If you're interested on more about this sort of cameras I highly recommend checking out the site. I've also built a Tumblr page where I've been posting all stuff related to my project: lambemovel.tumblr.com/

And here are some of the test I've made so far...