some 6×9 contact prints

These are all on old (mid 80s I would guess) ORWO BS-1 paper. That paper is very difficult to keep from curling up while it dries. I should probably get some kind of press. But I also find that it results in very nice prints without much effort. The modern Ilford multi-grade RC paper I usually use is much more finicky and much more sensitive to exposure time variations. This isn’t very scientific but the ORWO paper just feels like it wants to do a good print.

Especially when exposing it a bit too long – the ORWO paper gets darker but without losing details where the Ilford would just turn black. (I think “ORWO BS-1” is the low contrast version, so it might just be that).

6×9 cm is on the small side for photos, but still very much usable without a magnifying glass. Reminds me of very old (1910s or so) photo albums – which makes sense because most of those would be contact prints from 6×9 box cameras, at least around here in Germany. The Plaubel Makina I used makes much sharper pictures, of course. So as a physical artifact these are kinda fun – they look like ultra high resolution historical photos. At least in person – on the scans one can zoom in far enough to see that they are not actually *that* sharp, really.

This is dark, maybe a little bit too dark. But it’s also closer to what I wanted this to look like. I find these sort of tones to be difficult to do with just scanning the negative directly. (a much brighter direct scan of this negative is in the last post)
this is still not the greatest picture ever taken but it looks better here than with my direct scan
the duck again 🙂
and some obligatory Berlin things. This is very dusty/dirty but I kinda like that.
bird

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