I have a fresh bottle right here.Originally Posted by mdarnton
Glad to hear of your experiments.
Ether is starting fluid and it does stick not around long. I hate the stuff and will never use for this or starting engines. Maybe a diesel engine at the South Pole...
Tin Can
The original Kodak product appears to have some ingredient with a near-perfect refractive index match to film base, so that when it is dry there is a mechanical roughness but little or no optical scattering. The instructions that I have call for a drop to be quickly spread and rubbed dry with cotton, and the resulting film is remarkably thin. Maybe if I put some on a piece of film and use dark-field illumination in the microscope I will be able to see exactly what the texture consists of.
Now, if I can just remember to bring a sample in to work tomorrow....
Please!
Tin Can
This is all a matter of technique. Of course you need "normal room temp" for anything, with all your ingredient brought up to correct working temp. You hang a neg on a clothesline in front of your fume hood or spray booth. And you need the right kind of pencils. I had a long talk with some ole feller who once did all of Hurrell's 11x14 negs, as one of his long-term assistants. But I'm getting to be an ole feller myself, and have done this kind of thing in the past. Mostly I prefer to
work with films that have good tooth to begin with, because the same feature makes them more immune to Newton's rings in the carrier. ... But ether????? Hope you don't get raided as a suspected meth lab, if you don't blow up the place all by yourself first !! Another problem with lacquers is that they're really really bad for your health. But good print lacquers were generally butyl acetate, which stays clear and flexible for awhile (not forever). Some of these products are now illegal around here, so I suspect that art store mostly sells clear acrylic fixatives these days. One trick is just like applying anti-newton sprays. You don't
spray your neg directly, but form a cloud of mist then swipe you neg thru it before it dissipates. Of course, in such cases it helps to have variable power on your
fume hood fan, so you can keep just the right tension between the time the product stays in the air, and having it still pulled away from your own nose, eyes, and lungs. But like I already said, these are basically graphics arts techniques, so photographers has forgotten most of them. There is really very little different
between a sheet of mylar drafting "vellum" and the back of a piece of sheet film.
Except very few are even trying to do negative touch up.
I hate to have go to APUG.
One of my regret's is never seeing my last wife hand touch up Playboy negs or chromes. She dismissed the whole thing as child's play.
Tin Can
Airbrushing is a whole different suite of techniques. If you have experience with that kind of equipment, fine. But it's overkill for just getting a pencil smudge surface.
All she told me was, she used a fine brush and any old paint she had. She had a lot of oil paint. She painted like Rembrandt.
Airbrushing was somebody else, I assume.
Tin Can
Airbrushing was usually done on the work print, afterwards. But anyway, here's how I ACTUALLY work with negs: I never mess with the original itself, but register a piece of frosted mylar to it, which itself readily accepts any kind of retouching dye or pencil. It helps to have a punch and register system; but for incidentals, you could register and tape by eye over a lightbox. I go the a big art store and pick up big sheets of 5-mil translucent mylar, frosted both sides. Don't use acetate because it's yellower, has a more conspicuous frosting pattern, and is not dimensionally stable. Then I carefully cut this into standard film working sizes of 8x10 and 4x5, then inspect each subsequent piece over a lightbox. If a particular cut piece has a minor flaw like a kink mark or bit of uneveness in the frosting, I'll set it aside for use only with images with a lot of complexity, where slight differences in final density won't appear anyway. For anything with an open sky or soft complexion, I'll only use sheets which are flawless, at least in that area of the image. 5-mil is a lot easier to handle than 3-mil; but these same sheet are also used for diffusion when working with unsharp masks etc. I believe Alan Ross teaches a system of pencil masking analogous to what I've described, though I've never looked into it specifically.
Thanks Drew, please keep it coming!
Next thread will be how to make a cheap DIY punch registration system.
I see the old ones still cost a more than anything else in a darkroom.
Tin Can
I use the Condit system, which was pretty expensive. The problem these days is finding matched sets where the punch and registration frame still match. Once
in awhile you can find graphics arts punches small enough for larger sheet film sizes; and pin bars can be made up for these. I did this for my wannabee dye transfer printing, if I'm ever able to retire from retirement honeydo lists. You search under commercial printing gear in that case, not photo or darkroom gear (companies like Ternes-Burton or Olec Stoesser). You can save a LOT, cause there's glut of this old print shop gear still around. Or if you have a professional machinist-quality drill press or milling machine, you can make your own. The average woodworking press has too much spindle wobble. In the old days people would use heavy 3-hole paper punches. But nowadays paper punches are junk. If an old solid one turns up somehow and will positively hold its settings, then you can adapt these. But anything like that and you still have to use a registration tab, taped on, because the holes will be 1/4 inch diameter. If you punch the film itself, you need micropins and the little tiny punch holes that go with them. Aligning sheet on a lightbox can drive you insane if you are working with small film, but isn't so bad for the occasional 8x10 neg. There are tricks to make this easier too; but I vastly prefer a precision punch and register system.
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