Koraks tinkers

Scanned to mush – The effect of CT carry-on luggage on color film

This is the result of an unintended experiment I conducted recently. A single roll of film I forgot in a bag went through a CT carry-on luggage scanner on the airport. It’s a nice opportunity to see what this single scan does to (in this case) Kodak Vision3 50D film. It’s worse than I had imagined!

Brownies get the blues – Combining Van Dyke brown and cyanotype

This sort of emerged as I was playing with, and I’m actually quite happy with what I ended up with – unintentionally. It’s a combination of Van Dyke brown prints and cyanotypes that allows for the image tone to be set at virtually any point on the ocher-cyan axis. It’s also quite easy, reasonably quick, affordable and can be done with a high degree of consistency.

A decades’ worth of brownies – Making some Van Dyke brown prints

So apparently 2025 is my 10-year anniversary for making Van Dyke brown prints. To celebrate, I made some more. Seriously though – I was making some prints and thought to snap some pics of the process while I was working. Just now as I started writing, I realized I made my first Van Dyke in 2015.

Adding it up – A new multi-channel UV integrator

I have been using a (DIY) integrator for a while to get consistent exposures on my alt process prints. Recently, I grew unhappy with the buggy nature of the device I had built, so I made a new version using stuff from the parts box.

Silicon or gelatin – Look at the pictures

When it comes to my prints, I’m never really happy. There’s friction, always. As a result, I’m always searching, and this search takes me all over the place. In this case, I find myself on that decades-old divide of film or digital. No ‘versus’ debate for me – I hope we’re all past that point. But the question is still with me: how do the different processes translate into the final print?

Shades of brown – Controlling sepia toning hue

Sepia toning is about as old as silver-based photography, and it still works as nicely as it did back then. In fact, it works even nicer since the advent of ‘odorless’ sepia toners based on thiourea. Apart from a more pleasant olfactory experience, these toners can be used to control the hue of the end result quite easily. Here’s how.

Fade to pink – a brand new FerroBlend process

I hinted at this in my previous blog when I mentioned a brand new printing process developed by Photrio user @Raghu Kuvempunagar. Let’s have a closer look at this, because it’s quite striking in its own right and I suspect it’ll open up avenues for variations as well.

Copping out – A brief foray into cuprotypes

Try everything once, or so they say. As I was struggling with a new iron-copper printing process proposed by Photrio user @Raghu Kuvempunagar, cuprotypes were brought up. And I had never made one. So let’s correct that and have a brief look at this process.

Unearthed – Running film through an old Kiev rangefinder camera

I’m not a camera collector. At the same time, if a camera literally ends up in my lap, I generally can’t resist giving it a go. This happened to a Kiev rangefinder camera that I found in my dad’s attic. So…does it work?

On a Color Mission – Comparing two RA4 color papers

With FUJIFILM being the only remaining manufacturer of RA4 color printing paper in the West, one of the questions remains how their products compare. Let’s have a look at an entry-level product in their portfolio pitched against a one of their top-level products and see what real-world differences there are.