joe_lipka3

I do believe that PS 7.0 has an action that will sepia tone an image. Looking on the action pallette might be a help.

I think you will sell the $40.00 photographs.

I also use a service bureau for digital negs, but...

 

Visit www.Danburkholder.com. He "wrote the book" about digital negatives. He reccomends Pictorico (a trade name, I think) transparency media as a suitable base for digital negatives from a desktop printer. There is a lot of information at his web site as well as in his book.

 

Negatives from desktop printers are only suitable for alternative process printing, such as platinum, gum bichromate, cyanotypes and the like. They are not detailed enough to make silver prints.

Many years ago I had a subscription to VC. Decided to clean house, and cull out the best articles and photos. Recycled much, much more than I kept.

 

The lack of variety in photo subjects is understandable because of the nature of the subject matter that can be photographed successfully with a view camera. The lack of quality cannot be excused. LensWork has the best reproduction of any photo publication going today. Then there was that recent reduction in subscription rates....

As an earlier poster said, everything is in Dan's Book, including a CD with an assortment of curves. I have found that only minor modification of Dan's suggested curves are necessary to create a good negative.

 

I have scanned silver prints on a flatbed scanner to get my digital file created. I have been relatively lazy and have yet to calibrate my scanner for transparencies, which would make scanning negatives my prime source. In any case, you will need to calibrate your scanner to make sure that original art and scanned file contain the same values. Until you do this, you will not be building on a solid foundation.

 

You will have to do tests, but again, step wedges and a whole bunch of other goodies are included in Dan's book. You can also check out his website for updated curves for various digital negative media for used with a desktop printer.

 

Pictorico is a trade name for the medium you run through your printer to get a negative. I haven't tried that yet. I send mine out to an offset prep house to get a film negative made.

 

(Shameless Plug) I wrote a short article on www.unblinkingeye.com on "Alternative Process Quick Start" which might help you make up your mind.

 

Oh, yes. Don't sell the cow unless you get magic beans as part of the deal....

How about testing what you usually photograph? Towels, grey cards and the like can be test subjects, but wouldn't a more valuable test be what you might typically photograph? Wouldn't it make more sense to learn what exposure and development would be for tree bark in the deep shade would be rather than a towel? Something to consider.

There are vacuum easels and vacuum frames. I believe that you would want a vacuum frame. I have a 17 x 22 I bought used for about $175 that I use for platinum printing. The vacuum frame has a hinged glass cover over a flexible rubber bed. An electric vacuum pump pulls a vacuum of about 25 inches of Mercury. That much even pressure gives superb contact between negative and paper.

 

I would advise using this for the ULF negatives to get solid contact between negative and paper. It will avoid blurs and weak highlights with the big film.

 

Check used printing equipment houses for this type of equipment.

Vacuum printing frame for plate burning is a great thing for the ultra large format contact prints. Keeps the negative tight to the enlarging paper for the most delicate hightlights.

 

The process camera can be used to create enlarged negatives from regular sized silver prints.

An image needs to be the size it needs to be. Some images need to be small, others need to be big. You will figure this out. Bigger is only bigger, not necessarily better. A bad big image is much, much worse than a bad small image.

I did not use that particular step wedge, so I do not know what the percentages are in each step. If you are evaluating a step wedge, the absolute best way is to use a densitometer to read the print densities. Eyeballs are good, but densitometers are accurate.

 

If you are using the method pioneered by Dan Burkholder to create your negatives, let me advise you that the first step is the most important in the process. That step is getting the image into photoshop. Please make sure that your scanner is calibrated to provide an accurate scanned image to photoshop. Unless you know where you start from, getting the right curve is very difficult to do.

 

Good luck.

Spring back frames are good. The absolute best is a vacuum frame if you have the space in your darkroom. The tighter you can get your negative to the paper, the better off you will be.

I have never tempted fate by using any other than the wash trays for double duty. At that point in the pt/pd process, why try to save a couple of bucks by re-using the trays?

At this point you only know what a print processed in a contaminated tray will look like. Now go buy some new trays and see the difference.

