Re: Dichromate dilution and speed

Footnotes #1 and #2:

1. Just want to make sure everyone understands that I'm not drawing any
conclusion from this about what Sam's results might be if he did the
same comparison, (it could be absolutely anything; I wouldn't dare to
venture a guess) or much less about Sam's method itself. He's a master
at his method, and the master's tools always work best in the master's
hand. The negative I used printed a nice image, with good contrast
(considerably more contrast than the image I was using the other day)
using saturated dichromate. Without doubt if you start with a negative
that has been created with the diluted concentration in mind, the
results will be quite different.

2. And also wanted to make sure everyone understand that my purpose is
not to defend any particular way of doing things, it's only to try to
figure out where the truth lies on a particular issue. I've been accused
of defending turf; this makes no sense to me, as I have no turf to
defend, unless fairness constitutes a turf. That turf, I will defend.

I print with saturated dichromate but that doesn't mean I think everyone
should. It's just the way I do it, and I'll do it this way as long as I
print gum, because I'm so comfortable with it I can do it without
thinking. Enough rambling,
kt

Katharine Thayer wrote:
>
> Drum roll........
>
> Okay, my curiosity got the better of me and I've spent the day comparing
> saturated to diluted dichromate using a digital negative (everything the
> same as the other day except the negative) and I'm prepared to say that
> though I've happily printed all kinds of negatives with saturated
> dichromate, never noticing any great differences between them (but
> understand, I work intuitively, not by measuring, so I may make
> intuitive adjustments for the different materials without realizing it)
> the behavior of the digital negatives when you start messing around with
> concentration is TOTALLY WEIRD. I can't make heads or tails of it.
>
> The weirdest part was that the prints I made with the diluted
> concentration were lower in contrast (that's what I said, LOWER
> contrast) than the ones made with saturated dichromate. I thought I must
> have made a mistake in measuring and got too little pigment or too much
> water in the solution, so I dumped it out and re-measured everything,
> but I got the same result the second time.
>
> The other thing is that none of the 5 exposures (1x,2x,3x,4x,and 5x the
> exposure time of the good print made with saturated dichromate) made a
> good print; while there was an image on the paper at the end of each of
> the times except for 1x, in no case were the tones or the relationship
> between them correct, and their badness didn't seem to have any
> meaningful trend in terms of exposure, so there was no way to evaluate
> which was the best exposure of the four. If I were to give a wild guess,
> I'd guess that around 3x might be about right, but it's just a wild
> guess. (I know, it would be better to show this than to tell it, but
> that would require walking back out to the studio to see if the prints
> are dry, and I'm too tired to move.)
>
> There's no way I would draw any conclusion from this as far as
> dichromate dilution and speed except to say that all bets are off when
> it comes to digital negatives, and that I'm much more willing now to
> believe that if Sam is printing at "about the same" time with the
> diluted as with the saturated (I didn't follow all the hedging about how
> long is way longer and how long is about the same, so I don't know where
> that all came down, but as for me and my house, 5x is WAY longer, and 3x
> is way longer, and 2x is still twice as long, for heavens' sake, which
> is hardly "about the same" in my book) then the digital negative may
> well be the cause.
>
> Katharine
Received on Tue Dec 2 17:57:04 2003