From: Carl Weese (cweese@earthlink.net)
Date: 07/25/02-01:04:16 AM Z
Jonathan,
My experience is that grain size is not an issue with contact prints.
Intentionally "old tech" BPF200 is probably the grainiest film I've
tried, and it delivers contact prints in palladium that are
silky-smooth. By contrast, HP5 Plus, which has finer grain, is quite
prone to a slight grittiness in highlight tones in either silver or
Pt/Pd prints. I find that grain size, like "sharpness" is nowhere near
as important as tonal response for making satisfying prints.
I've done very little enlarging from pyro negatives. I've used Tri-X and
D76 for my 35mm work since the 1960's and see no reason to switch. With
large format negatives intended for Pt/Pd printing, *maximum* staining
is not what you look for. You want just enough stain to give the desired
contrast boost, without picking up overall stain that prolongs printing
exposures without improving print quality. It's also important that the
visual stain isn't what counts: the key thing with alternate processes
is how the specific print medium responds to a particular stain. To
someone used to PMK, negatives processed in Pyrocat HD seem to have
almost no stain at all, yet they print in Pt/Pd or in carbon with the
same response as PMK negatives that show far more stain. What the eye
sees isn't the same as what the UV-sensitive paper sees.---Carl
Jonathan Borden wrote:
>
> Carl Weese wrote:
> > Jonathan,
> >
> > FP4 Plus responds well to PMK pyro, with a working ei of about 64. Tmax
> > 100 doesn't show as useful a pyro stain as TMax 400, but I don't know of
> > any direct relationship between grain size, speed, and pyro
> response. ---Carl
> >
>
> Interesting. I've not done an extensive comparison of films, but for my 35mm
> work I've used Delta 100, TMax 100, and Neopan Acros 100, all of which make
> perfectly fine negatives in PMK, but all without terrific stain. The 400 ASA
> versions of TMax and Delta seem to have better stain (I use Delta 400 and I
> reference your statement about TMax 400 above). BPF 200 (which I use in
> 4x5/8x10), whose grain is larger than Delta 400, also has terrific stain. I
> suspect the grain in FP4+ is larger than TMax/Delta/Acros 100, so perhaps
> the grain size/shape rather than the speed has something to do with it? I've
> also tried Fuji Neopan SS 100 which I don't recall jumping out at me in
> flourescent green, so I imagine there are a number of variable involved. I
> don't know what other folks experiences are, but if my small sampling is
> plotted grain size vs. stain intensity, it seems as though there is a
> positive correlation. Perhaps FP4+ has better stain than would otherwise be
> predicted given its grain? If so I'd consider it for 4x5, but would that
> make a difference for 8x10 contact prints?
>
> Jonathan
-- Web Site with picture galleries and workshop information http://home.earthlink.net/~cweese/index.html
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