RE: How many gum layers (Re: ferri sesquichlorati)
"But, I
might also enjoy a bit of belt sanding and a bit of power hosing too"
Mark, for what it's worth, my favorite new tool is a $20
air-powered angled grinder from Harbor Freight. THAT baby can really do a
number on a stubborn gum print!
-----Original
Message-----
From: Ender100@aol.com
[mailto:Ender100@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 11:02
AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: Re: How many
gum layers (Re: ferri sesquichlorati)
Katherine,
I feel like I am starting to answer my
own posts here, so here is a short and sweet summary of my thoughts on the
topic and I will leave it to others to continue the discussion.
I think
I have said a few hundred times regarding gum that I am aware that it is a
very different animal than PT/PD. You can hose it, you can brush it, you
can print multiple layers each for shadows and highlights, etc etc
etc. I agree with that.
Setting that aside for a moment,
with gum there are adjustments one can also make to the negative to
improve results, so you don't have to do quite as much beltsanding or power
hosing—that is IF you want to go that route. If you enjoy belt
sanding and power spraying, then by all means do it.
Reading back over
your posts, such as your response to Sam, where you said that each type of
negative would definitely require a different curve, I am not really sure what
your take on the whole thing is.
Certianly with a process like PT/PD or
other single printing (usually) processes, it really is quite important how
you craft your negative, just as it is very important how you manipulate your
chemistry, paper, humidity , etc. But with gum you also have other
things you can do to achieve your goal—all I am saying is that if I can get an
edge with optimizing a curve or density range, for ME, I will take that
option. But, I might also enjoy a bit of belt sandiing and a bit
of power hosing too.
Happy gum printing!
Best Wishes,
Mark
Nelson
Precision Digital Negatives -
The System
PDNPrint
Forum at Yahoo Groups
www.MarkINelsonPhoto.com
In a message dated
10/25/06 10:50:56 AM, kthayer@pacifier.com writes:
> " Otherwise, why not just start with an
image, invert it and make
> a negative of any unknown density
without a curve and keep fiddling
> with it until you get what
you want in the print."
>
> Best Wishes,
> Mark
Nelson
Well, indeed, why not. Like Keith, this is
exactly my approach and
as Keith says, it works fine. And as
Chris showed last week, it
works good for her too. Her
tricolor gum made from inverted uncurved
channels was cyan-biased,
but that's not a function of the curves,
that's a function of
the selectiion of pigment concentration of the
three pigments
in relation to each other. So I guess my answer to
Mark's
question "why not?" is, beats me! Seems like a
perfectly
reasonable approach to me.
But since Charles
posted the link for ChartThrob yesterday, I've been
playing around
with generating curves some myself, and like Keith, I
have to say,
so far I like the "no curve" approach better too.
Recently, Mark, you
said that a beginner could save a lot of time,
money, and materials
by investing in a system for generating curves,
or better yet, two
systems. At the time, that didn't make sense to
me,
because the time and materials you "waste" in the
beginning
learning to print gum are "wasted" in the process of
learning to
print gum, not in the process of generating negatives,
and you still
have to learn how to print gum, no matter how you
generate your
negatives. So I'm not sure how it would make any
difference. And
besides, the way gum works, there's
very little waste; there's almost
no print that can't be salvaged;
pigment stain is the one exception,
and curves or no curves don't
have any bearing on pigment stain.
But I didn't think there
was any point in arguing further, so I let
that thread die without
saying so.
But now, after an evening of printing value
templates, I have to say
I think the savings are in the other
direction; you save more
materials by printing gum. At least when
you're actually printing
images, you have a print to work with and
do something with, and
chances are you can do something with it,
even if you didn't get it
"right" on the first printing. But
a template of value patches is
just a template of value
patches. And if I was really going to do
this, I'd have to do
it for every single different pigment I ever
use, at every
concentration I use it at, at every environmental
condition
(humidity, particularly).... I would be doing nothing but
printing
templates for the rest of my life, and there's not a thing
you can
do with the stupid things, except generate curves. Talk
about
waste of materials! I'd rather be printing gum.
I can't say yet
whether the resulting curves would be an improvement
over the
uncurved negatives; I'm not even there yet. Will report
in
due time with a
comparison.
Katharine
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