Re: Test for Silver Metal in Print?

On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Ryuji Suzuki wrote:
>
> It's not just toning. With a bit of cynicism, I say that a lot of
> darkroom literature are cut and paste work of old literatures, maybe
> with added modern misconceptions. Old literatures are filled with all
> sorts of magical statements, some from lack of scientific knowledge at
> that time or simply from plain enthusiasm about particular technique.
> Stories get embellished by playing with words without going back to
> the underlying process or mechanism. If I sound too cynical, that's
> because I too was initially fascinated by those implausible stories
> and took a lot of time and effort to find out.

You're singing my song -- tho when I said same about the
excuse-the-expression great gum pigment ratio test, all hell broke loose
around here... at least the first few times, now it's an old story.

But stories told by former Kodak employees made the point I've tried to
make about the difference between our "alternative" processes, which were
never based on commercially packaged & sold products but devised by
individual practitioners, and silver gelatin paper bought from a factory.
Any fudging or failure of factory materials and instructions could cost
the company real money... and after a couple of disasters it seems Kodak
worked seriously (ultimately claiming 3 million $ per day in research) to
prevent such.

In my own tests of cyanotype toners, for instance, not one single formula
worked as given in old books -- yet apparently still cut & pasted in our
time, for instance into Keepers of light (among others) and from there
into "Photographic Possibilities" and from there on into infinity.
(Ditto for the great GPR test.)

Judy
Received on Sat Nov 1 18:09:05 2003