Sorry for the delay in replying to your last mail; more college work got in the
way, but it is all done bar an exam or two this week.
The menacing college work and dissertation were all in the pursuit of a BSc. in
Photographic and Electronic Imaging Sciences at The University of Westminster
here in London.
The dissertation was in fact a project investigating various alternative
processes from practical, historical and scientific viewpoints. As to a
suitable reward I graduate later this year and expect a less than satisfactory
grade due to leaving everything to the last minute; I will probably therefore be
suitably rewarded for my own laziness.
Back to digital negatives; I have tried oiling the paper with sunflower oil (it
was near to hand in the middle of the night when inspiration first came to me)
which works very well but have yet to try paraffin do you think this will have
any better result? Having covered the paper in oil I put it into a clear faced
acetate sleeve, this usefully serves two functions; firstly to keep oil off the
print and secondly it provides much needed rigidity to the flimsy paper neg
ensuring better contact with the print when being exposed.
Last Saturday I went looking for dots with a loupe in a kallitype made from one
of these negs and neither Terry King, myself or any of Terry's other students
could see any visible dot although the paper had a pronounced tooth which could
have hidden all sorts of ugliness.
I am slightly confused by this quote from your message:
>The story is that a fellow on this list runs a service bureau in Los
>Angeles, got some fancy new equipment, offered to send me a negative when
>I made a post about a problem I was having with a long stretch of even
>highlight (a stretch limo, in fact). Since he's in the business & has
>done work for a bunch of art photographers, including platinum printers, I
>assumed it was high end -- the first one he sent me made terrible
>blotches from the dots (not visible by eye, only by loupe), which as I
>said, I attributed to dot gain. Then he did two others, one I think with
>finer dot, the other stochastic, which I haven't had time to really work
>on yet, though a couple of prints run off quickly showed the blotches,
>tho milder....
Are the blotches visible to the naked eye or only by loupe? If they are only
visible by loupe I cannot see a problem but perhaps thats just me.
The big problem with all digital negs output using printers or imagesetters is
they are designed to produce an illusion of continuous tone using ink dots on
paper and will always be "gritty" to some extent if you look close enough. What
is the solution? I think it will come when more workers in alt-processes start
talking to the service beareau's and showing them the sort of final results
expected and achieved.
I'll send you some samples very soon
But enough of all things digital I'm off to shoot 10x8's whilst I can still use
the college's camera (without undue worry about sense and sensitometry).
Regards
Barney