Desaturated prints..how?

[babil]

Hello,
the title says it all. Is it possible to do this in a "wet" darkroom? I am refering to the printing stage and not to the negative development.


Thansk in advance,
Vassilis

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Panalure was a paper designed for printing B&W from color negs. I don't know if it is still made or if there is any substitute.

Alternately, you could always make a color print and dupe it on B&W film and even use filtration for B&W effects.

 

[babil]

Thanks for the quick reply.......though I didn't mean this. It's my fault, desaturation it's not the right term. What I mean is to reduce saturation so that the color becomes "muted", like in --don't shoot-- Gimp (or PS).

thanks
Vassilis

 

[Nick Zentena]

Like bleach bypass?

 

[Mark Antony]

What film are you using? something like Kodak Gold is supposed to 'pop' and give nice contrasty saturated colours.
If you want less saturation you need a film like Kodak Portra NC

One caveat though, if you are getting them done at a 1 Hr Lab then they'll scan them, print digitally and the paper they use is designed for the 'happy snapper' crowd with slightly high saturation.
hope that helps
Mark
http://photo-utopia.blogspot.com/

 

[frotog]

You could try slightly underexposing portra nc and then underexposing the print on a low contrast paper.

 

[babil]

Thanks very much for the replies.
So I assume that after exposing and developing the film color saturation cannot be adjusted.

Thanks
Vassilis

 

[Struan Gray]

I have seen published work where the photographer gave RA4 paper two or three times the normal exposure and then cut development time significantly. This gave a very creamy look with low saturation colours but fairly normal looking contrast. The negatives were taken in normal to harsh daylight with normal contrast film - i.e. the negatives were not low contrast themselves. The report said a lot of experimentation was needed to come up with the right combination of overexposure and underdevelopment, but once found it was consistent: i.e. it didn't have to be tuned much for individual images. I'm afraid I don't have any starting points, but processing a series of ring-arounds with 2x, 4x, 8x etc exposure for different times should let you find the ballpark quickly enough.

 

[babil]

that's not a bad idea. I am also thinking about preflashing the paper. Maybe a couple of msec.

I will try to experiment this weekend.

 

[Mark Antony]

Not typically. There aren't really grades of colour paper like in mono printing although...

The contrast curves of the papers vary by manufacturer and paper type.

Years ago we used Fuji paper and chemicals at our Lab, a valued customer hated the Fuji paper "too high contrast for weddings'
So we found a supplier (Agfa) that supplied a softer paper, at that time they made Optima and Portrait paper to compliment their films of the same names.
Possibly there may be an Agfa lab near you that still has some of this paper
http://www.uniquephoto.com/index.php?expand=22091

 

[Ed Sukach]

If you are trying to decrease contrast, so that highlights are not 'blown" and shadow detail is maintained, "pre-flashing" - exposing the paper to 10% - 20% of the total exposure using the image of a gray card - may be useful.

I once photographed an assembly of girls wearing white and colored gowns on the front steps of a University Building, in BRIGHT (and I mean **BRIGHT**!!) direct noon day sunlight. Preliminary prints indicated absolutely NO detail in the "white" gowns, and NO detail - at all - in the shadows.

The negative was analyzed for color balance and exposure using a ColorStar 3000 Analyser, giving an exposure time of "X" seconds. Then a gray card image was color balanced, the enlarging lens aperture set to duplicate the time of the original; and the paper exposed for 20% of that time. The paper was removed, the original negative replaced that of the gray card, and the paper re-exposed for the remaining 80% of the "X" time.

Easier to do than to write about. The result was *very* successful.