Re: Temperaprint

> BTW, I made 3 more coats to my first temperaprint in the weekend (using
> a better, bigger and smoother foam roller - following Dave's pigment
> mixing instructions, I didn't get undissolved pigment this time; thanks
> Dave). I did go for the shadows; with short exposures (half the exposure
> time of the first two coats) Unfortunately the density build is very
> very slow. Yes, there was an improvement but very less compared the
> first two coats - it's like the self masking in POP prints; the more
> relief the print becomes, the harder is coating the shadows (relief
> parts). I can clearly see the egg is more present in bas-relief portions
> of the print but less in the relief parts (I'm not sure if I managed to
> describe it). So the short exposure didn't work much - higlights
> dissolved and the less coated shadows very little changed. What is my
> problem? Do you think I'm coating with less solution than what is
> needed?

Hi Loris,

I wanted to reply after you described your approach last time, but I thought
it was probably better to wait until you tried it first.

First, there is optical property. A small change in density in shows more
markingly in highlight than in shadow. So if you density of 0.1 and 0.2, you
can see the difference very clearly, whereas if you have density of 1.5 and
1.6, they are very hard to distinguish. This is the reason why we need
darker coat for shadow.

Then there is physical property. As you add more pigment to the emulsion for
darker tone, there is some filtering effect, so even with the same exposure,
less exposure will reach the base. This is especially true if the emulsion
is thick. Temperaprint uses quite thin coating, but the effect is there
nevertheless. So if you do use darker emulsion, I think halfing the exposure
is too much (actually I mean the exposure would be too less). You could try
10-20% less from the original exposure.

If you can control the above 2 factors, then you are in control but then you
will be examing/experimenting the effect of duotone (multi-tone) printing,
even if all tones are gray. Since you mentioned that you were a picky
person, I would recommend doing testings with smaller size. For example, you
can take a 3x5" area of your negative which cover both highlights and
shadows and make 10 copies with highlight exposure (since you got that
pretty nicely already), then try different shadow coating/exposure for each
of them.

Dave S
Received on Mon Feb 9 10:30:49 2004