Comparison between Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown

Cor Breukel (cor@ruly46.medfac.leidenuniv.nl)
Tue, 12 Nov 1996 11:36:06 +0100 (MET)

In exploring new fields in Alt-photography I tried VDB, it's a lot of fun
trying these new things: "instant" results. I observed the following
things. Initial tests with the same neg., same paper, same exposure times
showed:

_VDB is faster (roughly 1 "stop") than cyanotype.

-VDB showed a longer tonescale than cyano (can also relate to the "faster"
VDB, I have yet to try longer exposure times with the cyano print).

-After fixing (1 min.) and 20 min washing the VDB looked wonderfull (as
most prints do when wet..:-( ), but after drying the nice print
became considerable (too) darker, I did not observe this effect that
prominent with cyano. (I use H2O2 before final wash)

Any comments/advice/other points?

And in my attempt in combining different processes: Am I right in
presuming that, chemically seen, there mustn't be much problems in
combining VDB ande cyanotype (Cyano over VDB or VDB over Cyano. or no
difference)?

Thanks in advance!

Cor Breukel
http://ruly70.medfac.leidenuniv.nl/~cor/cor.html
"The Infrared Gallery"
http://ruly70.medfac.leidenuniv.nl/~cor/ir-gallery.html