The negative Film


B/W negative film follows exactly the processing procedure described above. As we saw in the previous section, it reflects the motif’s brightness pattern in the opposite direction: particularly bright areas reflect a lot of light. Deep penetration of light into the layer reflects it onto adjacent silver halide crystals, thereby creating numerous development nuclei. There, the film becomes relatively opaque due to the high proportion of metallic silver, which impedes light from passing through. The positive process balances this distorted world by allowing only a small amount of light to penetrate the dark film area, resulting in minimal blackening of the photographic paper during the copying process, leaving it white. In contrast, the little light coming from dark parts of the motif produces only a few development nuclei, and the film is almost transparent in these places. Such a negative area lets almost all the light through during copying and exposes the photographic paper accordingly.

Diagram illustrating the photographic exposure and development process of a black and white negative film: upper section shows chemical changes during exposure and development; lower section shows a negative image of a cow on a wall and its positive paper copy.
Figure 17: Sequence of the exposure and development process for black and white negative film

Next The reversal film

Main Image creation, Depth and Size

Previous The negative Film

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Since I started my first website in the year 2000, I’ve written and published ten books in the German language about photographing the amazing natural wonders of the American West, the details of our visual perception and its photography-related counterparts, and tried to shed some light on the immaterial concepts of quantum and chaos. Now all this material becomes freely accessible on this dedicated English website. I hope many of you find answers and inspiration there. My books are on www.buecherundbilder.de

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