I’ve been continuing my experiments with making paper negatives the last few months and I finally graduated to working with a person instead of landscapes.
I’m really pleased with the initial results though I won’t deny there are some challenges.
Anyone who has ever worked with paper negatives know that the effective ISO is incredibly slow. With this image I was metering the scene with an ISO rating of 2. Such low ISO ratings mean very slow shutter speeds - a full two seconds in this case with the lens wide open at f/5.6 on the view camera. The model I was working with was very good at sitting still but poses were more or less limited to situations where she could sit down very close to the source of light.
The second challenge is the ever frustrating battle with contrast. Paper negatives are extremely contrasty and while that sometimes looks great with landscapes, it looks less great far less often with people. I mitigated this by developing the paper in VERY diluted developer which seems to have done the trick pretty well. The developer recommendation from the manufacturer is 1:4 and I diluted down to 1:25. I may even try a dilution of 1:50 next time.
All in all however, this is not a bad start!