Keith Carter gallery vs National Geographic

Yes, gum is excellent for that kind of project, and involves a simpler learning curve. You really want to visit Bob Carnie and his Elevator Gallery there in Toronto. He specializes in color gum printing atop silver and platinum underlying images. And he's developed a number of improved techniques, and even shows examples of some of those techniques on his web videos.

Yeah gotta check him out, I heard he provides courses too. Apparently Toronto is the place to be if you're in the printmaking business. Never occurred to me, and I'm here.
Gum is not like color carbon probably, I think it will be easier. No transferring back and forth.

The look I want to achieve in the end are like these, via RA4 enlargement/contact, gum, carbon, etc. just not inkjet.


Dye Transfer


Carbro


Gum


Kodachrome

He could also generate the color separations for you too, though obviously for a fee. But given the high cost of large sizes of sheet film these days, and all the preliminary experimenting expense learning to make separations yourself, that option might be realistic. No harm asking the cost.

Gum printing, unlike color carbon, does allow for some tweaking of final color due to the more gradual build-up nature of the process.

For now I will be making use of my 8x10 Cambo, to make RBG separations. Will experiment first on a 6x9cm roll film back, probably with Arista 100, 120 roll film. I think it's panchromatic. Once tweaked, I will move up to 4x5, and then 8x10.

Right now I'm playing around with cheap, high-contrast line/document films, together with very low contrast developers from Darkroom cookbook, and post-flashing. The 8x10 negatives will be used for contact printing.

As for color film, I have only developed C-41 in my kitchen, but no paper development yet. Gonna try small 6x9cm color negative sheets first, before moving to 4x5 and 8x10, probably for color contact printing.

So lots of work...

The specific choice of pan film is important. You want total batch to batch consistency, or the results will be unpredictable. And in most cases the different color separations need to be separately developed for matching gamma; the only exception to that is TMax 100, if you find its sweet spot of exposure. A lower cost alternative would be FP4, but in its case, the blue separation will be of lower contrast than the red and green and need a little longer dev time. I'd avoid Arista; it's Fomapan, and you'll probably have a nightmare trying to calibrate that; you won't save money at all.

Flashing and tweaked high-contrast films are also a death of a thousand cuts. Believe me, just out of curiosity I've gone down that rabbit hole just for the fun of it; and it certainly wasn't fun. For color separations, you want as long and consistent a straight line in a film as you can get.

Well, the high-contrast films are more for B&W experimentation, specifically for high contrast, and I LOVE the low cost. I wasted a lot of film while learning, and did not waste a lot of money, and I did not become frustrated, just got hooked on it more. Also it's not red-sensitive, so that excludes it from being used for RGB work anyway, but love how it can be developed by inspection.

I want to try Arista at first for RGB or something else that's cheap, and then maybe TMax. If TMax gives the widest straight line portion of the curve as you say, I will try with a 6x9cm format with my roll-film back mounted on a 4x5 toyo view.

I've heard somewhere that B&W-only carbon prints like high-contrast negatives. Does high-contrast film come into any use here?

Also I figured that with document films, if I exposed for highlights, post-flashed the film to bring up the shadow details out of the foot of the curve a bit, then under-developed with low-contrast developer, I can get something decent.

Somewhere else I heard that just about any film with any latitude can be tweaked to work with proper techniques. Some are just more difficult than others.

Aside from that, before going into RGB separations, gum, etc. I will try printing RA4 paper and see if it can be made to print something closer to Kodachrome color balance. Not Kodachrome ofcourse, since its a positive slide film, but something with that look. CineStill film I heard gives that nice retro look. The good kind of retro.

You want a malleable film that is capable of relatively high contrast, but with a curve that doesn't get bent out of shape doing that. TMax films do that, with TMY100 being originally engineered as a good color separation film, replacing Super XX. Ilford's best product for that is FP4, like I already noted. Working the other way around, using a very high contrast graphics film, and trying to tame it in a darkroom (versus stochastic image setter devices) is a questionable proposition, although numerous people go that route due to budgetary reasons and the fact they aren't necessarily interested in realistic results, and are fine with unpredictable funky. Whatever.

Don't believe everything you hear. Sure, you might be able to kill a charging rhinoceros with a shovel; but what are the statistical odds? Of course, I hope you have fun doing this, and don't mind some bumps and bruises along the way. But just how frustrated do you want to get? It's a lot easier to get from Point A to B with the correct film in the first place than trying to beat just any pan film into submission. A lot of work goes into calibrating your protocol; and you'd have to start all over again each tine you switch to another film. And once you move up to 8x10, false starts add up expensively.

RA4 papers are their own topic. And no, you're not likely to get a "Kodachrome look" without significant equipment and materials investment. What kind of color enlarger do you have? It would have to be made pin-register compatible if you plan on doing sequential additive printing using a set of in-camera RGB separations for enlargement purposes. I calibrated everything and set up to do that using 8X10 TMX100 a couple years ago, but never found the right subject matter or pause in the wind. It would be different if I still had a place in the mountains; but it's windy most of the year here on the coast; and I haven't been able to make any serious desert trips during our very high gas prices, which are only now tapering off. But I did get some RA4 printing done from 8X10 chromes via precision Portra 160 internegs, and of course directly from color neg originals.

