Continuing my experiments: I read that you can use old fogged printing paper for making paper negs. I have a few boxes, dated from 1985 through 1993, that a friend gave me. Paper from the oldest box, when developed without exposure, yields a grey that would be around about Zone three on the scale - pretty good for rendering everything in dark shadows! Not much use for printing though.
However the theory is that a bit of fog will help tame the contrast, just like a pre-flased exposure. So I tried a sheet from each of the boxes. Paper from the youngest box, from 1993, has provided a pretty reasonable result.
These images are from the scan of the paper negative; an original and one inverted in Photoshop with adjustments. The light grey border of the first one shows the degree of fog on the paper - that's the unexposed part of the paper neg which is supposed to show "paper white"!
The paper neg:
and the same image inverted and adjusted in Photoshop:
I've yet to try contact printing any of these to give me a proper darkroom print - maybe tomorrow. 🙂
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