For those who are interested in making digital negatives using pigmented inksets

I was reading Sandy King's very informative article "Making Kallitype
Prints: A Fresh Look at a Beautiful Printing Process" @ Ed Buffaloe's site
(unblinkingeye.com) and noticed the statement below:

Quotation > "...There is also a good paper on making digital negatives by
David Fokos on the Bostick and Sullivan website. Unfortunately, Fokos' paper
is now several years old and has not been updated to reflect the current
generation of inkjet printers..."

Fokos' paper is indeed old but... FWIW, I got very successful results
applying his Platinum curve (intented usage: to make imagesetter negatives
for Platinum process) to my digital negative making workflow (that curve is
a Godsend - for someone like me; an impatient-step-wedge-reading-incompetent
person without a densitometer). The digital negatives for Van Dyke
Brownprints below were made using an Epson 1160 CIS primed with a pigmented
quadblack inkset consisting of Conetech Selenium Piezotone Gray inks + MIS
FS / FSN Black ink (old version - not Eboni) on Pictorico OHP using David
Fokos' Platinum curve (modifying the last point as 255 - 255):

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=1999496

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2012642

(click the "Large" link below the images to see them bigger)

I think they're nice tonally. What do you think? The most important fact is
that the tonal range and contrast of the prints are as close as possible to
what I visualized on my computer screen - that's what counts for me. After
this recent "discovery" I redeveloped an inclination towards digital
negatives for Van Dyke (because they're much more easy to make - but lith
negatives still hold the quality advantage).

I will try the curve with Cyanotypes (but decreasing the density by 10% at
every point; that way the max density in the negative will be exactly the
same density according my inferior Cyanotype curves).

Regards,
Loris.
Received on Wed Dec 31 12:12:13 2003