black & white slides

film: Eastman Direct MP 5360 (often known as the red stuff). This film is only available in 2000 foot rolls but we bulk load it down into easier to handle 100 foot rolls which are similar to all our other bulk films. Because it is orthochromatic it can be handled under the red 1A safelight. It is a medium contrast continuous tone film, therefore, it can be used for both high contrast line art and lower contrast material such as photographs which include tones of grey.

Since it is fairly low in contrast, you must be careful since white-out and cut-and-paste edges will show up. Sometimes careful xeroxing (followed by erasing) of your original can solve this. The film will loose some shadow detail so be sure that your artwork can tolerate this. Avoid significant or important dark areas in your pictures.

Because the film is orthochromatic you should be careful when photographing originals which are not black & white. Red coloured areas will appear much darker and blue much lighter than you would expect. A strong red area will come out black and a blue sky will appear as though white.

exposure: 1 second @ f4 (with the two orange 650 watt lamps). MP 5360 is one of the slowest films made this century. It doesn't have a published speed rating, but if it did it would be about ISO 0.05. This is, however, no problem when it is used in a camera mounted on the copy stand with bright lights.

processing:

You will need 200 ml of each solution at 20^o C. The film should be agitated by inversion twice every 30 seconds during development and fixation. After use the developer is discarded, but the fixer is returned to the bottle for reuse. Be careful to rinse the film twice to wash out the red dye otherwise it will get in the fixer.

The camera viewfinder accurately shows the image as it will be on the film, however the slide mount will mask about a millimeter on each side. Therefore don't let your artwork get too close to the edges of the frame. The 35mm slide has a height to width ratio of 2:3 so ideally your artwork should also be 2:3. If not, opaque silver tape is used to mask the final image on the film.

The film should be cut exactly between frames. The finished slide should be positioned with its dull side down in the L shaped brackets on the grey half of the Gepe slide mount and then the white half is snapped down onto it. The finished slide goes into the projector tray correct reading left to right but turned up side down. Try to run through the tray with a projector prior to your talk to make sure that all the slides are oriented correctly.