I need your help

Paul Sorensen · Nov 19, 2005

I think that this is great and that it should be pursued. That said, I don't feel that I am in a place with my photography where I can put forth the effort this would require right now. I suspect I may want to do this in the future and I am extremely grateful that someone is out there working on this kind of thing and interested in passing the knowlege along.

JG Motamedi · Nov 19, 2005

Even learning how to make an emulsion with an ASA of 12 would be great.

A number of "samizdat" booklets sell on eBay in PDF form; the most notable of these is the Lens Collector's Vade Mecum.

Mick Fagan · Nov 20, 2005

As I live on the bottom of the planet, a book or whatever would be pretty much what I would be able to acquire.

I would be very interested in coating various papers with real workable emulsion. Liquid light is quite good but it's stability on some paper surfaces I tried, seemed to be dependent on my ability to get a reasonable amount of emulsion evenly coated. It's also very, very expensive, if one starts to coat large areas, or for multiple prints.

I think your windscreen wiper type applicator you mentioned in another post, may be the answer.

I will follow this with great interest.

Mick.

Photo Engineer · Nov 20, 2005

Mick Fagan said:
As I live on the bottom of the planet, a book or whatever would be pretty much what I would be able to acquire.

I would be very interested in coating various papers with real workable emulsion. Liquid light is quite good but it's stability on some paper surfaces I tried, seemed to be dependent on my ability to get a reasonable amount of emulsion evenly coated. It's also very, very expensive, if one starts to coat large areas, or for multiple prints.

I think your windscreen wiper type applicator you mentioned in another post, may be the answer.

I will follow this with great interest.

Mick.

Mick, thanks.

At present, I can get a good print with 250 mg of silver / ft sq. This is 5 mils thickness of the emulsion diluted 1:1 with gelatin and water for 12 ml of emulsion / ft sq. I'm working on reducing the level.

The basic formula gives a contrast grade of 1.0 in this mode. Adding addenda to increase contrast gives me grades 2 and 3 respectively with Ilford MG IV as my check.

It has been a rather big expense for me as a retired person, but I don't intend to profit by it. I only wish to recoupe my costs for the coating blades and some of the experiments.

As I said in a previous post, I would rather die surrounded by 100 friends than 100 $100 bills. You get my point I hope.

Anyhow, free publication is my goal as well as dissemination of the high quality coating methods that I use to get good images at 8x10 and hopefully higher. My supplier has informed me that the 11x14 blades will be available next week as well as the modified 8x10 with better spread capability.

The repeat ISO 100 emulsion went well this afternoon, but coating was a problem due to pH. That ammonia digest is a pain in the tush!

So, two steps forward and a step backwards.

I continue my work. Thanks again to you all for your e-mails, your private messages and other contacts. I truly welcome them all. Please do keep in touch. Objective input is helping me a lot. without a 'raison d'etre' I might have given up. It is not easy working in a vacuum.

PE

Lukas Werth · Nov 21, 2005

Living in Germany, I certainly support Chris and Mick in their longing for a book. Self-coating emulsions seems to me a fascinating idea for hundred and one reasons: independence, able to create one's own looks and character, make one's own formats, use it as a starting point for one's own ideas and motives, going back to the sources, away from the "predigested world" to quote Chris.
I happen to think that consumerism and consumerist attitude really is a scourge of photography. PE, if you succeed in getting results in film speed - or any worthwhile and communicable results - (and I was reading those remarks about autochromes!!), I would think of this as a major achievement in creative photography, pushing open a new door.

Lukas

David A. Goldfarb · Nov 21, 2005

If your goal is free publication, I think the publication of Reilly's albumen book as a PDF on http://albumen.stanford.edu would be an excellent model. I think most everyone doing albumen today has downloaded the book, and the site also has other publications, and video showing the coating process. Maybe Stanford or some other reliable academic site like RIT would be willing to post your materials as well.

Donald Qualls · Nov 22, 2005

Photo Engineer said:
Here is the question:

"Why would you want to attend a workshop to learn how to make and coat emulsions when there are products like Liquid Light that you can buy"?

I answered as best I could, but hearing from you all would be a great help to me.

Disinterest and negative opinions are very welcome.

What I get for not coming in for a few days...

It seems to me that Liquid Light and similar products will be gone long before film is, and further that an ISO 100 emulsion is 5-6 stops faster than Liquid Light. Availability of a kit and workshop would be a godsend for those trying to continue chemical photography, once it becomes obvious that film is on its deathbed (at present, IMO, it's deeply ill but still ambulatory).

