31–40 of 48 posts
I was lucky enough to learn film development in high school, though now a days I don’t have access to a darkroom.
Which is unfortunate because many of my family members are photographers and used to have darkrooms in their homes.
There are metal replacement toners that replace the silver in a print with either gold or platinum. This way the print can be made normally with an enlarger and silver chemistry to overcome the contact printing limitation. Toning improves the longevity of the print and provides many of the same tonal effects, depending on how long the print sits in the bath. Unfortunately, the chemicals involved are quite toxic. I re…
I didn’t even know this was a thing but would love to try this process out. I was lucky enough to learn film development in high school, though now a days I don’t have access to a darkroom. Which is unfortunate because many of my family members are photographers and used to have darkrooms in their homes.
I guess you then have to have some registration holes in the paper + film to align them correctly if you want to check paper exposure during development, but my understanding is that the process is slow enough that you again aren't in a darkroom, you are exposing the paper with sunlight, and then fixing can be in a tray.
There are metal replacement toners that replace the silver in a print with either gold or platinum. This way the print can be made normally with an enlarger and silver chemistry to overcome the contact printing limitation. Toning improves the longevity of the print and provides many of the same tonal effects, depending on how long the print sits in the bath. Unfortunately, the chemicals involved are quite toxic. I re…
And I agree, fibre paper is awesome but the drying and mounting process tends to be onerous compared to resin coated paper, so I rarely do it. Saying that, I do happen to have a 16*20 capable heated paper press, but compared to fibre, there really is no contest for convenience!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can buy 50,000 lumen lightbulbs nowadays which, from 1 metre away, are in the same ballpark as the sun.
Do they produce enough UV to expose platinotype? Most of the modern lights you see are LEDs that produce mostly visible light. You can get UV bulbs, but at this point in our scenario we’re modifying enlargers, and the enlarging lens may focus differently in the UV region from the visible region (something you’d have to check and compensate for). Normally you’d focus an enlarger visually, perhaps with a grain focuser—…
Yes, I have some experience with this (see my other reply in this thread) and it's a real problem but there is an easy fix.
Instead of using a grain-focuser (which would also be dangerous for the eyes anyway, and good quality UV lights don't leak much into the visible) you use plain white paper, cheap paper that is treated with optical brighteners.
These brighteners glow in the UV to make the paper look whiter, which means that under your UV enlarger, they turn the projected UV into a visible image. You can then focus using a regular looking glass to look at the paper. And UV-blocking sunglasses (you can easily test if they actually block UV: the paper will not glow at all if UV-blocking glasses are in the way).
Some lenses are corrected for UV-Vis focus shift, but they are generally extremely expensive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's possible to print large negatives from digital files. You can actually do it on your home laser printer, onto transparent sheets. You can then go even easier and make salt prints (also uses silver) and the sun. They come out very interesting.
This sounds like a great use for the laser transparencies I bought at Goodwill having no particular use in mind. Thanks for the idea!
Use the media that your already have to dial in your pre-processing to some extent.
There are metal replacement toners that replace the silver in a print with either gold or platinum. This way the print can be made normally with an enlarger and silver chemistry to overcome the contact printing limitation. Toning improves the longevity of the print and provides many of the same tonal effects, depending on how long the print sits in the bath. Unfortunately, the chemicals involved are quite toxic. I re…
The toners don't replace the silver so much as alter or supplement it. I used selenium back in the 80s and the (fiber paper) prints so treated have held up almost perfectly. The tonal difference it very subtle. Mounting them on archival board or storing them in neutral buffered paper boxes is essential for maximum longevity.
There are metal replacement toners that replace the silver in a print with either gold or platinum. This way the print can be made normally with an enlarger and silver chemistry to overcome the contact printing limitation. Toning improves the longevity of the print and provides many of the same tonal effects, depending on how long the print sits in the bath. Unfortunately, the chemicals involved are quite toxic. I re…
Any vendors of toner replacement chem you could pass along?
I've also used tetenal for sepia style prints, their sulphide toner. Not a metal toner, but produces interesting and long lasting prints, this stuff: https://tetenal.com/en/homepage/consumer-shop/black-white-ch...
Tetenal make great C41 and E6 chemistry too if this is your thing.
There are metal replacement toners that replace the silver in a print with either gold or platinum. This way the print can be made normally with an enlarger and silver chemistry to overcome the contact printing limitation. Toning improves the longevity of the print and provides many of the same tonal effects, depending on how long the print sits in the bath. Unfortunately, the chemicals involved are quite toxic. I re…
Any vendors of toner replacement chem you could pass along?