Gotta see this video on platinum printing

Mainecoonmaniac · Oct 24, 2013

What got me fired up about platinum prints was seeing George Tice's platinum prints in SF. The gallery employee said they're made by Salto in Belgium.

http://vimeo.com/20321908

troyholden · Oct 24, 2013

I live in San Francisco and am a fan of Tice's work. What gallery is he showing at?

Mainecoonmaniac · Oct 24, 2013

It's at 49 Geary Street

troyholden said:
I live in San Francisco and am a fan of Tice's work. What gallery is he showing at?

I think it's the Scott Nicols Gallery on the fourth floor. It becomes a blur after I've hopped a few galleries. But such fun!

ParkerSmithPhoto · Oct 24, 2013

Totally awesome.

Here's another video that shows Albert Watson making the images shown in the platinum video. He's using a Phase One back on his Hassy. D'oh!!

The shots of him holding a mug with a cute kitten on it gave me a laugh:

davido · Oct 26, 2013

Great to see Mike Ware in person (video). Why do they always have to have a soundtrack to everything these days!
They have a very slick process here. For those who haven't done platinum, it doesn't need to be this slick.
Also, why is he making three negative separations for a B&W platinum print? How the hell would one print a platinum print with three negatives?

Alan Klein · Oct 26, 2013

They make three negatives with high, medium and low tones through a computer that are full size to the print. Then they line up all three negs to expose the print. At least I think that,s what they do by my reading of what I viewed. It,s toward the front of the video.

Mainecoonmaniac · Oct 26, 2013

I think that's cool. What I don't get why 3 negs sandwiched? Isn't the point is to separate the exposures. This is still all new to me. Appreciate if someone explained.

adelorenzo · Oct 27, 2013

Everyone just close your eyes when you see those big, digital negatives. Pretend he's got a really big film camera.

Seriously though, I'm curious about why they do the separation with three negatives like that as well.

Tebbiebear · Oct 27, 2013

I would assume that they do it via 3 negs in order to maximize the tonal range. The negative printers are not able to capture the entire range in one print so they break it down into multiples. Again that is just an assumption.

Simon Howers · Oct 27, 2013

Hmmm. My experience of digital negs is that they lack the density of film. Stacking them would give more density without having to fiddle about with the solutions. Registration would be a nightmare though !

Simon Howers · Oct 27, 2013

Neg Process

Simon Howers said:
Hmmm. My experience of digital negs is that they lack the density of film. Stacking them would give more density without having to fiddle about with the solutions. Registration would be a nightmare though !

Having looked at both videos - it would seem that the photographer is using a colour digital back on his MF camera. The lab are splitting the file into RGB to play with. The finished (reassembled) file is going to another lab who are using a (very expensive) machine to make internegs. This is a heavy-duty commercial operation.

In this case, the photographer only takes the picture - everything else is done for him.

pdeeh · Oct 27, 2013

Simon Howers said:
In this case, the photographer only takes the picture - everything else is done for him.

I'm not at all sure what that is meant to imply - should I infer that thereby his photographs are somehow less "authentic" than someone who makes their own materials?

But huge numbers of photographers don't make their own materials - they buy film made in a factory, shoot it in a camera made in factory, then send it off to laboratories who develop and print it for them. So for those photographers - and this will include some of the people often referred to as "the greats" - they only take the pictures, and everything else is done for them.

I'm not sniping, by the way, I am simply genuinely puzzled by your remark.

MartinP · Oct 27, 2013

I think that Simon was referring to the imagesetters used to make the negs. They are not amateur level gear (especially price-wise) but have been used for decades in large printing shops, so the experience in using them is in the same sort of business. The input to the imagesetter is typically Postscript driven, so all the usual manipulations you could imagine, and more, may have been used to end up with the perfect neg for the final prints.

I'm not sure of the precise relation of the RGB separations to the Pt-Pn print either, possibly the adjusted separations are then contact-printed to one master-neg for use on the print?

Loris Medici · Oct 28, 2013

Perhaps sandwiching the negatives serves the purpose of hiding imagesetter grain in the medium tone and (especially) highlight areas; imagesetter negatives can give serious grain; back when I was using imagesetter negatives, I had to print emulsion side up, in order to hide the strange blotching effect caused by some areas - being in very good contact - showing dots (even at 3600dpi hardware resolution!) and other areas not. This causes tonal differences and makes the print look blotchy / defective. Maybe they're laying the negatives so that the negative for the dark tones is in direct contact with the paper and on top of it the negative for midtones and to the top the negative for the highlights? (If they aren't doing multiple printings that is...) Since the 2nd and 3rd negatives (from the paper surface) aren't in close contact with the paper, they won't show the screening pattern, and since the detail / sharpness comes from high contrast areas which is (mostly) provided by the dark tone negative in close contact with the paper, this practice won't diminish (much) the apparent sharpness of the image. All that for creamy tones, is my take... (Again, if they are actually stacking all the negatives together and not doing multiple printings...)

Regards,
Loris.

Gotta see this video on platinum printing

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