Being direct and positive

What with this lockdown thing I thought it would be a good opportunity to dig out that box of Imago Direct Positive paper that's been in the back of my film fridge for a while.  You load it in the 4x5 film holder as usual and shoot it at about ISO 3 and you end up with a positive image...so it's a one-off, no negative is produced.

There are, apparently, a couple of ways you can approach it, depending on the look you're after.  Using it straight out of the box and you'll get a very high contrast print.  Alternatively, pre-flash the paper for a second or so under the enlarger and you'll get a more normal result.

In for a penny, I thought, and pre-flashed the first sheet.  Well, the first challenge was to make sure I was pre-flashing the correct side of the paper - no easy feat in the dark.  Unlike 4x5 film, there are no notches to guide you, so it's a case of feeling both sides of the paper.  It's a gloss coated paper, so eventually I convinced myself that the slightly smoother side was the business end.  I'm working in complete darkness since it's supposed to be sensitive to normal orange safelight (red is OK, apparently) - more of that later, by the way.

So, first sheet pre-flashed and loaded and off we go to set up the Sinar.  My wife had collected a few pine cones the other day so I put some in a glass bowl on the kitchen table.  In hindsight, it wasn't a great choice of subject matter...

My first, forgettable, direct positive print

Even with pre-flashing it's a bit black-and-white and I'm not getting much detail in the cones but I was just pleased to get anything at all.  Developing and fixing, by the way, was done in open trays and just to see what happened I did have the orange safelight on, but faced away from the trays.  Everything seemed OK with regard to that - which, as you will see in a minute, just lured me into a false sense of security...

Anyway, so far so good - something was coming out on print.  On to the next experiment - no pre-flashing, so I was expecting a more contrasty look.  I set a tray of old film clips on the floor next to the patio doors and lugged the Sinar over.  As you can see, it was a bit precarious - there's a lot of weight in that setup and whole thing wasn't very far from toppling over - which would have made a heck of a mess, I can tell you:

The setup (phone snap)

There's a lot of trust in that tripod head!  It's the proper Sinar pan-tilt head (which are a bit like hen's teeth, with a price to match, unfortunately) on my old 1970s Slik tripod but it held firm - although I was tiptoeing around it very carefully, it has to be said.

So, shot taken and off I headed to the darkroom ready for the masterpiece to reveal itself.  Now here's where things didn't exactly go according to plan vis-a-vis the safelight.  It didn't take long to see that something was amiss - the print was completely fogged.  Hmm...did I load the paper the wrong side up?  Let's try that again...   Load paper, take shot, develop print.  At least it's a quick turnaround.  Same result...completely fogged.  By now I was really scratching my head.  The only difference with the way I'd approached the first print was that I hadn't pre-flashed the paper.  Could that make a difference to the paper's sensitivity to the orange safelight?  Only one way to tell.  Off I went again...load paper, take shot, develop - but this time in complete darkness, so I'm sloshing the print around in the tray and counting for a bit and then I'm fishing it out, rinsing it and fixing it.  Lights on.  I get an image!   It looks a tad under-developed but the image is there.  OK, it's looking better, so go again...load, shoot, develop for a bit longer and here's what came out:

A more memorable direct positive print

So...from what I can tell, pre-flashing the paper seemed to reduce or eliminate the paper's sensitivity to my orange safelight.  I'm afraid my knowledge of chemistry is insufficient to offer an explanation as to why.  Normally, pre-flashing paper results in getting a little detail in the highlights where there was none previously and, combined with less exposure, better separation in the shadows, but it does reduce overall contrast since you are essentially fogging the paper.  (The reduction in contrast can of course be overcome by using higher contrast filtration).  So...perhaps the fact that the Imago paper was already fogged with white light means that it was no longer (or perhaps just less) sensitive to the orange safelight. 

One final observation.  It was quite a pleasant change to work with paper rather than film - without a negative the turnaround is a lot quicker - 2 minutes in developer and the same in the fix and you're done.  Not quite digital quick, I grant you, but not far off ;)