Kallitype: Your Wisdom

[Franswa]

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

I’ve done what I can to mentally manage this expectation.

 

[Franswa]

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.

Thanks, I’ve seen a handful of various videos by Don and am considering his book

 

[Franswa]

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.

Honestly, I’ll most likely end up exploring that and other processes because I’m very curious by nature. But, who knows

 

[Franswa]

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.

No problems there…I’ve got sodium citrate on its way!

 

[Franswa]

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.

Fine tuning my digital negatives has been a top priority for me as I’ve learned is a critical foundation for good print results. Is the density/curve process far different than for cyanotypes? As for toner I’ve already ordered platinum toner

 

[retina_restoration]

Is the density/curve process far different than for cyanotypes?

Yes!!! You will need a negative with much greater density in the highlight values.