Hi: I have found another cheap ortho film that can be used to make large continuous tone negatives. Its 1/4 the cost of Kodalith and maybe 1/2 the cost of Arista APH.
I have two very nice negatives made with this film. More to come soon. I want to be able to make alternative process prints from large pinhole negatives. I have been using printing paper negatives, and waxed paper negatives (from laser prints of scanned printing paper negatives) with little success. I needed a local source of inexpensive large format film. I think I have found it. Importing films into Canada is too expensive. It's Kodak Camera 2000 CGP film . See : http://www.kpgraphics.com/USC/products/film/conv/index.html and http://www.kpgraphics.com/pdf/products/Film/camera/TI1995.pdf It comes in sizes from 8x10 inch to 30X40 inche and in rolls up to 60 inches wide. I'm working with 18x22. This is a film designed in the printing industry to produce large full page half-tones and so on. It is supposed to be available world wide. I am able to buy from a local printer supply shop quite ch1eaply. I'm almost in the middle of no-where so others should be able to get this film easily as well. I tried two developers Dektol diluted 1:10 and Dave Soemarko's Low Contrast developer (LC-1) diluted 3A:3B:4water See: http://members.aol.com/fotodave/Articles/LC-1.html The negative developed in Dektol was still very contrasty. The negative processed in LC-1 was nearly perfect. It was able to hold all the shadow detail and all the hightlight as well. Other people have used Sprint developer diluted 1:29 with success. see: http://www.sprintsystems.com/ I am going to try using some other developers as well. The film has an effective ASA of 6 when processed in Dektol and an ASA of 1, yes thats 1 when processed in LC-1. Makes this film only practical for use outdoors in good lighting. I have also been testing this film for making enlarged negatives and interpostives for alternative processes. It appears to be very easy to control and manipulate its contrast range by changing the dilution of developer. LC-1 makes very evenly developed normal contrast negatives. diluted Dektol still makes contrasty negatives. Other people have had success using Arista APH film from Freestyle in LA, but I found it was too expensive to get this film in Canada. Freestye has a US$100.00 minimun order - translates into $160.00 Canadian, plus shipping, duty, brokerage fees GST etc... This was too expensive for me. Kodak CGP film seems to work much like Arista APH. Anyone like myself living outside of the US that would like to produce large pinhole negatives should consider Kodak CGP film. Kodak has a list of regional offices worldwide. One could contact one of these to find a distributor on your area of the world. Its more likely to be sold in a printer supply shop that a photography store. Agfa also has a line of ortho film," Litex" that may work as well. We are making plans for a big 40"wide pinhole camera :) Gord --------------------------------------------------------- Gordon J. Holtslander Dept. of Biology [email protected] 112 Science Place http://duke.usask.ca/~holtsg University of Saskatchewan Tel (306) 966-4433 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Fax (306) 966-4461 Canada S7N 5E2 ---------------------------------------------------------
