Re: Why use cyanotype in-camera?

From: TERRYAKING@aol.com
Subject: Re: Why use cyanotype in-camera?
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 17:22:48 -0500 (EST)

> > And you can make emulsions of a very wide range of contrast, speed,
> > and curve shapes
>
> All these things are possible with most processes.

Really? Can you make the following using photochemical process other
than silver-gelatin process?

- gamma exceeding 10 (ok, make that 5, or maybe 3, if that helps)
- ISO speed exceeding 1000 (ok, make that 100, or maybe 10, or 5, if that helps)
- change from long toe to short toe, by design, within the same
  photochemical system

To my knowledge, silver gelatin is the only process capable of any and
all of these.

> The printing out processes were displaced by silver gelatin as it is
> faster. But we lost qualities inherent in the printing out
> processes.

That is historically inaccurate. Many printing out processes
originated after silver-gelatin developing out papers came in use. The
reason why silver-gelatin paper wasn't popular in some era is partly
because the image quality of SG was crappy then. The reason why
silver-gelatin came back is because people figured out how to make
better projection printing paper emulsion (and people became to shoot
roll and 35mm formats thereby requiring enlargements) so most people
lost reasons to deal with printing out processes.

Therefore, trying to carry your argument in terms of "quality" or
history usually doesn't work too well.
Received on Fri Feb 17 21:20:41 2006