Pig Poop, was Re: crummy printers and gum

Chris,

Well, you missed a lot more than your printer by not being in South
Carolina today. There was this absolutely hilarious story today in
the Greenville News. It seems that the republican governor of the
state, Mark Sanford, tried to make a point about pork barrel spending
by bringing two live pigs into State House Chambers, but the action
backfired on him and ended up in a bipartisan fire-storm against the
governor, with both democrats and republicans calling his action
insulting and childish. The headline story in the Greenville News
today was, "Sanford's pig stunt raises stink." It seems that as soon
as he put the two pigs down in the House chambers one of them
promptly defecated on the marble floor. Rep. Bob Leach, R-Greenville
related the story, "Sanford appeared out on the floor with two small
pigs under his arms. Then he sat them down and one of the pigs
crapped all over the floor and we had to clean it up. It smells bad
there." A democratic leader added, "it is unfortunate that Sanford's
spokesman, Will Folks, actually had to clean up the pig poop from the
marble floors of the statehouse today. However, in some ways it is
appropriate since Folks has to clean up behind this governor on a
regular basis."

Anyway, to keep this on topic, have you tried making negatives with
the Epson C84? This is a very inexpensive printer with pretty high
resolution that uses pigmented inks and in my experience works nicely
for making alt process negatives.

Sandy

>This week, I decided to test my old Epson Stylus 660 printer and see if it
>would print out halfway decent negatives for gum. My Epson 2200 is back in
>SC (sob!) and I am here with this crappy piece of work for 3 months. I
>brought 30 negs with me, but you know...there's always one more you want to
>do (can't wait to show this to Sam, heheheh--nude in landscape a la Chris
>Anderson....).
>
>The printer is maybe a $100 jobbie, very kindergartenish printer driver.
>The negatives came out pale and bluish, and next to the 2200 negatives were
>a joke.
>
>My first printing with them of a cyano layer was unusable. I was going to
>throw them away, but decided to print them in a layer of gum at my usual 4
>minute/*low dilution* am di time. Still unusable--almost completely blocked
>up and no contrast.
>
>This time I saw the obvious, which I usually miss (as with the hair
>dryer/brush thingie) and decided to cut time drastically, and exposed them
>for 1 or 2 minutes instead-- realizing contrast changes with exposure.
>
>Not only did they work, but they look really pretty good! So those of you
>with aging, cheapy printers and no $700 for a 2200, it is not a lost cause.
>
>Last summer I could never get this printer to make suitable negatives even
>with using a very dramatic contrast curve, because I was using saturated
>ammonium dichromate--way too powerful for crummy negatives that don't lay
>down enough ink. I remember someone once saying a year or two or three ago
>that gum "laughed at" the density in a digineg. This is what happened to
>me, too. With the lower dilution (1 tsp pigment mix which is a 14ml tube of
>pigment in 50 ml gum + 1 tsp gum arabic + 1 1/2 tsp water + 1/2 tsp
>saturated ammonium dichromate) they work.
>
>I thought I'd report this while thinking of Don Bryant struggling with
>making suitable negs for kallitype. Gum is so much more flexible because
>you print layer upon layer, so you don't have to rely on one perfect
>exposure :) One more reason GUM ROCKS!
>
>HEYYY! Don, any reason you couldn't double print a kalli??
>Chris
Received on Fri May 28 11:11:28 2004