Thankyou to all who wrote, I received a couple of nice
replies publically & privately.
First off, I moved into pyro for a different "look". I shot
almost 99% 4x5 inch B&W right now, mostly as a hobby, but
once in an odd while i make the odd sale here and there. The whole
area of alternate processign facinates me. I seldom just make a print,
my faovurite process, although not a true "alternative" is sepia toning,
the good ole fashioned bleach & toner. There are many product that
will give you a sepia "look", but these people are missing the point.
Almost all conventional B&W prints, FB or RC papers, at least in my
darkroom suffer from "drydown", which is when the whites of your print
loose from brilliancy after they dry overnight.
One of the things I love about sepai toning, the proper way,
is how the bleaching restores that brilliant look to the whites of your
print. Another "neat" effect is not to completely bleach away the
print, but only to partially bleach it, then tone it and depending on how
you do it, you can get a neat effect. Another way to adjust your
bleaching is to take a small bruch and rub areas of yoru print while
in the bleach to enhance the bleaching in certian areas, then ake your
print out, wash, and tone.
Wow - really off topic here. Anyhow, back to Pyro. I just
bought my first set of Hutching PMK pyro a couple of weeks ago, and
ran my first set of eigth, 4x5 negatives through. Often I'll do the old
thing of shoot two, process one, hold one. Lately I've been using
Kodak's Xtol as my favourite developer because it is the only thing
that works well with TMax and all other B&W films.
Well I did one set in Xtol, one set in Pyro, all Delta 400
I know that the traditional emulsions are supposed to work best
with Pyro, and I've bought 100 sheets of HP5 to try next.
Comparing the two, my Pryo negs were thin next to the
Xtol negs, but shadow detail was better in the pyro negs. I;ve never
seen Pyro negatives before, so I have no comparison. I've been told
by others over the net to cut film speed by one stop when planning
to use Pyro. Normally I shoot Delta 400 at 320, so I plan on shooting
my HP5 at 200 to 320, depending on what kind of advice i hear from
others.
What I would really love to hear is how your negatives
are supposed to look, what kind of times people use. Yes, there is the
book of pyro, which I have nto bought yet, but my experience with just
about every other B&W film and developer out there, from FP4 in
Rodinal to TMax400 in D76, is to just take the times in books as
starting points. Talkign to other people who are actually using Pyro
is what I would love to hear.
As for the alternate printing processes, kinda neat stuff
here. About the only other place I currently see any of this stuff
is in Darkroom User magazine. Heck, most of the better camera stores
around here haven't even heard of stuff like Pyro. In fact, therre seems
to be only one camera store in all of Canada that carries Pyro
commercially. On one hand it is kinda depressing, on the other hand,
with some many 35mm, aps and digital cameras out there, perhaps the
more obscure a process is, the better a niche you carve out for yourself
that others cannot copy.
take care
joe
http://www.multiboard.com/~joneil
B&W, Large Format Images From Southern Ontario