What is your method for making digital negatives?

[Andrew O'Neill]

Have you encountered with your 7600 the artifact of "gradation lines" that run perpendicular to the print head travel in continuous tone prints with the 7600? (Prints w/smooth gradations.) This artifact supposedly occurred with the earlier Epson 2400, 2200, 4000, 7600, etc., printers. The R1800 (or R1900?) and the 3800 printers did not show this artifact. I sure saw it with my 4000. It was my understanding from Bostick-Sullivan that this artifact was an early printer issue seen in printing digital negatives that was not apparent in standard printing on paper.

They were seen in continuous tone prints from digital negatives, like portraits with smooth backgrounds, because the artifact was faint enough to be camouflaged by prints with more complex subject matter.

I have noticed this with the 4000. That is why I have to be very selective when choosing a negative for carbon transfer printing. Smooth areas are okay as long as they are middle gray and darker.

[Zero_Equals_Infinity]

Bob,

The idea of silver negatives produced with a Lambda printer is a totally amazing one. All I can say is, where do I sign-up, what is the minimum order, and how much per square foot? Other than that, please make some step wedge negatives for people to buy and take home so that we can create correction curves to apply to the negative in Photoshop before having you print it.

[Jim collum]

First.. personal experience with the Lambda silver prints from Bob.. best b/w digital output I've seen. I highly recommend them.

Second.. has anyone experience with Jon Cone's new inkset/curve for QTR combination specifically designed for digital negatives? One of the battles I've always fought with the photoshop applied curves has been how extreme the curve ends up being.. with subtleties in the highlights difficult to get right (it can be done.. but it doesn't seem that the accuracy is there in the curves tool to dial it in with a lot of precision).

Bob,
The idea of silver negatives produced with a Lambda printer is a totally amazing one. All I can say is, where do I sign-up, what is the minimum order, and how much per square foot? Other than that, please make some step wedge negatives for people to buy and take home so that we can create correction curves to apply to the negative in Photoshop before having you print it.

[Zero_Equals_Infinity]

I just installed the inkset on a 3880 to be a dedicated digital negative printer.

I hope to get into the darkroom on the weekend to fire off some step wedges. In the past, I have had the devil's own time with the K3 ultrachrome inkset due to poor UV blocking of most inks. The results were underwhelming. I am hoping that using Jon's Method 3 will enable me to spend time printing images instead of continuously working to get a good curve.

[bob carnie]

Ron Reeder is coming to Toronto next month to give digital neg from pictorico on our Epson 7800.
But he is also going to help me with the silver negs , as will Sandy the following week.
Once I am confident on outputting for others we will have a Press and Go price available just like our silver paper and RA4 and Ink on paper.... www.pressandgo.ca at this point there is not a price point.
The benifit is IMO the blocking power of the silver negative as well the archival aspects.
Also I found in my own testing that just looking at the negative and adjusting curves manually in PS was all I needed, but for an service output for others we need to be more sophisticated with custom curves or profiles.
Minimum order would be 3ft of film on a 20 inch roll.

Bob,

The idea of silver negatives produced with a Lambda printer is a totally amazing one. All I can say is, where do I sign-up, what is the minimum order, and how much per square foot? Other than that, please make some step wedge negatives for people to buy and take home so that we can create correction curves to apply to the negative in Photoshop before having you print it.

[sanking]

First.. personal experience with the Lambda silver prints from Bob.. best b/w digital output I've seen. I highly recommend them.

Second.. has anyone experience with Jon Cone's new inkset/curve for QTR combination specifically designed for digital negatives? One of the battles I've always fought with the photoshop applied curves has been how extreme the curve ends up being.. with subtleties in the highlights difficult to get right (it can be done.. but it doesn't seem that the accuracy is there in the curves tool to dial it in with a lot of precision).

I have used Jon Cone's Methodology 3 inkset/profiles with the Epson 3800 for carbon transfer printing.This methodology allows the user to select from one of five curves that produce UV blocking ranging from about a maximum of log 2.2 to about log 2.8, which is enough to cover most alternative processes. For silver printing the effective log density range is about 1.2 to 1.8, which would cover most silver papers. The negatives produced with this method have very little grain and virtually no digital artifacts. However, to produce a completely linear result I had to use .acv correction curves. The curve was not very extreme since the profiles allows selection of the correction Dmax.

One problem I had with the inks was they they did not dry on Pictorico quite as fast as the Epson K3 inks. This was something of a problem with printers that use the so-called pizza wheels to advance the OHP, most of the small consummer ones. This would not be a problem with higher end printers that have suction systems to hold the paper.

