[alt-photo] Re: Multi-Neg Printing Methods

[etienne garbaux]

Francesco wrote:

>What I think I've stumbled upon is that Salto makes his negatives by
>separating channels rather then making negatives actually exposed for
>shadow, midtones, and highlights as I had assumed. It is these separations
>that are made into negatives and then printed which also removes the issue
>of the over printing in the mids and shadows. I don't believe Salto uses
>masks (that was my assumption at first) and the channel separation
>technique answers why he doesn't need to use masks. Also, this brings some
>light to other information that I've come across in the past regarding how
>Penn made many of his negatives. From my understanding part of his
>technique was to use filters to create a similar kind of channel
>separations which also accounts for the fact that he didn't use masks
>either. I think the key is working with the channels in negative form which
>will behave very differently in printing then negatives exposed for the 3
>primary tonal areas.

By "channels" I assume you mean color separations?  If so, I still 
don't see the need to make all the different negatives -- why not 
just combine them in the digital domain and make one composite 
negative that gives the same cumulative exposure at each image 
point?  Trivial, really.

Now, it is possible that his imagesetter/film/processing combo cannot 
produce a single negative with sufficient DR for the ES of his Pt 
process.  But still, I'd think 2 negatives would do it easily, after 
appropriate digital manipulation.

Then again, there could well be something I'm not understanding.


Best regards,

etienne