I doubt I'd ever be able to attend such a workshop, for the same reasons I wouldn't put myself in the market for coating blades: I'm broke, and I'll likely be broke, at some varying level, for the rest of my life (never really been anything but broke, come to that). Buying a kit is just possible, depending on cost, and I'm a smart fellow; I can probably find a way to coat glass, which will do just fine for me. But I'd surely rather be able to make the emulsion (and especially to make an emulsion faster than ISO 50, with ortho or panchro response) than be dependent on a vendor to produce it in ready to coat form.

k_jupiter · Nov 22, 2005

Donald Qualls said:
What I get for not coming in for a few days...

It seems to me that Liquid Light and similar products will be gone long before film is, and further that an ISO 100 emulsion is 5-6 stops faster than Liquid Light. Availability of a kit and workshop would be a godsend for those trying to continue chemical photography, once it becomes obvious that film is on its deathbed (at present, IMO, it's deeply ill but still ambulatory).

I doubt I'd ever be able to attend such a workshop, for the same reasons I wouldn't put myself in the market for coating blades: I'm broke, and I'll likely be broke, at some varying level, for the rest of my life (never really been anything but broke, come to that). Buying a kit is just possible, depending on cost, and I'm a smart fellow; I can probably find a way to coat glass, which will do just fine for me. But I'd surely rather be able to make the emulsion (and especially to make an emulsion faster than ISO 50, with ortho or panchro response) than be dependent on a vendor to produce it in ready to coat form.

Donald, You just have to wait until he comes up with a Folgers Crystal version of this and you'll be in like Flynn.

Hmmm... was just looking at a 6.5x9 plateholder this AM wondering...

So in answer to your question...

Why? Because it's there. I can buy a cyanotype kit, I can buy cyanotype paper, I can just do the damned thing on a computer and tint it blue!

Or I can learn a craft.

Repeat after me... Cyanotype Kalliotype, PT/Pd, oilprints, Z-types,etc etc.

Learn what is there to be learned. Go for it.

tim in san jose

avandesande · Nov 23, 2005

I would be more interested in a panchromatic emulsion that you could make glass plates with. There are a large variety of printing processes available, but the variety of films have shrunk to thin film and t-grain. There are people doing wet plate now but there is a big gap of photographic history between wet plates and modern film.

Photo Engineer · Nov 23, 2005

avandesande said:
I would be more interested in a panchromatic emulsion that you could make glass plates with. There are a large variety of printing processes available, but the variety of films have shrunk to thin film and t-grain. There are people doing wet plate now but there is a big gap of photographic history between wet plates and modern film.

This is doable, but panchromatic work requires total darkness with either work by feel or use of IR safelights and viewing equipment.

It ups the ante considerably in either darkroom expertise and dexterity, or investment in equipment.

I have achieved panchromatic sensitivity, but it is hard to control and coat. I will address this fully in the Workshop and in anything I write up about the process. I hope that will help you out.

PE

avandesande · Nov 23, 2005

Straight from silence of the lambs....
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=47626

Not a bad investment since you would probably do DBI with your plates anyway.

Photo Engineer · Nov 23, 2005

avandesande said:
Straight from silence of the lambs....
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=47626

Not a bad investment since you would probably do DBI with your plates anyway.

Yep.

The one I used at EK had a helmet with an IR lamp and binoculars. That was way back when those things cost about $3,000 each or something like that.

It leaked a little of the green light from the phosphor around my eyes, but since I was only working with slow paper emulsions on that project, there was no big problem.

The prices sure do come down.

PE

Donald Qualls · Nov 23, 2005

avandesande said:
Straight from silence of the lambs....
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=47626

Not a bad investment since you would probably do DBI with your plates anyway.

For a lot of what I do, ortho plates would work almost as well, and can be worked under red safelight, but I'd like to be *able* to make panchro emulsion if and when I coat my own plates, just because some things are red...

BTW, those Harbor Freight goggles would require considerable modification for a panchro darkroom with ISO 50-100 material -- as illustrated, they'll leak enough light to read the MSDS by...

Jim Noel · Nov 24, 2005

Congratulations on your accomplishment.
I am one of those people who wants to keep learning another 76 years or so, and thus am very interested in your process either in a workshop or written form. Even the slower processes intrigue me and I am sitting here wondering about using your approach and coating on glass with a relatively slow ortho emulsion rather than collodion as a method of making an image which appears to be an ambrotype.
More power to you. Keep up the good work and please keep us informed.
JIm

Photo Engineer · Nov 24, 2005

Well, the repeat didn't go quite as expected.

