Exposing Paper, Fixing, No Developer

[kevin_v]

Hi, I noticed (and I'm sure it's nothing new) that photo paper when exposed to sufficient amounts of light will darken (pink/red/purple) and, if put in fixer without developer or stop, will stay like that. So, I've started trying to expose the paper using an enlarger to get an actual image, however, I'm having problems with the "sufficient amounts of light" part. At the widest aperture, enlarged only to 4x6 from 35mm film, it takes 20 minutes to get even the faintest hint of the dark parts of the image. Has anyone experimented with this? If so, can you give me an estimate of how long an exposure might take with respect to a normal (with developer) exposure. Any other tips would also be appreciated.

 

[Dwig]

Hi, I noticed (and I'm sure it's nothing new) that photo paper when exposed to sufficient amounts of light will darken ...

Sufficient amount of light = approx 2-10 minutes is full sun with the negative clamped in contact with the paper.

I did this as a kid when Dad "did a whoops" (read: turned the white light on in the darkroom without closing the box of paper) and left me with a supply of paper that wasn't any good for anything else. I would use either my father's 5x7" or my grandfather's 2x3" contact printing frame along with various found objects, often leaves, as the "negative". Google "rayogram" to get an idea of what my creations looked like. Rayograms were what Man Ray called his work of this type, though I believe he was always developing out his papers rather than printing out.

Long ago and far away..."print out" papers were made specifically for this purpose. Modern "develope out" papers will still work but give notoriously odd colors. You'll find it best to use a fixer with either a mild hardener or no hardener. The acid hardeners will bleach the image somewhat. Back in the day, when this was a normal technique, fixers were generally just pure sodium thiosulfate, then called "hyposulfate of soda" and hence our slang term "hypo".

 

[KenR]

Thats how William Henry Fox Talbot made his first paper negs in the 1830s- took quite a while to expose things to obtain an image - then he figured out how to speed things up with developer to bring out the "latent" image.