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Over the summer, I did some Polaroid Sx-70 image manipulations, using expired Artistic-Z film. (You can get the back story on that effort here.)
What started this exploration was the death of my little darkroom refrigerator, which stored a lot of Polaroid film. The Artistic-Z was one stack. The other stack is the Type 79, which is 4x5 peel-apart sheet film, 20 sheets per box. (!!) The expiration date is 2009, so I decided to see what I would get at this late date in the way of color and basic dye integrity. Being a peel-apart film, I had concerns the emulsion or dyes would have dried out and stick together, not peeling anymore.
To test this film, it seemed quickest to just load a sheet into my 545-I film holder and load that film holder into my Daylab slide printer. A slide printer lets you take any regular film slide, mount it on a holder, and project the slide's image onto a piece of Polaroid film - so that's what I did.
After exposing the Polaroid film and removing it from the Daylab, I peeled it apart after 90 seconds, and it still developed fine - good rich color! (I had to take a guess at the Daylab color head settings, which act as a mini-enlarger, but they were good enough.)
Here's a shot of the Daylab setup. This is the Daylab color head (the top) mounted on the 4x5 base. There are several interchangeable bases depending on what kind of Polaroid film you're using. This shot shows the 545-I film holder on the left, into which I had loaded the Type 79 sheet film, and also shows the 35mm slide in its little holder, that you project light through onto the Polaroid film.
So, the first piece of film developed at 90 seconds as expected. Hooray! I decided to shoot another piece and, this time, try a quick image transfer.
Easy setup: a small tray (8x10) of cool water , and another small tray of warm water to soak a piece of plain watercolor paper, which would be the receptor of the dyes from the Polaroid. I shot the second piece of film and, instead of letting the print develop the full 90 seconds, peeled it apart in about 15 seconds, then pressed the negative part (still holding the majority of the dyes) onto the damp watercolor paper. I used a small brayer to roll it flat, and let it sit for a few minutes, then picked up the paper, with the film still attached, and slid the whole thing into the cool-water tray, and peeled it off underwater.
I lost some of the dyes, anyway, as I thought might happen. Here's a shot of both of the regular Polaroids - the one on the right was my test shot in the Daylab. You can see the brighter colors from letting it develop completely. The pale one on the left is what's left after I pulled the film apart after 15 seconds, to keep the dyes from migrating over:
(You can barely see my notes on the margin of the right side print, for the Cyan, magenta, and yellow settings on the Daylab, which made a nice colorful print.)
I did another one and it was a slightly better effort than the first one:
I decided I would hand color the one on the left, since it had more emulsion left. After letting it dry overnight, I used Prismacolor pencils (wax-based). I like the emulsion ripples and folds from the water.
I left some of the lifted-off dyes, which appear as bare green patches on the print, because I like it, too. Here is the hand colored image transfer:
This shot shows how you view and compose your slide (in this case, the slide is of these flowers and bee) into the Polaroid film. The film is protected from the viewing light at this stage by a white card, which is pulled away right before you hit the orange Start button:
I felt enthused, so I decided to take the first shot, the fully developed Polaroid up above, and do a slightly different process - an emulsion lift. This process calls for a tray of hot water (around 160 degrees F.), to enable the emulsion to separate completely from the paper backing of the Polaroid, so you can literally "lift" it out of the water and onto various receptors (I generally use hot-press watercolor paper), and brayer it into place after having a play with the emulsion itself. You can tear, twist, etc., good emulsions.
Here's a picture of that set-up, showing my thermometer, the distilled water and the actual print I slipped into the hot water:
Alas! This process did NOT work at all. That expired emulsion is way too fragile to handle the high heat. What was left in the hot water tray was a lot of floating pieces of film and goo, and a paper backing with nothing left on it. *sniffle*
I tried a couple more, varying temperatures, time in the water, etc., but it all dissolved and floated away. No point in wasting more film on it - emulsion lifts are a no-go with this stuff now. It's just too old and fragile.
But overall, I'm encouraged to be able to do some of these processes again. Pretty sure some will still be less successful than others, and I may have trouble with darker dyes. But it's still making my inner alt-geek very happy to play with this stuff again.
My Daylab, which has been gathering dust for years, isn't quite a doorstop yet!
