U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: fogged digital negative?

Re: fogged digital negative?



Gregg,

My experience is that you can use digital negatives a number of times until the get scratched or you do something that wrecks them.  I've used them up to 10 times and have not noticed any problem from the exposure to UV light.

If I understand correctly you used this negative before and it sounds like it picked up moisture from the coated paper this time.  Did you notice having to peel the two apart?

Newly printed negatives will look "frosted" when viewed from the non-emulsion side until they dry a bit.  This is very pronounced right at first.

The 2200 inks take much longer to dry than the current inks in the R2400.  As Jon mentioned, you can give the negative a boost in drying with a hair dryer without damaging it, as long as you keep the hair dryer moving and don't overheat the negatives.

For the 2200, I think the negative would cure in a couple of hours on the original Pictorico and in less time on the Ultra Pictorico.  An R2400 negative on Ultra is cured in about half and hour the the density remains stable after that.

The R1800 negatives take quite a while to cure and are prone to picking up dust during printing and right after.  The 2200 and current inks don't seem to gather dust at all.

I always let my negatives cure emulsion side up.

Mark Nelson
Precision Digital Negatives
PDNPrint : Precision Digital Negatives
Mark I. Nelson Photography
In a message dated 4/12/08 3:28:45 PM, gregg@roanokesound.com writes:


I was printing some cyanotypes today and one of my digital negatives 
seems to have "fogged".  I've printed with this negative 3-4 times 
before, with fairly consistent results.  But today it added a dark 
ring around the print.  When I looked at the negative, it looked OK on 
the inkjet side, but the other side had a strange, silvery fog to it.  
The effect was to lighten the negative and print out darker around an 
area about 6 inches in diameter.

Is this a normal problem for a digital negative - a short life span?  
Or did I do something wrong - maybe use it too soon after printing the 
negative.  I don't remember how long I waited before using it to make 
a print.  But I've used it several times over several weeks.  I'll 
make another negative, but just wanted to check here to see what I may 
have done wrong.  The negative requires a 9 minute exposure for the 
cyanotype and paper I'm using.  I'm printing with a UV lightbox that's 
around 26 x 20 inches or so, and about 4 inches from the bulbs.

- Gregg
 










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