RE: Color Carbon

Sandy,

My own take on this exercise is to be able to stabilize the tissue in terms
of thickness and pigment density. I am reasonably sure from experience that
both can be achieved on the newest version our machine. If the pigment load
is just outside the fog level, tissue thickness well may not be of much of
an issue. Even so, I can control thickness to +- one tenth of a mil for a 90
sq ft run.

Kevin is back in Los Angeles right now meeting with the Epson folks and
working on the known problem on the 9800 of faint banding (one of the
blacks) when high ink loads are experienced. When doing CMYK this should not
be a problem as not nearly as much ink density is needed in the negs with
multiple colors. Kevin is also working on a system of calibrating the seps
to the tissue. The problem was probably a lot more ticklish in the olden
days when one had to make film seps. Calibrating digital negs is a lot less
scary than working with film. Experts I've talked to in the pigment industry
tell me that a fairly wide range of colors can be used in the CMYK world,
one need only adjust the plates (negatives) to the colors. Of course there
are standard colors used in the printing industry so this is not much of an
issue in their world.

Obviously this is not an easy haul, but one already proven to be doable by
folks like Tod Gangler and others.

I am hoping that the atelier printers will pick up on this eventually. I
discussed this issue with a friend who I a photographer, museum trustee, and
one who has sat on acquisition committees. We're now seeing Struth and
others getting hammered down in the $100,000+ range at auction for C41
prints!!!!! I asked my friend if his committee would be more willing to pay
$101,500.00 for a print in 4 color carbon than $100,000.00 for a C41.
"Absolutely" he said this would be especially so if he conservators get a
say in the matter. Much work is bought and donated by unknowing patrons and
that is a problem. Some of the Starn Twins work was put together with Scotch
tap and is a conservationist nightmare now.

The point is at there prices for a percent or two extra in cost one can have
a 4 color carbon made. I am sure there are plenty of people around who would
make an edition of 24 x 30 prints at $1500 per.

Comments?

--Dick

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-carbon@spitbite.org [mailto:owner-carbon@spitbite.org] On Behalf
Of Sandy King
Sent: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 3:26 PM
To: carbon@spitbite.org
Subject: [carbon] Color Carbon

Learning to make a balanced tissue set for carbon printing is quite a
challenge. When I first started to work with carbon I was only
interested in color and spent three or four years working almost
exclusively in color. And I have four or five very nice prints to
show for my efforts!! I did have a big jump start on the tissue
because Richard Kauffman, who later collaborated in the creation of
Ultrastable materials, provided me with his own formula for
three-color tissue. However, the process of balancing separations
with wet processing was a very formidable task.

If I were to balance another color set it would probably be easier to
first balance it for carbro, then adjust sensitizer and exposure for
carbon. But I am so much into monochrome photography now that I
probably will not do color again. But I do have a nice Devin 5X7
tri-color camera that only needs a new pellicle and calibration to be
on line and I am very tempted to resurrect the beast to do some
historical type color printing.

Sandy King

At 2:03 PM -0800 12/27/06, Eric Scott wrote:
>Dick,
>
>I tried to make a 3-color carbon this time last year using the triple
>transfer process and a step wedge. I spent 3 months trying to
>balance my tissues so that the step wedge printed neutral. I failed
>and burned myself out completely. I put all my carbon stuff away.
>Now I'm back at monochrome after having recovered. One day I will go
>at it again. This time I will forget about step wedges. I'll make
>contone balanced separation negatives and manufacture my tissues in
>such a way that I get a print that isn't too horrible to look at.
>When I make just one print this way, I will then make the seps
>digitally in photoshop and buy your 3-color tissue on a regular basis.
>
>Eric.
>
>On Dec 27, 2006, at 12:12 PM, Richard Sullivan wrote:
>
>> Much of the pressure at the moment is for color tissue and that is
>> our
>> next hurdle to cross. We have a Color Carbon Study Group which will
>> meet
>> until June and we will be working with Russell Lees 4x5 Pietown, NM
>> Kodachromes from 1940. We decided it would be a bit unwieldy to
>> each do our
>> own images, so working on one set or one image is a bit more
>> practical.
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Received on Wed Dec 27 16:35:21 2006