From: Christina Z. Anderson (zphoto@montana.net)
Date: 04/14/03-09:52:08 PM Z
Since I had such a ROTTEN day testing gum stuff (nothing worked out
well, after ruining a perfectly good gum print in the pot metabi stage--oh,
it went on worse from there) I decided to go back and play again with
cyanotype. Not that cyanotype is child's play, to be sure :) but anyway, I
was inspired again after reading Sandy's post about diginegs. I find that
both paper negs on Clearprint vellum and on Pictorico out of my lowly Epson
800 printer work great for gum, and I then printed them on cyano. I was
using Ware's formula, and found that the difference between Pictorico and
Clearprint vellum was only a stop of time, but both printed really quickly.
I was doing a 1min 45 sec exposure with Pictorico and a 3 1/2 with the
Clearprint paper neg (unwaxed) under an Edwards UV BL lightbox. I couldn't
believe it--lately it seems my UV lights have sped up or something, both in
gum and in this, or something has changed. Anyway, with the Pictorico you
can see minute, 1/32" apart pale lines of vertical banding throughout the
print. As someone has said, Pictorico has 0 dot gain and all kinds of
things show up that don't on paper or other substrates. This is very
true--this vertical banding does not show up on the paper neg. However, it
is so miniscule that I do not feel it detracts from the cyanotype too
badly--you have to almost wear glasses to see it. And it is not apparent in
gum at all. I did have the supermicroweave function on and printed on photo
glossy film setting and all that. But the point I am making is if I can get
this quality out of a crummy Microtek $80 scanner from Costco, scanning a BW
print I had made, and a 4 year old printer, then I truly believe digital has
possibilities. It sure beats enlarging negs in the darkroom.
I did not mess with my levels either.
I'm not suggesting this is a huge revelation to anybody, just that if
you haven't tried it, I encourage you to do so.
Good night.
Chris
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