First of all, the twist, I applied this technique to images I made digitally.
I have a Kodak DC40 and recently bought the DC120 digital camera. I had the
DC40 with me when I made a trip to LA and back in May. I decided that some of
the snapshots might be interesting as small Pt/Pd prints. I used a method
shared with me by Steven Hays of Denver, Colorado. It's kind of a modified
Dan Burkholder method. The drawback to the DC40 is obviously in resolution.
I scaled the images down to a 3 1/4 x 5" size at 450 dpi (they start out
756x504 at 128dpi so it was a "push" in resolution to go the 450 dpi route
with a smaller image size). I did everything else as instructed (Applying
manipulating the image, applying a platinum curve, saving a .TIF file, etc)
and created a Pagemaker 'ganging' of several files to output to my service
bureau. The service bureau was limited to 3600 dpi film (as desired) with a
maximum 200 line halftone with an eliptical dot (The original instructions
were for 225 line).
The end result is 'pretty good'...I would actually consider displaying one or
two of the attempts side-by-side with Pt/Pd prints contacted from original
4x5's. The screen gives a slight textured look that is pleasing. The only way
to see the screen is through a loupe. I definitely want to improve the
halftone resolution to better than 200 line that I had available to me.
The Kodak DC120 offers a vast improvement in resolution and I will be trying
some Pt/Pd prints from this camera's output on my next trip.
Steve Procko