U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: Kirkland redux and diginegs for BW

Re: Kirkland redux and diginegs for BW



Eric,
His new paper is different than his old--it is about a stop faster, tho I do not know of the manufacturer of either. He still has 8x10 and 11x14 and when he does a "press run" of it, it costs him $35,000! I was using the old yesterday in the darkroom, but the new was what I experimented with at Penland.
Chris

----- Original Message ----- From: "EJN Photo" <ejnphoto@sbcglobal.net>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2007 11:55 AM
Subject: RE: Kirkland redux and diginegs for BW


Chris, It is good to know that David's paper is still available. I had
written an article about using his paper for regular silver printing for
Photo Vision magazine back in 1999, or 2000. It is a wonderful paper. Green
and blue are the color we look at in MC printing. Cold light heads like
Aristo make this easy to see however you can use the opposite color as well
magenta and yellow. As the MC papers developed, the colors of the gels also
changed. If you look at gels from the 70's and 80's they are quite different
in color than those from the late 90's.

Printing acceptable B&W prints from color negs got much easier with the
newer papers as well.

Besides being a great bromoil paper, David's paper also works great for
those that still like to hand color their silver prints. I liked it better
than the Agfa 118 surface but his limited size, up to 11x14, kept me away
from using it all the time. It tones extremely well with sepia and selenium
toners too!



Eric

Eric Neilsen Photography
4101 Commerce Street, Suite 9
Dallas, TX 75226
214-827-8301
http://ericneilsenphotography.com

Skype : ejprinter> -----Original Message-----
From: Christina Z. Anderson [mailto:zphoto@montana.net]
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2007 9:28 AM
To: Alt, List
Subject: Kirkland redux and diginegs for BW

I have absolutely no idea if the following interests anyone but
if you are
making diginegs for doing bromoil (an alt process) it should I
would
think...

1.  After a full day in the darkroom yesterday I can report
that Kirkland
cheapy ink jet paper is just fine--it prints as sharp an image
as does
Pictorico which I printed side by side--not the white Pictorico
which hasn't
come yet but the clear, which I can use successfully on David
Lewis' bromoil
paper being a slow enough paper but it is pretty ineffectual on
Ilford MGIV
which is extremely fast.  Wow was that a long sentence.
Needless to say  I
was surprised that the paper negative was as sharp as
Pictorico.  Don
Bryant's link to another cheap ink jet paper--not as cheap as
Kirkland at 12
cents a sheet (his is 40 cents I think) but it may be thinner
even than
Kirkland and hence a better, maybe, digineg product for those
who don't have
Costco around.
http://inkjetart.com/photo_papers/cheap/index.html

2.  But I also discovered another interesting thing which
didn't occur to me
until printing a VC and a graded paper side by side.  I can
admit I have
never used a graded paper, preferring either Ilford, Berger, or
Forte VCs.
The Ilford MGIV VC was pretty darn grainy (I was printing tonal
palettes a
la Mark Nelson, hence squares of uniform color).  I assumed
that was normal
with diginegs until I printed the graded paper and suddenly the
grain
disappeared.

At the same time I also noticed another thing.  I had made up 4
tonal
palettes on one page to assess different color choices at once
to save
time--and when the chosen color moved toward Magenta, the total
relation of
tones switched within the tonal palette on the VC paper but not
the graded
(highlights got whiter and darks got darker).  And so I finally
realized
what was going on.  Printing BW we use yellow filters for low
contrast,
magenta filters for high contrast, and this is true of printer
inks, too, on
a variable contrast paper.  The yellow and magenta dots of ink
were not only
producing the grain because the paper is responsive to those
colors
differentially (in a chosen color that uses both of these inks,
such as
red), but it was producing a higher contrast image in total,
the more I
moved toward magenta in my tonal palettes.  None of this
happened on the
graded paper.  These are two reasons I will probably stick to
graded paper
when using diginegs.
Chris
_____________________________________

Christina Z. Anderson
Assistant Professor, Photo Option Coordinator
Montana State University, VCB 220
Box 173350
Bozeman Montana 59718
406.994.6219
CZAphotography.com
_____________________________________