Thanks for looking! All comments are welcomed and appreciated. Hope I haven't made your eyes glaze over.
What started this exploration was the death of my little darkroom refrigerator, which stored a lot of Polaroid film. The Artistic-Z was one stack. The other stack is the Type 79, which is 4x5 peel-apart sheet film, 20 sheets per box. (!!) The expiration date is 2009, so I decided to see what I would get at this late date in the way of color and basic dye integrity. Being a peel-apart film, I had concerns the emulsion or dyes would have dried out and stick together, not peeling anymore.
To test this film, it seemed quickest to just load a sheet into my 545-I film holder and load that film holder into my Daylab slide printer. A slide printer lets you take any regular film slide, mount it on a holder, and project the slide's image onto a piece of Polaroid film - so that's what I did.
After exposing the Polaroid film and removing it from the Daylab, I peeled it apart after 90 seconds, and it still developed fine - good rich color! (I had to take a guess at the Daylab color head settings, which act as a mini-enlarger, but they were good enough.)
Here's a shot of the Daylab setup. This is the Daylab color head (the top) mounted on the 4x5 base. There are several interchangeable bases depending on what kind of Polaroid film you're using. This shot shows the 545-I film holder on the left, into which I had loaded the Type 79 sheet film, and also shows the 35mm slide in its little holder, that you project light through onto the Polaroid film.
So, the first piece of film developed at 90 seconds as expected. Hooray! I decided to shoot another piece and, this time, try a quick image transfer.
Easy setup: a small tray (8x10) of cool water , and another small tray of warm water to soak a piece of plain watercolor paper, which would be the receptor of the dyes from the Polaroid. I shot the second piece of film and, instead of letting the print develop the full 90 seconds, peeled it apart in about 15 seconds, then pressed the negative part (still holding the majority of the dyes) onto the damp watercolor paper. I used a small brayer to roll it flat, and let it sit for a few minutes, then picked up the paper, with the film still attached, and slid the whole thing into the cool-water tray, and peeled it off underwater.
I lost some of the dyes, anyway, as I thought might happen. Here's a shot of both of the regular Polaroids - the one on the right was my test shot in the Daylab. You can see the brighter colors from letting it develop completely. The pale one on the left is what's left after I pulled the film apart after 15 seconds, to keep the dyes from migrating over:
(You can barely see my notes on the margin of the right side print, for the Cyan, magenta, and yellow settings on the Daylab, which made a nice colorful print.)
I did another one and it was a slightly better effort than the first one:
I decided I would hand color the one on the left, since it had more emulsion left. After letting it dry overnight, I used Prismacolor pencils (wax-based). I like the emulsion ripples and folds from the water.
I left some of the lifted-off dyes, which appear as bare green patches on the print, because I like it, too. Here is the hand colored image transfer:
This shot shows how you view and compose your slide (in this case, the slide is of these flowers and bee) into the Polaroid film. The film is protected from the viewing light at this stage by a white card, which is pulled away right before you hit the orange Start button:
I felt enthused, so I decided to take the first shot, the fully developed Polaroid up above, and do a slightly different process - an emulsion lift. This process calls for a tray of hot water (around 160 degrees F.), to enable the emulsion to separate completely from the paper backing of the Polaroid, so you can literally "lift" it out of the water and onto various receptors (I generally use hot-press watercolor paper), and brayer it into place after having a play with the emulsion itself. You can tear, twist, etc., good emulsions.
Here's a picture of that set-up, showing my thermometer, the distilled water and the actual print I slipped into the hot water:
Alas! This process did NOT work at all. That expired emulsion is way too fragile to handle the high heat. What was left in the hot water tray was a lot of floating pieces of film and goo, and a paper backing with nothing left on it. *sniffle*
I tried a couple more, varying temperatures, time in the water, etc., but it all dissolved and floated away. No point in wasting more film on it - emulsion lifts are a no-go with this stuff now. It's just too old and fragile.
But overall, I'm encouraged to be able to do some of these processes again. Pretty sure some will still be less successful than others, and I may have trouble with darker dyes. But it's still making my inner alt-geek very happy to play with this stuff again.
My Daylab, which has been gathering dust for years, isn't quite a doorstop yet!
Thanks for looking! All comments are welcomed and appreciated. Hope I haven't made your eyes glaze over.
