Terry wrote/amended the following on 5/30/96
> > Desk top bubble jets can give negatives on A4 typing paper that produce
better
> > gum prints than I have seen from the strange obsessionists. Gum can be
forgiving
> > enough to enhance such a negative. It is one of the advantages of gum. 'Good
> > enough for gum' is not necessarily a pejorative comment, but it often is,
from
> > the ignorant.
>
> What kind of resolution? I'm having trouble printing high-end digital
> negatives because my style of printing on smooth paper has no forgiveness
> -- a small amount of dot gain (which does happen) and bingo, measles.
> Have you got one of those desk top negatives on A4 paper? Can you make a
> copy & send it to me?
It was Barnaby Cox 'wot done it' not me, but he is busy writing his dissertation
at the moment so he probably want see this until next week, but he did say how
he did it on the list recently.
Well I've written the dissertation so now a can add my tuppence worth to the
debate, for details of the printer, resolution and set up see my posting from a
couple of weeks ago Re: Inkjet negs (or something like that).
I've spent the weekend playing with the printer and trying to sort out some
problems associated with it; it all seems to be going rather well -more details
when the problems are solved or I'm driven to distraction by them.
When I wrote that the results were "good enough for gum" the main point was
regarding the density range not the fundamental resolution. The printer works at
a screen frequency equivalent to about 150 lpi but because it produces random
dots rather than a regular screen it is very smooth and unobtrusive.
The resulting prints have a lack of biting sharpness which is probably due to
the paper diffusing the lightsource, but this hides the dots so helps matters
somewhat.
If you would like a sample neg to play with I'd happily send one or two over.
Regarding your experience of "high-end" digital negatives I'd be interested to
know how you go about producing them, most of the stuff I've seen written about
the subject seems to go about the process in a somewhat unecessary manner.
When I get the chance I'd like to experiment with Stochastic screening
techniques such as Agfa's CristalRaster. An English outfit are using such
techniques to produce four colour carbon prints to much acclaim over here.
Does anyone else have any experience with this technique?
Barney.