Re: Difficult altprocess

Luis Nadeau (nadeaul@nbnet.nb.ca)
Sun, 08 Feb 1998 00:18:26 -0400

At 11:46 PM -0400 98/02/06, Sandy King wrote:
>Terry,

...

>No doubt carbon was easier back in the Victorian days when "the boy" could

>From hundreds of ads in the British literature, "the boy" simply picked up
his supply of *pre-sensitized* Autotype carbon materials at a local shop.
Those were the days...

>do it. One could obtain manufactured tissues in a wide range of colors,
>along with all of the support papers. Nowdays all these materials must be
>handmade and this takes a lot of time. It would be easier to use the
>tissue still made by Autotype, which you use, but limiting myself to one
>color would take away a great part of the creative potential of the
>process.
>
>Also, your comments understate the problem of temperature/humidity. A
>combination of high temperature with high humidity, which characterizes
>much of the States in the summer months, makes it virtually impossible to
>work without climate control. I did a workshop some years back in the
>Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina during the month of July, with
>temperature and humidity both in the upper 80s. Did you every make carbon
>tissue in those kind of conditions? How long do you think it took
>sensitized tissue to dry?

Terry said the "nineties". I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to
those who believe that the Earth is flat and those who believe that Elvis
is still alive, but making carbon prints of what I call respectable quality
in such an environment is simply unbelievable.

For gravure it is different as pigment papers that give too much fog for
carbon can still be used for gravure. In fact, this is the reason why we
had so many problems with the Hanfstaengl materials. Hanfstaengl did not
believe that his pigment papers fogged. He no longer had anyone at the
plant capable of making carbon prints, so I described a simple fog test
(see my books) that doesn't even require sensitization and his following
letter started with the words "you were right all along..."

>But enough. Take the Luis test. Go make some good carbons in several
>different colors with your own hand-made tissue. And add to this the
>following. Make sure there is a lot of clear sky in your prints because
>this will provide a good test of your ability to produce a tissue with no
>uneveness or streaking. Also, for technical reasons make sure that the Dmin
>of the print in the areas where the highlights are paper base is no greater
>tha .06, because greater than this would indicate too much fog density.
>Now Terry, I suspect with your experience you might well be capable of
>doing this. But how long do you really think it will take someone to get to
>that point after "one demonstration"?

Well said.

Luis Nadeau
NADEAUL@NBNET.NB.CA
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
http://www3.nbnet.nb.ca/nadeaul/