Re: Beginner Question: Digital Negative to Silver On Variable Contrast Paper

Thanks Jack,

I'm completely new to alt process and have only had my own darkroom less than a year. I realize many on this list probaby don't consider silver gelatin prints "alt" enough, but the way I see things these new digital negative techniques are my going to be my "gateway" to a whole gamut of different alt process in the future. I'm trying to work out my techniques in the darkroom on silver paper first. If I can master that then it should be a matter of adapting to different processes, right?

I guess where I'm going with this is that with VC paper you can either use polycontrast filters to set contrast from grade 0 to grade 6. Light yellow to dark yellow going from grade 0 to 2.5 or 3, then light magenta to dark magenta taking the contrast up the rest of the way to grade 6. Or, if you don't use filters you can calibrate a colour dichro head to do the same thing as the filters argueably with even more control.

So, I'm guessing that since the nature of B&W VC paper is to respond differently to yellow, magenta that I can use these colours and others (O/C safelight orange for example) to control the contrast via color on the negative output from my printer (an Epson R300 using dyes).

My original question might be better put as "is VC paper a moving target, therefore, harder to hit calibration wise" than say if I just used regular grade 2 paper.

Thanks.

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Jack Fulton
  To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
  Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 3:25 PM
  Subject: Re: Beginner Question: Digital Negative to Silver On Variable Contrast Paper

  Yes, you can print to a material such as Epson backlight film and tailor your curves for paper contrast. A nice prinet each time you expose.

  On Nov 5, 2004, at 8:31 PM, Michael Koch-Schulte wrote:

  This is my first post to this list, forgive my ignorance I'm still learning. Am I crazy to think I can contact print or calibrate my digital neg workflow to use Kodak Polycontrast (VC) paper? Would using "color table" methods work better or worse because of VC paper's tendency to change contrast with different color (e.g. filters). Thx.
Received on Sat Nov 6 16:04:33 2004