I dream in black and white. I used to dream in color, but it took a week to get the dreams back from the lab. 8)

You bet. See www.danburkholder.com, or www.lenswork.com. Usually this is the method used to create enlarged negatives for alternative processes. Can also be used for regular black and white prints. Don't know about color because I am not interested in that.

Since photogravures are an ink on paper process, at the time of Camerawork there were two ways to get to the photogravure negative. One was the camera negative, the other was an enlarged negative. The enlarged negative could be created in the darkroom, or an original print could be re-photographed using a copy camera. Since Steilglitz ran a photoengraving business, my guess would be the latter.

 

As for modern practictioners there are few. Russ Dodds in Portland, Or is one that first comes to mind. He produces photogravures for the LensWork Special Edition gravures.

 

You might try to post again in the alternative process forum for more and better responses.

A little bit more on Oliver Gagliani's life and career.

 

http://www.lenswork.com/gag1.htm

Dan Burkholder is doing that now, too. See his web site at WWW.DanBurkholder.com

I have a Wista Field 45 (20+ years old) and have no problems with a Fuji 90mm lens. It will rise and fall and tilt and generally have a reasonable amount of movement with it. Now, when you buy your Wista 5x7 adapter to hang on the back of your 4x5, then you lose all movement.

Plastic sandwich bags of ice work just fine to cool developer down, with the added advantage that you don't dilute the developer with melted ice.

Head for Ed Buffaloe's www.unblinkingeye.com. Lots of info on alt process and a big article on UV light for alt processes. Azo, being silver, will respond to an ordinary light bulb. Most everything else needs UV. Depending on how handy you are with tools, you can DIY or you can buy a UV light source.

Sepia toning will give that "old fashioned" look. There should be a sepia action that is included with photoshop. For fans of traditional b&w printing there is sepia toner. The joy of that process is the rotten egg smell from the sulfur used in the toner. If the result is for publication, your printer could help with the selection of inks to make it happen during printing.

Checking out the later posts, I was struck by the ultimate aging photographer conundrum. Ain't it a (female canine) that once you get your vision, your eyesight goes?

You could add or substitute a fresnel type ground glass for, well, the ground glass in order to get a brighter image to focus. That should help. Remember, you still have to check the edges with the lens stopped down to make sure your focus and depth of field are what you want.

When I did do 5x7 a lot, I used the same lenses I used with my 4x5: 90mm, 150 and 210.

Here�s your follow up as requested. I have covered some of this ground in an article on Ed Buffaloe�s web site, www.unblinkingeye.com, �Alternative Process Quick Start.� It�s a general overview and lists various routes to producing alternative process prints. Here is my story. I purchased PhotoShop at version 4.0. I purchased it specifically to pursue enlarged negatives for platinum printing. In the meantime, I was side tracked by the opportunities for other means of photographic output. It took me a couple of years of not so serious playing to develop proficiency with it. (I am now at 5.5, with a 7.0 upgrade planned.) You could probably reduce both time to learn and cost to acquire PhotoShop if you enrolled in a junior or community college to learn PhotoShop. PhotoShop comes in an �academic version� which is about half price. Having a course with assignments will force you to become proficient quickly.

 

In developing the negatives for my show, I invested (wasted?) about one hundred dollars to determine that I needed to start with a calibrated image. After that I needed only one more round to get me to the negatives I can use for a long time. Film costs are basically dollars per square inch. 10 x 12 was about $12 to $15 each, 20 x 24 was about $40 to $44 each. Some labs will charge a basic set up fee, others won�t. The most economical way to do this for me was to submit an adobe acrobat file that was image setter ready. Some folks have worked directly with a lab that Dan Burkholder uses. They should be very familiar with what type of files to receive and what is the output.

 

Film positives and negatives made in your darkroom are the least expensive way to go. There is even an article on Ed Buffaloe�s site that talks about using graphic arts film and continuous tone developers to make inexpensive inter positives and enlarged negatives. I did that in the mid seventies when I was in college. I chose to do the digital negative route because as I am not as willing to invest a large chunk of my spare time in long darkroom sessions as I used to be.