Re: Cyanotypes

Hi:

I have been using ortho film in my pinhole cameras almost exclusively. My
pinhole shots are printed with cyanotype or gum usually.

The trick is getting a good developer. I mix my own, but commercial ones
to try in addition to dilute dektol are xtol, selectol (if its still
available) - a low contrast developer is essential.

There are some other alternatives depending on what you want to try. Many
alt-process users make digital negatives -but this is tricky. You could
try scanning a paper negative and printing the scanned image on
transparency material, and use this as a negative.

Could also try photocopying your paper negative onto a transparency and
use this as an image. This would alter the image characteristics, but it
may "work" for your image.

Gord

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, George L Smyth wrote:

> Bob -
>
> If you can process paper you can process sheet film, at least orthochomatic sheet film. As a matter of fact, you can even use Dektol to process it (there are better choices, but it is good at a starting point) - look to use it in a 1:10 to 1:15 range.
>
> Personally, shooting and hoping is not often going to get you the results you are hoping for - it will give you surprises, which work out about 1 times in 10. I think that you will find it essential to do some testing so that you can gain control and consistency over the process, otherwise you will be spinning your wheels.
>
> As far as contrast is concerned, you will want to do exactly the opposite - go for a very contrasty negative, so that if it prints on grade 0 paper then it will be in the range that cyanotype (and most other alternative processes) want to see. The image "Jimmy" (http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hmpi/Pinhole/Images/PinholeImages.htm) was done as a pinhole using orthchromatic film printed via the Van Dyke process.
>
> Cheers -
>
> george
>
> -----
> http://www.GLSmyth.com
> http://DRiPInvesting.org
>
> --- On Fri 01/07, Bob < bob@bobarnott.com > wrote:
> From: Bob [mailto: bob@bobarnott.com]
> To: pinhole-discussion@spitbite.org
> Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 10:16:14 +0000
> Subject: Re: [pinhole-discussion] Cyanotypes
>
> George L Smyth wrote:<br>> Bob -<br>> <br>> I have done it, but gave up in favor of using halftone film, which is <br>> as inexpensive as paper and (IMO) works much better. The exposure <br>> time will be considerably longer, which is something I did not want <br>> to deal with since I use a UV unit that I built (which is slower than <br>> the sun, though consistent). There are ways of stripping the back of <br>> the paper to compensate for this, but again, I found that ortho simply<br>> made things a whole lot easier.<br><br>I've heard about this pealing of the paper and also waxing and other<br>methods; always seemed like a fudge to me. I'll have to have a look<br>around and see if I can get hold of this ortho film stuff, although<br>I would be a bit worried about processing it and I've never processed<br>sheet film before.<br><br>> The density will need to be akin to what you would be using if you <br>> were shooting for a grade 0 paper.<br><br>So that would be a short !
> contrast range rather than a high range...? Is<br>there anything you did to achieve that...? I'm not that up on shooting<br>for a particular density, I just point, shoot and hope for the best<br>normally.<br><br>Cheers,<br><br>-- <br>Bob http://www.bobarnott.com/<br>
>
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---------------------------------------------------------
Gordon J. Holtslander Dept. of Biology
holtsg@duke.usask.ca 112 Science Place
http://duke.usask.ca/~holtsg University of Saskatchewan
Tel (306) 966-4433 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Fax (306) 966-4461 Canada S7N 5E2
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Received on Thu Jan 20 08:09:42 2005