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

Ding. A light just went on in my head. Unfortunately it's on a dimmer...Thank you. I forgot that VC prints as a 2 grade with no filter. I thought that if I started indexing different colors (shades of yellow-magenta) to different contrast areas on the neg I could manipulate how it printed that way. What madness. I would have created a moving target from a stationary one....(I think).
Would thinning out my D-76 1:1 to 1:3 start to decrease the slope of my paper's contrast curve? The problem I'm having now is that my test step-wedge prints have all the tonal range jammed on the dense end (the inkiest part) of the negative. e.g. I'm printing a step wedge that goes from 0 to 100 per cent in 2 step block increments on transparency media. My VC paper's tonal range almost all falls between 4 and 16 per cent with the rest of the scale printing black. When I chart my data and create a curve it comes out looking more like a boomerang rather than nice "S". A very short toe a brutal straight line than runs away to the top, makes a right turn, then a looong shoulder. This is printing with just black ink or CMYK component black. I think I'll start adding the red/orange and see how that helps. I may have some scraps of rubylith still kicking around from my graphic arts days I could take a colour read off of it. Rubylith was the one way to guarantee complete saturation when prepping material for offset.

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Jack Fulton
  To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
  Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 5:16 PM
  Subject: Re: Beginner Question: Digital Negative to Silver On Variable Contrast Paper

  Michael:
  Working on RC paper w/out filters is theoretically grade #2.
  The negative you'd print on the backlit film should do well @ that setting.
  Or, you can fiddle w/the curves.
  I've not made one for RV variable contrast myself but assume you would be
  able to further adjust during the printing process by working with filters in addition to the 'perfected' negative. But, the idea for that neg, rather than just make a print, is the adjustments of dodging and burning, raising the contrast in certain areas, and other aspects necessary to a perhaps multi-filter print with burning & dodging. The hope w/the digital neg is to make it right the first time and all adjustments are created in Photoshop so it will print nicely on the #2 aspect of the paper.
  Too, further adjustments can be thought of in terms of changing developer dilution or time.
  Jack

  On Nov 6, 2004, at 2:04 PM, Michael Koch-Schulte wrote:

  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 20:40:47 2004