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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.

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