I made just about every stupid mistake in the book such as grabbing NaBr from the shelf instead of KBr. Oh well, here is my definition of an expert based on my recent work.

(ex = has been) (spurt = drip under pressure). Thats me.

I think it will measure out at ISO 75 with lower contrast and dmax.

Here is a scan of the original ISO 100 paper negative, flipped and inverted.

PE

Photo Engineer · Nov 24, 2005

This is from an 8x10 contact print on my Azo type grade 2 paper.

The original sheet of paper is 11x14 inches, with an 8.25" x 14 inch coated area placed in the center using a coating blade of my design. The emulsion used was posted in another thread, but was modified slightly to improve dmin and was doctored and doped for contrast adjustment.

This is a very old family print about 75 years old.

PE

Photo Engineer · Nov 24, 2005

Photo Engineer said:
This is from an 8x10 contact print on my Azo type grade 2 paper.

The original sheet of paper is 11x14 inches, with an 8.25" x 14 inch coated area placed in the center using a coating blade of my design. The emulsion used was posted in another thread, but was modified slightly to improve dmin and was doctored and doped for contrast adjustment.

This is a very old family print about 75 years old.

PE

Whoops, sorry, that is the grade 3 example above.

PE

Peter Schrager · Nov 24, 2005

AZO?

PE-what did you do -scrape the emulsion off of the paper to use it? Just a little confused here...
Thanks, Peter

Photo Engineer · Nov 24, 2005

Peter Schrager said:
PE-what did you do -scrape the emulsion off of the paper to use it? Just a little confused here...
Thanks, Peter

Peter, I'm making my own emulsions.

The Azo work alike is the same speed and curve shape (as close as I can get) to the actual Azo product using direct comparisons.

I make the AgCl emulsion in gelatin and then coat it on paper.

PE

Photo Engineer · Nov 24, 2005

And finally, here is an 8x10 print made using my enlarger. The exposure was 12" at f8. This same picture required 12" at f22 with Ilford MGIV and used a 30M filter to achieve a grade 2.0.

Therefore, by comparison, I believe that this image is about grade 1.5, perhaps lower, and is 3 stops slower than the MGIV. I have matched the Ilford for speed but at the present time, but I sacrifice some dmin. I am working on higher contrast.

You too can do this in your home darkroom.

PE

Peter Schrager · Nov 24, 2005

Misread

PE-sorry-I have been following this thread with extreme interest. Just being lazy and not reading the fine print. I know that you are making your emulsions and it is more than fantastic. I support you endeavour wholeheartedly and will try to make it to the workshop. Please keep us informed as to when PF will have it listed....oh and by the way nice photo!
Peter

David A. Goldfarb · Nov 24, 2005

Interesting to see some promising results here. Is it my imagination, or are the shadows bleeding into the highlights, like you would get with diffusion under the enlarging lens? Is that infectious development?

Photo Engineer · Nov 24, 2005

Peter Schrager said:
PE-sorry-I have been following this thread with extreme interest. Just being lazy and not reading the fine print. I know that you are making your emulsions and it is more than fantastic. I support you endeavour wholeheartedly and will try to make it to the workshop. Please keep us informed as to when PF will have it listed....oh and by the way nice photo!
Peter

Peter, it is now listed.

PE

Photo Engineer · Nov 24, 2005

David A. Goldfarb said:
Interesting to see some promising results here. Is it my imagination, or are the shadows bleeding into the highlights, like you would get with diffusion under the enlarging lens? Is that infectious development?

David;

There are several factors at work here.

1. This was a 75 year old print that was scanned in and turned into an 8x10 negative with a step scale pasted into it. There are all of the defects associated with the old print (see the cracks in it?) and the flare from scanning a small original and making the 8x10 digital negative.

2. This is on a non-baryta fibre based paper which creates a lot of scatter from the paper fibres.

3. Maybe what you suggest, but I see no signs of it in other prints. I'll have more posted soon from a wider variety of better negatives.

Forgive the use of digital negatives, but for making large prints at constant exposure (when you are limited in the amount of time and paper available to you) you sometimes have to make do. I can only handle 12 sheets at one time, and there is no margin for error.

I am working on getting sufficient baryta paper to do an exact comparison, but have not had enough to do really extensive work with it. I think this will help somewhat in future prints.

PE

David A. Goldfarb · Nov 24, 2005

Thanks. Not a criticism, but just curious.

I need your help

Paul Sorensen

JG Motamedi

Mick Fagan

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Lukas Werth

David A. Goldfarb

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Donald Qualls

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