I Love Peelings!

I was lying on the sofa watching my favourite teleshopping channel (the legendary Dr. Schulz from dermTV) when the tickling of the peeling mask in my face reminded me of the mission doc had assigned to me: to find out about the peelability properties of PX Silver Shade film, cause as we all know by now, peeling can not only prevent your images from being attacked by the evil killer-christl but also is a starting point for all kinds of eggziting analog artwork.

필링은 어떻게 하는건가요?
어떻게?

인테그럴 필름의 레이어 분리에 가장 힘든 것은 마스크입니다. PX필름의 하단과 테두리의 흰색부분을 말합니다. 그 부분은 접착제로 붙어있어 모든 것을 고정하고 있습니다.

이 문제를 해결하기 위해서는 얇은 나이프로 테두리를 돌려가면서 찢으면 됩니다.

fig 1. 뒷면에서 마스크를 분리합니다.(LLP가 도움이 됩니다)	fig 2. 윗부분을 자릅니다.

봉합을 풀고난후에는 간단하게 뒷면과 앞면을 떼어내면 됩니다.

fig 3. 레이어를 분리시킵니다	fig 4. 부드럽지만 확실하게 당깁니다.

…하지만

정확히 무엇을 벗겨내나요?

비록 인테그랄 필름에 983개의 레이어가 있다지만 필링에 필요한 개념은 딱 네가지입니다. 네가티브, 드라이 에멀전, 픽레이어, 마이라(사진위의 투명한 창)입니다.

마음대로 하면 되는 것이 아니라 에멀전 레이어의 상태가 중요합니다. 충분히 건조되지 않았다면 찢겨지고 네거티브쪽에 남게됩니다. 일부는 마이라쪽에 남습니다. 너무 말랐으면 이미지에 붙게됩니다.

PX600을 벗길때 충분히 빠르게 시작한다면(촬영후 10분 경과후),

문제 없습니다. 마스크를 제거한 후 네거티브를 벗겨냅니다. 두번째 방법을 택했을때,

그림6번의 하단을 보면 이해하실겁니다.

Read On About Freezy-Peasy Here

Discovering the

Freezy-Peasy Way!

Red/Brownisation of PX 600?

Now that I found out how much the PX600 accomodates us to fight the evil killer-christl by his high peelability, I wanted to find out if the peeling can also fight the annoying fact that PX film turns rather brownish when shot in warm temperature. It happened to be a rather hot day (over 30° celsius) when I did my eggsperiments and even when peeling a picture super quickly after shot, with this high temperature, the image turned brown immediately.

So my first idea was to develop the picture in the fridge, but I have to admit that I didn't have much suxxess with this - the pictures turned brown even if I ran the 5 meters from the couch in my livingroom (where I took them) to the fridge in the kitchen. After having wasted a couple of minutes trying to move the fridge to the livingroom, smart boy that I am, I moved the couch to the kitchen immediately next to the fridge. But even with this setup I had not much suxxess, even if I put the pic into the fridge a couple of seconds after the shot, the evil brownisation occurred. So (smart boy that I am) I figured that the temperature of the chemicals in the moment of exposure would be the crucial point, so my next attempt was to put the whole filmpack into the fridge for a couple of hours before taking the shot. To make a sad story short, also this approach didn't help much, the pictures still became brown faster than I could turn them around and fetch the knife.. with the additional disadvantage that these pre-cooled pictures were almost impossible to peel - the developing layer always tore apart when seperating mylar from negative - probably some kind of condensation phenomenon (see fig. 9) ..and the pictures were still brown! .. almost as much as my popo, that I wanted to bite in utmost frustration!

fig. 9

broken emulsion layer

But I was possessed with ambition - there simply had to be some way to avoid the brownisation! So if the fridge didn't help, the next logical step was the freezer.
I put anotha pack of PX600 into the freezer for 10 minutes and took the first shot.. the result was rather underwhelming (see upper left of fig. 10), so I put the SLR680 back into the fridge for anotha 10 minutes (didnt wanna loose a pic by taking the film out of the camera). The next shot looked promising, so I repeated the procedure a couple of times, till the electronics of the camera gave up the ghost cause of acute hypothermia (and the chemicals in the pic refused to do their work - see lower right of fig.10)

fig. 10

pictures taken with progressively frozen film
(lower right, development severely handicapped - encouraged by
means of a lighter in the area around the eyes)

I had finished the packs of PX600 I had taken home and was quite happy with the results:
I had found out that PX600 can easily be peeled to prevent the christl - and that the brownisation can be controlled by development in the freezer*
(*note for the sceptic ones: the effect is permanent - I had put the pix into the backoven for over an hour in the hope that they would peel more easily - levels of sepiasation did not change anymore)

More Fun

With the freezer!

A few hours later my wife came home. Now finally having a decent model (everybody who knows me, knows that I hate shooting my ugly face) I was eager to continue the freezer research with PX100 film.
This time I didn't pre-cool the filmpack, but tried to get the picture into the freezer as fast as possible after it had been ejected from the camera (thankgod the couch was still in the kitchen).
Everybody who has ever watched PX Silver Shade develop, knows the wondaful special effects a pic passes through during the process of development, the blue opacification dye (called "Gardinenfarbstoff") slowly vanishing, various otha colors appearing and vanishing again, the phases of solarisation when parts of the image look like inverted... quite a spectacular show. Now I was fascinated by the idea of being able to capture parts of this by slowing down the development process in the freezer and then quickly peeling the image in a state before it was fully developed.
With a bit of practice I managed to seperate the layers even before the Gardinenfarbstoff had vanished (see upper part of fig. 11)

fig. 11

developed in freezer and peeled early

The results were fascinating documents of frozen stages of development - and they were even stable (pics in fig.12 scanned 24 hours after separation) - what supercool fun!

Now having tasted the joy of freeze-peeling, I became even more adventurous. I was fascinated by the potential which the combination of slowed down development and peeling early offered and wanted to test out its limits (since the wife suffered from pneumonia due to the long time in the freezer the evening before, I had to revert to my previous model - my favourite one, as everybody who knows me knows) I played around with cutting the frozen negative, mixing layers of different filmtypes and all kind of otha groovy things that came to my playful mind.

See below for some results of my experimental rush..

fig. 13

shape of glasses cut from the negative and put back onto pic to
prolong development in this area

fig. 14

hybrid develoment - PX 100 image layer on (unexposed) TZ Artistic
negative and vice versa

fig. 15

"hybrid double exposure" - mixing image and negative layers of a
freshly exposed PX 100 and freshly exposed Spectra picture

I don't wanna go into much details about these stunts, let me just tell you that I had a huge lot of fun! So roll up your sleeves, move the couch near the freezer and start having fun too! Sometimes PX Silver Shade film might appear to be a pain in the youknowwhere, but in facts its potential to have fun and live your adventurous spirit out is enormous!

Don't throw away your PX images that you consider failures too hastily - by peeling the pic and getting access to the backside of the emulsion layer, you get a second chance to produce breathtaking art! "Draw" on the pic by scratching the emulsion or beautify your pic by applying color to the back of the emulsion..

Also emulsion lift/transfer works like a charm with PX Silver Shade. Read all the details about manipulation techniques

Here

Yours truly,