Re: Why use cyanotype in-camera?

Terry,

First of all, I'm not Loris. She and I may share the same kind of
questions but we are different people. I just read your responses to
Loris and I found some (most?) of her questions are not answered to
*my* satisfaction. I also had my own questions, so I asked.

Throughout your reply, I understand that you are predetermined to
choose cyanotype as the best process, in terms of such vague notions
as inefficiency of production, slowness of operation, and your
subjective judgement of fine qualities such as "subtle tonality."

I should also point out that, silver-gelatin process has 135 years of
history, and "people work hard to find solutions to problems which
arise from their personal inefficiencies rather than any inherent
fault in the process.." as you said. Making silver gelatin emulsion is
time consuming and requires great degree of intellectual
curiosity. And you can coat the emulsions on paper or any other
suitable substrate of any texture you like. You can also intentionally
lower the Dmax if that's your taste. And you can make emulsions of a
very wide range of contrast, speed, and curve shapes.

Silver gelatin process is capable of very good gradation. I often find
that people who are used to processes with long toe or strong shoulder
find modern commercial enlarging paper to be too crisp when overall
contrast is the same. It's just that modern commercial papers are made
with that type of sensitometric design goal. Many old silver gelatin
papers had longer toe and more pronounced shoulder, and they are
actually easy to reproduce in homemade emulsions.
Received on Fri Feb 17 11:41:55 2006