Sandy

[sanking]

Ron Reeder is coming to Toronto next month to give digital neg from pictorico on our Epson 7800.
But he is also going to help me with the silver negs , as will Sandy the following week.
Once I am confident on outputting for others we will have a Press and Go price available just like our silver paper and RA4 and Ink on paper.... www.pressandgo.ca at this point there is not a price point.
The benifit is IMO the blocking power of the silver negative as well the archival aspects.
Also I found in my own testing that just looking at the negative and adjusting curves manually in PS was all I needed, but for an service output for others we need to be more sophisticated with custom curves or profiles.
Minimum order would be 3ft of film on a 20 inch roll.

Bob,

Whatever method you use to linearize for printing with the Lamda should work. The only complication is that when doing this for customers to make digital negatives the curve will need to be inverted from what I assume you do when printing directly positives on the silver paper.

Sandy

[bob carnie]

Linearizesing the Lambda is done automatically and it generates a 21 step wedge as you already know. For me I just do a couple of test negatives with curve shapes I think will work for a particular process, and go from there, I am hoping you and Ron can show me how to make it very predictable.

For instance, we have had great success making neg's for silver contact printing.(not to be confused with neg's to go in enlarger) basically it was just a simple matter of making one negative, contact it on Ilford Warmtone with a #2 filter, finding the density that best represented the enlarger print.
Then making adjustments to the file by increasing or decreasing the curve where I though was needed and then sending the positive file over to the lambda.
At the lambda stage I can make a positive or negative film with the same ease and the same 21 step process to linearize.

For those who are well adapt at looking at negatives this approach should be acceptable for the old farts.

A more defined profile that gets the younger generation in the ball park the first time with minor tweaking at the process stage is where I am hoping to get to with your and Ron's help. Some of our target market have never seen a negative or made a wet print , but they are well adapted to profiles and PS .


I have Chris H from Rochester who has been working with Ron Morey and GEG workshops . He will assisting both of you for the time you are here, he is interested in making the colour carbon tissues for us so we are bringing him in for 14 days to meet you and Ron Reeder. This young man has already made some very nice silver emulsions on different papers under Ron Morey's guidance and mentoring.. I am really looking forward to this session as I believe we are closer to my goals.

Ron Morey was great to meet and I would love to organize a GEH weekend to see the collection , pick his brain and that of Mark Ostermann.
I know that between Steve Shermans group and people from Toronto we could make a great weekend of education and look at beautiful prints.

Bob,

Whatever method you use to linearize for printing with the Lamda should work. The only complication is that when doing this for customers to make digital negatives the curve will need to be inverted from what I assume you do when printing directly positives on the silver paper.

Sandy

[sanking]

I have Chris H from Rochester who has been working with Ron Morey and GEG workshops . He will assisting both of you for the time you are here, he is interested in making the colour carbon tissues for us so we are bringing him in for 14 days to meet you and Ron Reeder. This young man has already made some very nice silver emulsions on different papers under Ron Morey's guidance and mentoring.. I am really looking forward to this session as I believe we are closer to my goals.

Ron Morey was great to meet and I would love to organize a GEH weekend to see the collection , pick his brain and that of Mark Ostermann.
I know that between Steve Shermans group and people from Toronto we could make a great weekend of education and look at beautiful prints.

Bob,

I think you mean Ron Mowery, right? Ron is indeed a great person to know, with a great wealth of information about films, having worked in that area many years for Kodak as an engineer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4q0Ryh9pBE

Not sure that Ron Morey, www.ronmoreyshow.com/, would contribute very much to our wealth of information about films.

Those who long for purity in their photography should become more familiar with Ron's emulsion making. It would allow them to free themselves from "cheater" items like factory coated film and paper.

Sandy

[bob carnie]

Yes indeed Ron Mowery
please do not tell him I mixed him up he would not be pleased.
He was a pleasure to spend an afternoon with and I want to spend more time with him.
I saw a few 11x14 prints with Ron's emulsion on watercolour that really reminded me of Ektalure , which in the graded days was one of my favourite papers.
It was coated perfectly. But I will still use the "cheater" products until I earn my 10th dan black belt in alternative process..
say hi to Sam, I won't see him in May.

I think I am still on my white belt with yellow tips.

Bob,

I think you mean Ron Mowery, right? Ron is indeed a great person to know, with a great wealth of information about films, having worked in that area many years for Kodak as an engineer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4q0Ryh9pBE

Not sure that Ron Morey, www.ronmoreyshow.com/, would contribute very much to our wealth of information about films.

Those who long for purity in their photography should become more familiar with Ron's emulsion making. It would allow them to free themselves from "cheater" items like factory coated film and paper.

Sandy