Lately I’ve gotten hooked on working with paper negatives. There are a lot of reasons for that, probably the biggest among them is that with COVID-19 still lingering around I needed something fun and new to do that I could accomplish all by myself. Working with paper negatives isn’t all that much different from working with traditional 4x5 or large format sheet film, only it is much cheaper and a tad easier to develop considering you can work with it under a safe light.
The challenges to working with paper negatives are obvious for anyone familiar with film. Most large format film is made in the ISO range of 25 to 400. Black and white paper has an ISO of about 2 or 3. This means much longer exposures than one would normally have to contend with. Honestly this isn’t a big deal to me since no matter what I have to put the 4x5 camera on a tripod regardless of shutter speed.
Photographed with a Large Format 4x5 Camera and Ilford RC glossy paper.
The other challenge to working with paper negatives tends to be contrast. Paper negatives are inherently contrasty. Personally I tackle this in two ways. First, I dilute my paper developer significantly. This tends to reduce contrast in development a tad. Second, I just embrace the characteristic as something inherent in the medium. I’m not necessarily trying to get my paper negatives to look like regular sheet film. I want them to be slightly unique from the rest of the work that I do.