Traditional Photography

Unit 15

FilmCoated with a gelatin emulsion that has extremely small microscopic silver halide crystals

The sizes of these crystals actually determine the contrast, resolution and how sensitive the film is.

The modern colour film consist of around 12 different layers

Medium Format/35mm

Basically it is a type of film gauge commonly for motion pictures and chemical still photography

35mm referes to the width of the film even though the width isn’t exactly 35mm they can be between 34.95 and 35.01

Taking the photo Contains a gelatin

emulsion with Silver Nitrate as one of the chemical in it.

When light hits the silver nitrate it makes it into metallic silver (otherwise known as a latent image)

So when you take the photo the light will bounce of the target into the camera and the image the light produces will be captured on the film

Depending on how much light hit parts of the image will be lighter or darker

Processing Film The lights have to be

out as total darkness as exposure to light will effect how the picture will look are dark room like you see in old shows

Wind the film onto a reel and put it in a developing tank

To clean the film water or a non-ionic wetting agent to rinse and left to dry after that

Developing

Developer is added: A liquid that grows the silver in the image until

they are visible Agitate for 2 – 6 mins

Add stop bath (generally acetic acid or citric acid )Add Fixer:

This removes unused chemicals from the film (the silver halides)

Wash and dry the film (more detail on previous page)

Negatives

Negatives is what the photo is referred to once it has been processed as the lightest area appear darker in the photo

Positive

The photo appears close to what the original scene.

Can be colour or black and white.

E.g the top left image on the right

Negatives use

We can use them to make printed photos

This is done by projecting the negative onto a photographic paper with a photographic enlarger

Making Prints

The process is incredibly similar processing film We use paper with silver compounds in (just like

film) Enlarging the photo is the first step in the process

using either the contact process or Develop Stop Fix Wash, Dry and Finish – in old shows like some

older Simpsons episode or even in Chucky they hang the photo up at the top of the room as warm air rises it will dry it quicker

Enlarging By placing the

negative in an photographic enlarger and projecting it onto a piece of photographic material such as glass or filmfor a fixed time (10s – 2 min) depends on the power of the enlarging agent.

Adjustments

Similar to how you can burn and dodge images on Photoshop this is based of the actually adjustments that can be made on real photos plus the additional adjustment of the contrast which is saturation

Burning Giving bits of the image more light – makes them darker

Dodging Shading bits of the image – makes them lighter

Contrast Different types of paper and developer allow contrast to

be changed

Processing

Agitate the paper in developer, till image appearsMove to stop bath trayAgitate in Fixer trayWash and Finish

Finishing

When finished with the developing there one last step which is to add effects to it such as pressing on a glossy coating or textured surface to make it look nicer or cropping to get rid of parts of the pho that aren’t needed and take away from the focus. Another finish that can be used is mounting it

Colour

Much the same but takes place in total darkness as the colours are more affected on the outside light then black and white.

Enlarging is complicated because corrections are made by changing the enlarger’s light colour meaning it is a lot more pricier as you can’t just use one light for a lot of