Kallitype: Your Wisdom

[Franswa]

Hello good People. I’m about to begin my exploration into kallitype printing and would like to ask you for one single piece of advice that you found to be critical in helping you learn this process. What’s that one nugget of wisdom you wish you’d known known that you hadn’t previously?

 

[gbroadbridge]

Hello good People. I’m about to begin my exploration into kallitype printing and would like to ask you for one single piece of advice that you found to be critical in helping you learn this process. What’s that one nugget of wisdom you wish you’d known known that you hadn’t previously?

It's going to take a lot longer and cost more in materials than you ever expected, before you get to a reasonable print.

 

[retina_restoration]

Hello good People. I’m about to begin my exploration into kallitype printing and would like to ask you for one single piece of advice that you found to be critical in helping you learn this process. What’s that one nugget of wisdom you wish you’d known known that you hadn’t previously?

The best nugget of wisdom I can offer you is this: buy the Kallitype book by Don Nelson. There will be no unanswered questions if you follow this bit of advice.

 

[awty]

When I proposed to start Kallitypes along time ago, I was advised to start with VDB's, that I did and never progressed any further. VDB is easier and more affordable and so far I haven't seen anything in Kallitype or for that matter P/P to make me want to try either.

 

[revdoc]

I second VDB as the preferred path, if it's feasible. Kallitype is more flexible in terms of contrast, which makes it a better choice for film negs. With digital negs, VDB is the way to go.

My single nugget of kallitype advice: stick with sodium citrate developer. Clearing will be you biggest problem, and citrate developers are your best. option on that front.

 

[koraks]

Don't try to fix in the print what the negative lacks. Put differently: make the negative fit for the printing process.

 

[Tel]

Some years back I did a Kallitype workshop with Lisa Elmaleh at Penumbra in New York. She made it seem very do-able and it was: I bought the chemicals from Artcraft and made myself a UV lightbox and printed a bunch of things with satisfactory results. But the process literally left its mark--a group of black stains on my bathtub, directly beneath the spot where I hung my prints to dry, that have resisted all attempts to remove them. Anyone know the solution?

 

[nmp]

Some years back I did a Kallitype workshop with Lisa Elmaleh at Penumbra in New York. She made it seem very do-able and it was: I bought the chemicals from Artcraft and made myself a UV lightbox and printed a bunch of things with satisfactory results. But the process literally left its mark--a group of black stains on my bathtub, directly beneath the spot where I hung my prints to dry, that have resisted all attempts to remove them. Anyone know the solution?

Assuming it is silver stains, probably Farmer's reducer which is a mixture of pot ferri and thiosulfate.

:Niranjan.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Make sure your negative has appropriate density range. Use a paper with no alkaline buffers, like Hahnemuhle, or Revere (otherwise, you'll have to acidify it in an acid solution), and your tap water is not overly alkaline, for the first rinse. For image stability, consider gold or selenium toning.

 

[retina_restoration]

As Andy has pointed out, it is critically important to engineer a negative of the correct density/contrast to work well with Kallitype. You can either make a digital negative (you have to work with Epson printer tech for this) or work out a process to create an in-camera negative, which requires special processing. (For this I recommend Ellie Young's pdf, which goes into considerable detail about achieving the correct negative density) Your best option for in-camera alt process negatives is FP4+, which is ideally suited to making Kallitype (and Salt) negs because of its low base + fog density. Ellie explains the choice of FP4+ in the pdf, so do yourself a favor and take a look at it.

Andy's recommendation to stick to an appropriate paper is also excellent advice. To his list of Revere and Hahnemuhle I would add Bergger's COT 320 paper, which has been my favorite for Salted paper and Kallitype printmaking.

Tone your prints before fixing. Gold chloride toning is considered the best for archival and aesthetic purposes. You can buy a gram of Gold chloride for about half what it would cost you to buy gold toner pre-made: go to ArtCraft Chemicals. The Thiocyanate toner version of Gold toner is simplest and very easy to make yourself.