From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 03/28/02-01:36:59 AM Z
On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, Christopher Lovenguth wrote:
> I'm a little confused here. Are we talking about what I call "plating" which
> is a build up of some type of metal over an extended period of time or an
> oxidized print? Or are we talking about solarization? These are completely
> different things. It also sounds like some people are talking about the
> phenomenon of over exposing to the other side of the "exposure bell curve"
> which gives you the "black sun" in some older prints when they tremendously
> over exposed a negative. This too is a different thing but more similar to
> solarization then plating.
>
> I don't think you can solarize a non-silver print. Can you? Solarization is
> achieving that over exposure to an extreme that the tones shift in the
> opposite direction like the "black sun". It is done when you re-expose a
> print after it has be excited by a developer, thus hyper exposing your
> print. It is not about building up metal on your paper. I know most of you
> know this. I don't think you can get any non-silver print to such a hyper
> state in the short period needed to solarize. If you can solarize
> non-silver, please tell me how because I would love to do it! I have gotten
> the "plating" effect, described by Judy, when I dry my Van Dykes with a hot
> blow dryer. For some reason the metal thickens up on the paper. I'm no
> chemist and I don't play one on TV, but my guess is that rapid oxidation
> happens due to the emulsion still being wet and hot air (oxygen) is being
> "pumped" into the print.
I'm glad you made this point Christopher... I think the terms are probably
so muddled by now there's no straightening them out, but I'll quote Ed
Buffaloe from Post-Factory #2:
QUOTE: The Sabatier effect has also been called "pseudo-solarization" to
distinguish it from the true solarization caused by extreme overexposure.
The two effects have been confused for years, until popular usage won out:
many writers have given up the term "sabatier effect" entirely, simply
referring to it as solarization. While it's important to keep the true
definitions in mind, it's much easier to speak of solarizing a print or
plate than of sabatiering it, and I freely use the term "solarization" to
mean "Sabatier effect."
====================================================================
In my own experience there is no *sabatier* effect in such processes as
VDB, platinum, kallitype, etc. That seems to only happen with silver
gelatin materials -- and is not a matter of over-exposure, since even a
fraction of a second at the right point can cause the reversal, mackie
line, etc. (Note that I don't include gum in this list, since there can be
effects in gum printing that look uncannily like Sabatier!)
But solarization seems to come to the hand coated processes in many
manifestations. In fact as I mentioned in my last chapter (or the one
before that), I attributed the lower d-max of the step prints closest to
the bulbs to over-exposure, or "solarization."
In sum, the *solarization* is apparently from over-exposure, the sabatier
not. And Walker & Rainwater's book about the Sabatier effect was titled
"Solarization.
Judy
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