Not sure how many of you traditional darkroom people have done this, but I learned this school in yesterday, and would like to experiment with this a bit more... A paper negative.... using printing paper, in this case Ilford Multigrade pearl, cut a strip long enough to fit in behind the shutter curtain of your camera. Make sure you do this in the darkroom, or the paper will be exposed. This paper has an ISO of 5.... so it was shot at f/5.6 @ 1 second. Develop the paper negative as you usually would develop a print. When it's dry you can than mount it on the neg holder of your enlarger and make a print..... exposure times will be much longer. These @ 90 seconds. You can try mounting the negative both ways.... you can see the difference in sharpness... just depends on the look you are going for. Here's the negative...

I am, therefore I create.......
--- michelleamarante.com

And here is the prints.... this one the neg was face down in the enlarger... makes a very soft print.

I am, therefore I create.......
--- michelleamarante.com

and this face up.... I think.... scratches in this one are visible...

I am, therefore I create.......
--- michelleamarante.com

Very cool. This reminds me of something that I was going to try, but never did since I don't have access to a darkroom.

Here's my thought process:

Take a digital image and invert the colors. Print the result to a transparency. Take the transparency into a darkroom and make prints from it as if it were a piece of film negative.

My thinking was that I could print digital prints to "traditional" paper for those people who insist on silver gelatin prints instead of "giclee" prints.

Anyone ever try anything like that?

-Taltos (who is now thinking this probably belongs in another post so as not to steal Michelle's thunder)

I wonder if that would actually work? Sounds like an interesting experiment though!

I am, therefore I create.......
--- michelleamarante.com

...hmmm One could make an 8X10 negative by reversing in Photoshop. Then print on the inkjet (on rice paper???) Then contact print...

i was thinking of doing something like this, with regards pinhole photography but never got around to doing it because i didn't fully understand the process and i forgot all about it...lol. it' something i'd like to do....

Pictures appear to me, I shoot them.   Elliot Erwitt

'chelle - we do something like this in the newspaper industry sometimes. Special paper film ... big 30" x 25" sheets of it (big enough for one doubletruck page). Kind of cool. Taltos - Hmmm ... I kind of get the feeling it wouldn't work because the ink would be opaque and no translucent. Would think it would tend to look like a 1-bit b&w image with no gradation. If you did halftone like dots that might work. Misha's sounds like an interesting technique that you might work really cool for some artistic prints. Sort of like a Polaroid transfer. There are a few ways they do it in the labs - printing digital images on traditional papers. I think the most popular way now is to use a system that uses LASERs to project the image onto the paper. Then everything else is done as you normally would if you had printed a negative. -=>Donald