Re: Rough Early Mid-Tones and Highlights
Michael, I was doing a bunch of these side by side test strip thingies with different dilutions of A and B and water and such, and inadvertently found that when I used too much solution I got that mottling/grainy result. Check and see if the ones that are mottling have solution "blooms" (a watercolor technique term) on the edges of the coated area where the solution is pooling and blooming back into the area. Or just try and use as minimal solution as you can and see if it improves. That discovery made me change my coating technique, because before that I geared my coating to using the most solution possible, expecting to have deeper blues that way (following the double coating theory). I discussed this issue a year ago on the list so maybe check back then, last January-February--I also had the white speck issue, too. The students' prints were totally speckled, and part of that was due to Tween use, which I did not teach this semester. But that is another topic. The mottling is a real problem when doing nice flesh tones with gum over cyanotype--the person looks like they have leprosy. Silly me--I thought I couuld continue adding gum layers to cover up the mottle but it doesn't work very well. Chris ----- Original Message Follows ----- From: Michael Koch-Schulte <mkochsch@shaw.ca> To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca Subject: Rough Early Mid-Tones and Highlights Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 07:08:00 -0600 >Can someone give me an explanation of why highlights and >early mid-tones in my cyanos (and other iron processes for >that matter) are not as smooth as the later mid-tones and >shadows. It's not my negative, they're also rough on my >stouffer wedge too. 20, 30, 40 per cent are consistently >mottled and rough while 50 per cent onward are nice and >smooth. I'm using 50:50 A 20%:B 10%. Thx. > >~m > Assistant Professor of Photography Photography Option Coordinator Montana State University College of Arts and Architecture Department of Media and Theatre Arts, Room 220 P.O. Box 173350 Bozeman, MT 59717-3350 Tel (406) 994 6219 CZAphotography.com |