Ned's photos with the keyword: opalux

This is part of the fortress and castle in Oslo. From near this view, you can see at least 5 different styles of stonework, from different times when the fortress was added to or repaired. I have another calotype that might show it. Turning the other way, you look out over Oslofjord and the waterfront. It is a wonderful place. I returned to this spot 4 different times during our stay in Oslo, charmed each time by the view and the gate, wall and apple tree. This did not come out as I hoped, but it illustrates something about "actinic focus" so I am posting it anyway. I wrote a lot about actinic focus with the inverted copy . This calotype has convinced me that it matters very much. When I realized I'd made a mistake, I came back the next day and tried again . The conditions were not as good ( it was windy and the sunlight failed ) but I think that one will still make a nice print. Trutat variant of a Pélegry calotype. 5x7 Eastman No. 1, Replica of Wollaston meniscus 4PM overcast but bright diffuse sunlight. LV ~13, f/5.6, 12 minutes forgot to correct for actinic focus Development: 28 August Image is faintly visible at start. 200ml of 0.7% gallic acid, added 2 drops of 12% citric acid and 4 drops of 24% silver nitrate. Seemed to come up slowly at first, even though a faint image was visible. That has happened with every one of these. Perhaps the tannic acid preservative needs to be washed off before the development really starts, which makes them seem to start slowly. It was obviously developing after 5 minutes. Stopped at 35 minutes. I waited until I could not perceive the difference between the levels of lighter and darker stonework on the far castle wall by reflected light ( still easy to see the difference by transmitted light ) and there was detail in the shrubbery.

Yes, another fuzzy-wuzzy. There will be a discussion about actinic focus at the Calotype Society soon, and I think this photograph will help. I forgot to make the focus correction on this one. I came back the next day and made one with actinic focus correction , and I think you can understand much of what I wrote below by comparing the two photographs, although the views are not identical and it was windy during the second one. "Actinic focus" means focusing the light the calotype is sensitive to, rather than the light our eyes can see. We can't see UV light, but that's what the calotype sees most. All modern camera lenses are "achromatic" and focus different kinds of light the same. This is an uncorrected lens, so different colors of light are focused differently. To correct this, I should have moved the lens 3 or 4 mm closer to the calotype. After the correction, the ground glass would look blurry, but the image would have been sharp where I intended on the resulting photograph. But first I'm going to make some comments about what I was hoping to do here, and there's something interesting. First of all, about soft focus. This is an un-coated single element meniscus lens. It has all the aberrations. The original calotypists would never have used the lens this way, they would have stopped way down, everything in reasonable focus and minimal aberrations. They would also have corrected for "actinic focus". But there is also a range of more open apertures where the out of focus areas can be quite beautiful -- and it's not really the same thing as what modern photographers call "bokeh". The transition is more gradual and smooth from the in-focus to out-of-focus areas, with more diffusion and glow; more like how a painter would exclude non-subject detail to enhance the subject or provide aerial perspective. When it's done right it can be lovely, but it's also easy to make something displeasing, and it goes against our culturally ingrained aesthetic that everything in a photograph should be pin-sharp ( even though that's not all all how we see and experience the world! ) In this photograph, I was trying to emphasize the near wall and the apple tree on top of it. I was hoping the mixed stonework on the castle wall behind would be softer but still interesting, and I was trying to render the shrubbery in front more diffuse with nice glow. After framing the scene, I used focus and rear tilt to bring detail out on the wall and tree, and really lovely diffuse highlights in the shrubbery. I made two mistakes. First, the building on the right has too many sharp details and high contrast areas, so it became very distracting. I should have moved closer and excluded it. When the soft-focus effects are in the shrubs, it can look pleasing and help the composition. When the soft-focus effects are on that building with high contrast details, it's jarring. But I do have an excuse: it didn't look that way on the ground glass! Secondly, I forgot to make the actinic focus correction. This scene does not look very much like what I composed and saw with my eyes on the ground glass. I had the front wall and gate pretty sharp, and part of the apple tree perfectly sharp ( I wanted the trunk on the right to stand out starkly ). The castle wall behind was a little soft and the building on the right was a little soft, but neither had really strong swirly or blurry areas.. just a little. I was aware the building on the right was a potential problem, but I was hoping it would be okay - mildly out of focus. This calotype appears to be out of focus everywhere, but if you look closely you can see that there is an area of sharper definition in front of the wall. It goes through the stones on the ground ( 6 or 8 feet in front of the gate ) and it cuts through the shrubbery on the right. That's my composition -- the one that included the wall and part of the tree! But because I forgot to correct for actinic focus, it is shifted forward, in front of what it looked like on the ground glass. Now here's something interesting, and I'm not sure if it is just a coincidence or something real. But the area of sharper definition in the shrubs is exactly the area my attention was on for the soft focus specular highlight glow. I carefully maximized the effect to be right there . Isn't that interesting? So when you are looking at the ground glass on the camera, the places where the highlight glow is most defined is where the actinic light is in focus. I guess that makes some sense. TLDR: because I forgot the correction, the place in the scene with beautiful highlight glow ended up being in focus. The places meant to be in focus ended up blurry. The strongest soft-focus aberrations ended up in unintended places, like the building on the right. Actinic focus correction matters a lot! And finally, I want to mention one more thing about trying to make a soft focus calotype. Looking at where the glow and specular effects are on the ground glass is probably useless. Even though I've only made a few, I've seen enough to realize that strong effects on the ground glass disappear on the calotype. Too much of what your eye sees is in red and yellow and orange light that the calotype is blind to. Our calotypes are sensitive to UV, violet, blue and a little green. But there is still some chromatic separation and some beautiful soft focus effects are possible: you can see it in the shrubbery here and in the backgrounds on the Hovedøya calotypes. I think the key will be experience and developing a feel for how the GG translates to the calotype, and that will only happen with practice.

