hagerman@friday.DEC (02/18/86)
x I did a fair amount of experimentation with the Kodak direct positive kit about 10 years ago. I don't know if it is still available, but what it had in it was chemicals to make developer, bleach, a clearing bath, and a second developer. The recommended film was Panatomic-X rated at ASA 80. Using the kit in this way gave interesting B&W slides with fairly fine grain. I especially enjoyed mixing B&W slides in with color ones of the same subject. Also, for subjects that we normally associate with B&W like farm scenes in the mid west a la the familiar depression photos, it seems almost more natural to see a B&W picture than a color one. I also tried using Plus-X and Tri-X with the kit. Plus-X works ok at a speed of about ASA 800, but I was never able to get decent results with Tri-X. There are also some films meant for printing B&W movies that are especially designed to work with reversal processing. I never tried them. For someone without a darkroom that wants to "fool around" with photography, reversal B&W is a good approach. Doug Hagerman