You objected as follows to fixing VD/Ks by inspection:
The idea of trying to gauge from a wet print whether the "first
perceptible tone appears to be fading" is awesome. Especially since VDB
has the most extreme dry-down known to the history of photography.
The dry down Judy is what makes it work. It works beautifully. It works even
better if you overexpose and bleach back in ferri. That's how I made the ones I
showed you. Were you awed or not wishing to offend ?
You also objected to my comments on the risk of staining the negative when using
the chrome method of intensification.
I said:
> Chrome is an effetive intensifier but there are risks of staining the negs.
It
> is far safer and more effective to contact the neg to make an inter-positive
and
> make an inter-negative from the inter-positive increasing the contrast at each
> stage.
You said that you had never had staining and that at large sizes contacting back
and forth would be extravagant .
If I were working with somebody else's negative I would never dream of using
chrome intensification because of the risk of staining. I have seen students get
it wrong enough times for me to tell people how it is done and even demonstrate
it but never to use it as the prime means of intensifying an important original
negative. I had a guy turn up to an 'interneg' session with the only negative
from his WW II wedding. It was so faint that it was difficult to see if there
was anything on the film. Nobody had succeeded in making a print from it before.
During the session, using PQ Universal and FP4, we contacted it back and forth a
couple of times to produce a printable neg which printed well onto grade 5. It
was warm glow time all round.
As to cost, you can contact back and forth on quarter sheets of FP4 5 x 4 and
then enlarge to contact interneg size. Extra cost about L1 with no need for acid
or chrome salts. And no degradation of the image.
Terry King
The impossible takes until Tuesday.