Platinum and Silver from the same neg.

[Benito]

It's often said that using Pyro developers (and no doubt others) a negative can be produced that will print well in both Platinum and Silver.

How practical is this, and what film/developer combinations work best?

I'm interested in producing negatives that will (contact) print well in Silver now, that I could print in Platinum down the track. Any advise on how I should set myself up?

I'd be very interested to see some side-by-sides of Silver and Platinum prints made from the same negative and would be grateful for commentary about the film and developer used or difficulties in printing (beyond those inherent to Platinum).

Thanks

[Ole Tjugen]

Platinum has "adjustable grade" through changing the mix, so just about any negative can be used. Staining developers are only necessary if you want to print on Azo (or POP) and something else.

[alec4444]

Platinum has "adjustable grade" through changing the mix, so just about any negative can be used. Staining developers are only necessary if you want to print on Azo (or POP) and something else.

Really? I was about to experiment with ABC Pyro for Platinum (and other alt processes). Today I develop my Efke film in Rodinal. If I liked the alt stuff, I was going to shoot each photo twice and develop one neg in Pyro (for alt) and one in Rodinal (for silver). I was under the impression that a high-density neg was required for alt processes....one that was so high that it would not print on silver well, if at all.

Was that incorrect?

--A

[Ole Tjugen]

It all depends on which particular "alt process"...

Cyanotypes give fairly high contrast, vandyke lower, salt print / albumen / POP very low. Pd/Pt is "tunable", as is Kallitype. In general the "printing out processes" give lower contrast than those which must be developed.

I have had good results from developing normally, and then if I really really want a long-scale negative to bleach it and redevelop in a staining developer. One rather anaemic negative ended up printing well on POP, with a longer range than the 21-step Stouffer wedge I put beside the negative...
Incidentally no process needs high density. The critical thing is the contrast, also called "scale".

[Ken Lee]

I'd be very interested to see some side-by-sides of Silver and Platinum prints made from the same negative...

In a sense, the notion that a photo can be made in such a way that it can be printed in either manner, is a misnomer. It's a bit like someone claiming that they take their photos in color, so that they print them in either color or monochrome. Yes, it's doable, but it's rare the the image looks best in both renditions.

Platinum and Platinum/Palladium prints have a lower dMax than what we get from readily available Silver papers, especially those Silver papers with a semi-gloss or glossy finish. As a result, not every subject will look best when printed both ways. Most will look best in one or the other - or in some other medium altogether. It's the subject and its interpretation, that matters here.

Hoping to eliminate the big visual difference between the two, I spent around a year experimenting with various methods of coating my finished Pt/Pd prints, in an effort to boost the dMax. In the end, I found that certain acrylic-based preparations helped best, but I could never get Pt/Pd to match the brilliant range of commercial Silver papers. I also began to wonder if greater dMax came at the expense of archival permanence.

I have found that many images look best when printed on either Silver or InkJet, because the subjects lend themselves to a rendition with long dynamic range. For example, this image just doesn't work well in Pt/Pd. It needs the full dynamic range of Silver or Inkjet. To use a musical analogy, we need all the deep bass and high treble sounds that the orchestra can produce.

On the other hand, this one looks better in Pt/Pd, especially when coated with a touch of Bowling Alley wax ! Seriously. The image on the screen is actually contrastier in appearance than the final Pt/Pd print. In musical terms, this image (and many which look best in Pt/Pd) has the quality of a duet for flute and harp. The image demands a limited dynamic range.

Both images were shot in 8x10 Ilford HP5, and developed in PyroCat. However, I much prefer TMY and PyroCat, and that's what I shoot nowadays.

[alec4444]

It all depends on which particular "alt process"...

Cyanotypes give fairly high contrast, vandyke lower, salt print / albumen / POP very low. Pd/Pt is "tunable", as is Kallitype. In general the "printing out processes" give lower contrast than those which must be developed.

I have had good results from developing normally, and then if I really really want a long-scale negative to bleach it and redevelop in a staining developer. One rather anaemic negative ended up printing well on POP, with a longer range than the 21-step Stouffer wedge I put beside the negative...
Incidentally no process needs high density. The critical thing is the contrast, also called "scale".

Thanks, Ole, that answers a lot of questions for me! Since it's the contrast which is key (at times, per the rest of your explanation) that is why a staining developer would produce better results than over-developing negatives in regular chemistry, yes? You get more scale in the staining developers rather vs. polarized values in over-developed negatives...?

--A

[John O'Connell]

Ole is correct in stating that Pt is "tunable," but you don't get the high contrast for free. In my experience with Pd (print-out and developed), adding contrast makes the image grainy fast. And we're not talking subtle Tri-X sort of grain here; your image, no matter how nice the negative looks, can end up looking as if it was composed of freshly-ground pepper flakes.

[Oren Grad]

Carl Weese did some work on this a few years back; Photo Techniques magazine published his article about it. The key was to use a pyro developer for the negative and a variable contrast silver paper, so that the color of the stain worked as yellow filtration and brought the contrast of the silver print within bounds.

I've seen some of these prints. The silver versions are quite good, although IMO not quite up to the very best you could achieve with a negative tuned specifically for silver.

Unfortunately, the silver paper that worked best for Carl in these experiments was Agfa MCC, which is no longer available.

[D. Bryant]

And we're not talking subtle Tri-X sort of grain here; your image, no matter how nice the negative looks, can end up looking as if it was composed of freshly-ground pepper flakes.

What kind of contrast agent do you use?

Thanks,

Don Bryant

[Don Hutton]

I currently shoot TMY and develop it in Pyrocat HD in a way which produces negatives which contact well onto AZO 3 (ES of about 1.1) or can easily be printed with an enlarger and they also print well on Pd with about a no 5 mix (Arentz's Na 2 mixtures on his webpage) - because these negatives have scale of about 1.4 to UV light - basically, pyro negatives are "more" contrasty to UV sensitive processes, because the proportional pyro stain is a good UV filter. The same negative has a scale of 1.1 in visible light, but in UV light, it has a scale of about 1.4 - a big reason why a lot of Pt printers use a pyro developer. To get to this point, I used BTZS testing and read the same set of negatives with both a regular ortho densitometer and a UV densitometer (the same instrument in different modes). It becomes pretty obvious where the two meet up when you do this.