What material do you use to print the negative on?
What material do you use to print the negative on?
I had very good luck with Pictorico OHPOriginally Posted by blevblev
once i got the profile right it was spot on.
You would want to use lith film and a reversal process. Unblinkingeye.com has a very good article on the reversal process and the book by Richard sullivan and Carl Weese "The New Platinum Print" has a very good section on enlarging negatives for pt/pd printing. Yes you can obtain full tonal range, in fact using lith film with a developer like pyrocat and the reversal process can improve on the negative if you messed up.
Don't know about the digital thing, but it seems to me not to be a very economical solution for negatives this size, I beleive printers capable of this size negatives with the required quality are very expensive, unless you farm it out. Bob Carnie sent to me a proof negative that seemed to be the solution, but then you would have to make sure it really is a print you want to enlarge since it was not cheap either.
Bottom line, if you have an enlarger with about $100 you can buy 10 sheets of 20x24 lith film and all the chemicals necessary to make copy negatives of this size, I imagine a single inkjet neg of this size will cost you just as much.
I have personally switched to digital negatives ( as of three or four years ago) for alternative printing, but the method Jorge mentions re: lith film and reversal processing (Liam Lawless method) works very well. I used it myself for several years and and was quite satisfied with the results.
If you are not into digital the lith film and reversal processing method is highly recommended by me.
Sandy King
Another thing to think about is once you figure out your exposure time and solution you have it.
With the digital negs, everything is extremely consistent. All your negs will be the same density, because you have already perfected them during the digitizing process.
But I do love Lith film
What material do you print the negatives on? Paper? Mylar? Saran Wrap?
Many people use Pictorico. I personally make digital negatives on an OHP material that I buy from Photo Warehouse. Less expensive then Pictorico, and not as much UV blocking.
Sandy
I've always held off on this because I didn't want to do it in the darkroom with ortho film, and I thought I didn't have an adequate printer. I recently tried some enlarged digital negatives on laser transparency material for cyanotype (printed out at my office), and the results were surprisingly good. The dither-type pattern from the laser printer kind of resembles paper grain, and it's actually pretty nice!
I ran into this woman: www.natalieyoung.com (Warning : Flash Site!) at the Fotofest Meeting Place two weeks ago, and she was presenting silver-gelatin prints made from inkjet negatives. They looked pretty good. Her printing style and subject matter may make the process less finicky than would be acceptable to a full-bore Ansel-esque zonemeister, but they did not have any qualities that screamed loudly "I AM DIGITAL". They looked like solidly printed silver prints.
Kodak discontinued its direct dupe film a few years ago. Much slower film is readily available for direct duplication of Xrays, the learning curve is not steep and the material is inexpensive. It is difficult to use, but not impossible, for making enlarged dupes account the slow speed. Photo Warehouse has a few sizes.
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