Godfrey
somewhat colored
Thank you Helen, and thank you to all the rest who sent me PMs and emails about it. 🙂
Washi-120 W is fun stuff, if a bit laborious to work with.
When making photos, you have to deal with not only the face that it is slow (ISO 3 to 6 processed as I do in Ilford MultiGrade paper developer), but also that it is orthochromatic with a steeply different response curve as the color temperature of the light varies from noon sunlight to tungsten.
Then, when processing, the recommended method is open tray ... and you better design a pair of proper clamps to hold the ends of the strip flat because the rice paper has NO structural integrity at all once wetted. I don't have a darkroom, so I've come up with the methodology of using a Kodacraft 120/620 tank (you know, the one with the long plastic "lasagna" ribbon that holds the negatives apart): this seems to do a decent job of keeping the washi paper semi flat but you need to do a bit of pre-soak and careful agitation so that the film develops reasonably evenly. I hang it to dry in the shower stall and again, I had to make little flat clamps to hold the ends while drying so it didn't curl in on itself and become unusable.
Scanning it and rendering it is equally fun, using both transmission and reflection scanning. Exactly how dense the negative is affects which method produces "best" effects, and given how tricky exposure is, it's often best to scan both ways to see what you can see. Then of course you have the usual invert, gamma correct, etc etc.
Talk about adding complication to your life! But I really love it when all comes together just right and does the job ...
😀 😀
I have a number of these I'm just getting around to doing the reflection scans. Before I can do them, I need to have them all sit in a heavy book for a few days to get as flat as I can make them... LOL!
onwards! 🙂
G
