Using mylar as negative material (was UV transparency)

Karen Molloy (Karen_Molloy.PILOT@pilotsw.com)
Thu, 27 Feb 1997 10:33:31 -0400 (EDT)

>Sil wrote:
>Mylar is completely opaque to UV, so it would do more than inhibit,
>it would prevent exposure!

>Klaus Pollmeier wrote:
>Most coating's sensitivity goes quite a bit into the visible part of light,
>dichromate sensitized gelatin for instance is sensitive even to green light. So
>it won't be impossible to print with Mylar-negs. But you may expect longer
>exposure times. Last semester two of my students took xeroxed (mylar?) foils as
>negs and it worked quite well. The problem was that the images are not dense
>enough but very contrasty.

I use mylar a lot in cyanotypes -- for drawings, composting images and textures
and so on.
Results of xerox-on--mylar vary, but I find I need to assess this right at the
copy shop -- it is possible to get dense images but you have to fiddle with the
xerox settings. These days I'm testing putting mylar through my home printer to
create negatives from PhotoShop -- so far though, those negatives haven't been
dense enough, probably because I have an inkjet printer not laser printer.

Karen Molloy

kmolloy@pilotsw.com