U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: matte black paint pen

Re: matte black paint pen


----- Original Message ----- From: "Ryuji Suzuki" <rs@silvergrain.org>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 9:13 PM
Subject: Re: matte black paint pen


From: Richard Knoppow <dickburk@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: matte black paint pen
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:35:35 -0800
The best generally available light absorbent paint I've
been able to find is Krylon Ultra-Flat-Black.
I need to get one of those.
I think the paste-on flocking is better and there are some
hard to find specialty paints but this stuff is relatively
cheap, works well, and is available in most hardware stores.
The surface causing reflection is the opening edges of a slit
shutter in Horizon Perfekt camera. This US$500 piece of Zenit
camera has so many small flaws, and I am working out hacks to
solve them.

The rotating lens platform is equipped with a set of rear
slits to make a shutter. This is made from a black plastic,
and the slit edge is straight cut, not even roughened. This
edge is causing reflection that makes long tails as the
shutter sweeps, whenever there is a street light in the
scene. There is no space or access to place flocking. Also
there is no access to roughen the surface with sand paper. I
tried to roughen the surface with a solvent mixture (heptane
and xylene) but this stuff melts to make a shiney surface
again. I really barely have enough space and time (there's no
good way to keep the shutter open in the middle of the
rotation range without holding against the driving mechanism)
to apply something on cotton swab.

http://wiki.silvergrain.org/wiki/index.php/Horizon_Perfekt

This is the only camera that made me feel like I should shoot
color again. (and indeed, I bought a few bricks of color film.)

BTW, this is a very good looking web site:-)
If the flare is coming from a relatively sharp edge you may have problems suppressing it because there is some refraction there. I discovered a similar problem in my Rolleiflexs. These cameras have internal baffles to reduce flare from light reflected from the insides of the camera box. I discovered that there were flare lines at top and bottom from reflections from the edges of the baffles. They are coated with a vert matt paint which appears to have some sort of flocking in it, nonetheless the reflection is there. I tried touching up an edge with the Krylon paint, it made no difference. I don't have an answer for this.
I have had success with the Krylon paint in eliminating reflections from the interior of view cameras. In particular, my ancient Agfa/Ansco cameras have a deep rebate just inside the film mask. This can cause a reflection along the edge of the film. The Krylon paint pretty much eliminated this.
I can see the flare streaks you are complaining about quite easily. I wish I had a sure fire answer. However, try the paint, it may just do the job.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@ix.netcom.com