Re: Zimmerman process

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From: Richard Sullivan (richsul@earthlink.net)
Date: 03/12/03-08:35:11 AM Z


The reports I've been getting back on the Zimmermann process have been
extremely positive.

Some have used the blotter development with success but others have used
the traditional bath method with it to success as well. The key to it
appears to be that you use lots and lots of sensitizer, lots of pigment,
and very little gum, sometimes just drops and get full tonal range prints.
It is as Zimmermann said at the turn-of-the-century, quite counterintuitive.

We used to sell the Zimmermann article as a Bostick & Sullivan Tech pack
which was just an unbound packet of Xeroxes of the article but discontinued
selling those about 5 year ago but the article is on our web site at:

www.bostick-sullivan.com in jpg format, at considerable cost as it takes up
a ton of space that way but the fonts in the article are so broken up that
that they don't OCR well.

After 20 years of nagging suspicion on my part that there was something to
be had with the Zimmermann process, the rolling stones have come home to roost.

--Dick

At 03:38 PM 3/12/2003 +0200, you wrote:
>Grafist@aol.com wrote:
>>..........................................................
>>Hi Matti,
>> 10 mins seems a reasonable time to get a decent print.
>> Respectfully,what is to be gained by shortening exposure, except a few
>> minutes? A longer exposure time gives a greater scale of times when
>> wishing to adjust for negatives of varying density.
>> Could you please clarify the information posted by Chris, where
>> she mentions you, about exposures ``without`` using sensitizer?
>> Thanks. John- Photographist- London
>
>Hi
>
>Zimmerman gives actually two methods. The first one is using 1:4
>gum/dichromate ratio. So more dichromate than usually. This surely counts,
>when getting shorter exposure times than what I normally with 1:1 ratio get.
>
>Another, rather exciting variation of his method is to coat the paper with
>sensitizer *without* any pigment using 1:4 ratio, and then painting with
>only watercolor over the first layer. Then when this is dry, another layer
>of sensitizer is spread over watercolor, left dry and then exposured. The
>first method worked for me ok, but the variation I tried, was a complete
>failure. The test strip remained all black after soaking it overnight,
>only the part that had the longest, in this case 30 min exposure showed
>something, the rest was completely black, so it can't be a question of
>overexposing.
>
>best
>
>-matti
>
>
>


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