A fellow was actually fishing on the far shore and caught a couple small bass during the exposure. Usually a calotype must be used within about a day of being prepared. This is one of the only types that uses a preservative so that it can be used and developed much later. Extensive notes below. First attempt at Trutat's variation of Pelegy calotype . 11AM Summer sun. LV 14 sky, 13 hill, 12 water. F/11 16 minutes. Eastman No. 1 5x7 First time using this camera and first time trying this calotype process. The camera was low in front of a wall I sat on, and I did not crane my neck to check the lower corners – Obviously I need to be careful to check coverage with this lens! Develop: no visible image. 75g gallic acid in 100ml DH2O, added 1 scant eyedropper ANS, and it seemed to be coming up very slowly, so I added another at about 5 minutes. After 20 minutes, it did not appear that the sky was getting darker, but the shadows were beginning to get too much tone, so I decided to stop rather than end up with low contrast. I would prefer to see darker sky and I think it needs a little more exposure next time, and then a little slower and longer development. Washed 2x10 minutes, then 2 x 10 minutes hypo, brief wash, then 3 minutes in 1% sodium sulfite, then 1+ hour wash in changes of RO water. Full details of the process: I followed the Trutat's rice water version instructions pretty closely, except no elemental iodine added to the iodizer, I sensitized the sheets individually rather than several at a time, and used gallic instead of pyrogallic development. Rice water: generally following Le Gray's instructions ( boil 7 oz. rice in 6 pints of water until the grains crumble between the fingers, before the solution gets thick and glutinous ). I don't know if Le Gray is using volume or weight for the rice, but I've done this several times now. I washed 2 slightly rounded tablespoons of rice ( Thai “jasmine rice” is what was on hand ) until the water was clear of white starch. Then I added 1 pint of DH2O and brought to a boil, stirring with the wooden spoon and checking the rice grains every minute or so until they crumble easily between the fingers. It reaches this point not long after boiling if you start with cold water and heat it up with the rice in it. I've been using a stainless steel pan and a wooden spoon, and so far no indication of contamination ( w/ salt prints or now with this process ) Filter 3 times through a cotton ball in a funnel. You might need to change the first cotton ball to finish the first round of filtering, it will have a slimy slippery feel, which will be not be there for the later cotton balls. Don't try to filter starch solutions through paper. I've used cloth but I think the cotton balls do a better job of removing the gelatinous part while leaving the very fine starch grains. This will make slightly less than 400 ml of rice water. Trutat's iodizer is 1.5% KI, 0.4% KBr, 4% lactose and 0.05% I in rice water. To make 400 ml, I added the still-warm rice water to: 6g KI 1.6g KBr 16g lactose Topped up to 400 ml with 10 or 15 ml of DH2O. Paper was Canson opalux, cut to 6x8 inches. This paper expands when wet and shrinks when dry. After it is all sensitized and dried for the final time, I cut it to size for my holders. Cutting ahead of time risks being too narrow to fit under the rails, and it likely needs trimming anyway. The margins also allow handling around the edges without worry. I also didn't bother with the little tag of paper on the drip corner, since the margins will be trimmed away. Sheets were immersed one by one, being careful to avoid bubbles ( a nice thing about opalux is that it is easy to see any bubbles underneath the paper ). 5 or 6 sheets at a time, flip the whole pack over, check for bubbles again, then iodize for 20 minutes. Remove one at a time and hang to dry overnight. The paper will curl when it dries, but can be flattened again under a heavy book. Probably the hardest part of the whole process is gathering together the curly, stiff and unruly papers, and making a stack of them to put under the book. But they do press nicely flat again... enough to be sensitized after one day and flat enough to use in the camera after a couple days. Sensitizer is 10% AgNO3, 4% acetic acid. Before sensitizing, I also made up the first wash: 1 to 2% acetic acid And the salt bath ( see below ), And the