This was the first test image I made after building my camera. Since I didn't have any film yet, I cut some photo printing paper to fit my film holders and made a paper negative.
Paper negatives can be a lot of fun. Not only are they less expensive than film, they also don't require working in complete darkness. Photo paper is not sensitive to red light. This lets you load a single-shot camera or traditional film holders and process the resulting images using a conventional darkroom safelight.
Once they are dry you can contact print them in the same manner used for film negatives. In this case though, I scanned the negative on an Epson flatbed scanner, and digitally reversed the tonal values to get this positive image.
Note that since we can only view a paper negative from the emulsion side because there is no clear base like film, the result is a "mirrored" image, which I have not corrected here. It would be easy enough to digitally flip it when scanning the negative.
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