Pyro negs and silver printing


Carl Weese (cjweese@wtco.net)
Sun, 06 Jun 1999 21:07:45 -0400


Gary,

A pyro developed negative prints on VC paper in a much more complicated
way (luckily) than being equal to a grade 0.

The stain is proportional. It is also similar in color to a soft VC
filter. There is much more stain in the highlights than in the shadows
of the negative, so the shadows trigger a relatively high contrast
response from the VC paper (generally a good thing) and the highlights
trigger a lower contrast response which is also usually good, at least
with a strongly developed negative.

I use a colorhead to print VC papers, and just as with regular negs,
adding magenta filtration raises print contrast from a pyro neg and
adding yellow filtration lowers it. The result is of course more complex
than with regular negs because you are still dealing with the
proportional nature of the stain but if your no-filter prints are too
flat you will improve them with a 2.5-5 contrast filter or increased
magenta from a color head, and if the no-filter print is too harsh you
will improve it with yellow filtration or soft VC filters. Just what
constitutes "normal" will depend on the specific VC paper, the light
source, the film stock, and the 'flavor' of pyro the negative was
developed in.

Look for a comprehensive treatment of this material in an upcoming
article I'll publish in _PHOTO Techniques_ this fall.

---Carl



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