Re: Luminosity and ease of making carbon prints.

Terry King (KINGNAPOLEONPHOTO@compuserve.com)
Mon, 09 Jun 1997 18:56:20 -0400

Message text written by Luis Nadeau

> By the afternoon, depending on the
>day, it was hopeless. Temps of 30 to 40C are not rare here in the summer.
>In the winter it's the same temperature as well, but with a - sign in
front
of it;-)

Unfortunately it is beginning to get that hot here in the summer too. I
have run gravure workshops when the water was coming out of the cold tap at
90. Ice did the trick in keeping the sensitiser and treatment water for
the carbon tissue at 55.

At the moment there is only one colour from Autotype and a lot of people do
like it. We have to show a commercial level of demand if there are to be
other colours.

Luis, you said "I never said I did not like the color since I didn't see
it". You did say that you did not like it . I wondered why as you
subsequently said that you had never seen it. I deleted the offending post
!

Not only Demachy but Puyo and others in the Linked Ring used sanguine
carbon tissue. As these images are effective there is no reason why we
should not use it today particularly as the material is so effective
itself.

I fully agree that we also need blacks. It is quite wrong to infer that
as 50 times more people make platinum prints it is 50 times easier to make
a carbon print. When good materials are to hand I would say that making a
carbon print was rather easier to make.

You say "It's all relative and it would be unfair to tell people it's as
easy as
cyanotype. It ain't.". I agree. I call cyanotype 'photography for five
year olds'. In fact an enterprising Calfornian company markets cyanotype
kits for that market.

The real reason why more carbon prints are not made is that people assume
that the materials are not available or that it isvery difficult. As it is
easy with the right materials, and if the materials were available at an
affordable price, we might even reverse the Pt/C ratio.

Terry