preservative: 5% tannic acid, 5% lactose. Sensitizer: 20g AgNO3 8ml glacial acetic acid 200ml DH2O 1st Acidic wash: 6 ml glacial acetic acid 500 ml DH2O Salt Bath ( as per Pelegry ): 4g NaCl 500 ml DH2O Preservative, made the day before: 10g tannic acid ( light brown variety from B&S ) 10g lactose 200 ml DH2O Heat and stir until dissolved. I filtered 3 times through a cotton balls in a plastic funnel. Compared to what I've read about dealing with dextrin, this was very easy. It has a somewhat pleasant smell that reminds me of something but I can't place it... I sensitized each sheet individually for 4 minutes, then put it to hold in a tray with the 1st acid wash. When 5 sheets were done, I then let the wash go for 10 more minutes. Then 2 more 10 minute washes, the first one with several changes of DH2O. Then 3 minutes in the salt bath Then 3 x 20 minutes wash in DH2O and finally a 3 minute bath in the preserver, and hang to dry in the dark over night. It took me a couple hours to sensitize 5 sheets. More sheets would not have taken very much longer, only about 5 more minutes each. Next day, gather the dried and curly sheets together again and press under heavy book. Over the next couple days, I turned the stack over several times and made sure the edges were being pressed ( to avoid waviness near the edges ). Finally, trim to about 1/16th of an inch less than 5x7 inches to fit into film holders. All in dark, of course. Each time I pressed the stack under the heavy book, the stack was inside an unsealed ziplock bag to help protect the paper and keep the air out. For development, I used gallic acid instead of pyrogallic, and I used my normal ANS which is about 6% AgNO3 and about 9% acetic acid. This is stronger than the 3% AgNO3 and 1% citric acid mentioned by Trutat. As noted above, next time I will try a little longer exposure and a little less ANS. Development notes: The one time I tried opalux with Greenlaw's process, I noticed the hypo turned “dark” ( later I saw that my hypo waste bottle had turned green! ) and I got terrible blisters in the paper. My impression was that the blisters appeared during washing, but I was not completely certain of that. I do always add a pinch of sodium carbonate to my hypo, to avoid H2S, and I usually fix 2 x 10 minutes, or until all visible silver iodide pale yellow is removed. This time, again the 1st bath of hypo turned dark, so I peeked with some incandescent light and sure enough it was green. The second hypo bath remained clear. The opalux stuck somewhat to the bottom of the tray and I'm not convinced I fixed completely. When the calotype came out into the light it turned a faint pink color, which disappeared during washing but was probably residual AgI on the bottom surface. In the future I will be sure to flip the calotype over several times during fixing. The problem was that my tray was 5x8 and the expanded wet paper didn't quite fit, and tended to stick to the bottom. I did not see any blisters at the start of the wash. I checked again every 10 or 15 minutes when I changed the water, and did not notice any. But after 1 hour and 10 minutes, there were small blisters visible. I am not 100% sure when they formed, because they were subtle and hard to see, but I think they formed in the last 15 minutes of the wash. Next time I will extend the sodium sulfite bath to 5 minutes and reduce the wash to 30 or 45 minutes. Strange that the blisters appear now, but not during the very extended wash sequence after sensitizing... developing the silver image must change the properties of the paper somehow. The calotype was dried between blotters, under a stack of books. I changed the blotter after a few hours, and again the next day. The day after that it was dry and very flat, and I cannot see any indication of where the small blisters were. A Greenlaw calotype would have already been fogged on the day I made this one. The prepared papers don't look any different today than they did 4 days ago ( at least under a safelight ). I can't see any hint of fog, and the extended process of making these is worth the trouble if the calotypes can be used much later and developed later too. We'll see how it does but so far it looks good. I iodized 12 more sheets – the last of my opalux supply – today.

Inverted digi-snap of calotype. I'll replace this eventually with a salt print, but it won't be until late summer.