Re: Could someone summarize that gum up or down discussion?

> However put one of your monochrome gums next to a carbon print and tell me
> that something is not missing from the gum. The most delicate tonal
> transitions, the infinite gradation of tone are not there in the gum.

AHA. Thank you, thank you Marek, for clarifying the bottom line here!! NOW
I understand. So the real test will be to make a monochrome one coat gum
that looks as good, side by side, with a carbon print. On paper.

I find this a bit puzzling because, again, back in the lit, there were huge
discussions where people were ignoring the fact that Pouncy's and Demachy's
and others' gums were SO good that viewers could not tell whether they were
a silver gelatin/carbon or a gum. So I have to assume from these
discussions that it is possible to achieve that "carbon tonality" with the
gum process. I could xerox all my xeroxes for you all to show the huge
brouhaha that went on at that time about this very issue--can gum, in fact,
give the same tonality and dmax as carbon transfer?? It seemed back then the
proof was in the pudding but people continued to say it wasn't. Either that
is because it, in fact, WASN'T, or they were too proud to back down.

So I have to wonder that there is something we are all missing in our modern
technique.

This interests me greatly.

Can I suggest a test, not being a carbon printer? For instance, Sandy, you
"wrote the book" on carbon. Would you be willing to send a carbon print you
have made, and a digital file of the negative to me and/or whomever (digital
file uncurved), and with Mark Nelson's Precision Digital Negative system I
could devise a curve that would compress the tonal range of your image into
the tonal range of gum and print a gum print and see if it rivals the
carbon? That would seem to be as close to comparing apples to apples as we
can get.

I have no clue as to the outcome of this experiment. Carbon perhaps may
rule. I have no agenda in proving this one way or another. I do not do
single coat gums. The only real experience I have had with carbon is seeing
a few at APIS and then your lecture/demo, Sandy, down at Clemson. And then
seeing that tricolor carbon print at A Gallery of Fine Photography that blew
my sox off and would've made me give up gum if I wouldn't have to spend
years slugging through yet another technical process to refine to
perfection.

I do know, historically, that carbon supplanted the poor little lowly gum
process, so there has to be benefits of the carbon process that gum or their
gum technique at the time did not provide.

I WANT to believe that with technology today, the ability to produce perfect
digital negatives for any process will allow us to come the closest to
closing that gap between carbon and gum if, in fact, there is a superiority
to the process of carbon and it is not a glitch in gum technique.
My $5.
Chris
Received on Sat Apr 15 20:03:25 2006