Nothing is going to look like a dye transfer print except another dye transfer print. For all practical purposes, it's an extinct process except for a handful of people still with the necessary supplies. Color Carbro would be a nightmare to resurrect; but color carbon is realistic, along with gum, casein, etc. I might or might not have enough DT supplies for about 5 years of printing, barely enough for the learning curve itself, beyond my preliminary revisionary experiments. But I have had old dye transfer pros amazed at what can be done optimizing color neg film exposure itself, and taking the pains to truly optimize chromogenic printing technique. But I had a long background in high-level Cibachrome, and all kinds of specialized equipment already. It can be done, and done superbly in a darkroom. The digital printing crowd rarely gets there because they think they can just post-tweak anything as they wish; and they can't. One has to really understand specific films and specific papers first. That's half the battle.

Well regarding the color enlarger.... I don't really have one, rather a B&W Besseler 23, that I plan to filter manually in the tray. I plan to do this for 35mm and 120 format.

For anything larger I plan on doing contact prints and a filtered light-source, probably the enlarger itself.

Color RA4 straight from the negative should be manageable like this.

The gum bichromate maybe I can do using the 8x10 negatives from the camera (not the high-contrast film negatives but TriX, etc.). Also I could do B&W carbon prints like this.

For your RA4 prints, why did you use internegatives? I thought these are used for flipping positives to negatives and then back to positive prints, or do they serve as some sort of contrast masks?

Also, regarding the digital crowd and how they can't "just post-tweak anything" they want. This is due to lack of skill/understanding, or limitations of digital image processing?

on another topic, I want to figure out the B&W process before stepping into color. I like the prints by Weston and J. Sudek a lot. Heard somewhere that Weston's negatives were extremely dark throughout, and that it is the relative contrast between the darks and whites that matters the most in the negative. Heard that his negatives looked extremely overexposed.

I wonder what were the reasons for him exposing like this, was he overexposing or its just the nature of the plates he used? What was the ISO equivalent of those dry-plates? I guess they were glass dry plate negatives.

I saw a documentary on his studio as it stands today and the exposures he took which lasted for half a day at f/64. What about the reciprocity effect of this? The contrast must have been insane, yet his prints look great. I think they were all contact prints. Maybe he did some kind of pre-flashing to get rid of the reciprocity contrast, to bring up the underexposed areas and even out the contrast in the plate? That's what kind of fixed a lot of my issues with the high-contrast film, when I shot it for a 15min exposures at f/8 on 8x10 format. This film has ISO 1-3 or so.

Yes I realize its not the right medium, but I will still explore it to full limitation. Not frustrated yet, as it's only for B&W contact prints, not for separation negatives.

An archival pigment print is a common term. It is a type of inkjet print. The same way that some inkjet prints use dyes that can fade easily, archival pigment inkjets use thick ink type pigments. Archival pigment prints are very archival.

It's NOT a synonym, never will be. It's a deceptive marketing ploy. Inkjet inks are not pigments per se; they're inks made of complex blends of micro-pigments, lakes, and choice of rather ordinary organic dyes. "Archival pigment" is totally BS. Just look up and research any of the applicable patents.

I opened a new thread for you in the Darkroom Equipment sub-forum and and moved all the D2 related posts to it. Have fun with your enlarger!
The thread is here: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/just-got-a-d2-enlarger.197781/

awesome, thanks

DREW WILEY said:

It's NOT a synonym, never will be. It's a deceptive marketing ploy. Inkjet inks are not pigments per se; they're inks made of complex blends of micro-pigments, lakes, and choice of rather ordinary organic dyes. "Archival pigment" is totally BS. Just look up and research any of the applicable pat

kfed1984 said:

Yeah gotta check him out, I heard he provides courses too. Apparently Toronto is the place to be if you're in the printmaking business. Never occurred to me, and I'm here.
Gum is not like color carbon probably, I think it will be easier. No transferring back and forth.

The look I want to achieve in the end are like these, via RA4 enlargement/contact, gum, carbon, etc. just not inkjet.


Dye Transfer
View attachment 331235

Carbro
View attachment 331234

Gum
View attachment 331236

Kodachrome
View attachment 331237

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Three of those four "examples" exhibit unfortunately poor color balance and/or density (exposure). Louis Armstrong looks great.

Vaughn said:

A print made with pigments. Really a very loose definition. The definition of 'pigments' is very wide itself..."a substance used for coloring or painting' -- seems covers any color that comes out of an inkjet printer. Another defintion is;" the natural coloring matter of animal or plant tissue"

Archival Pigment Print is at least better than Giclee.

For $1600 for a 16x20 inkjet print, one should be given a second to stash away from light.

Click to expand...

This thread got goofy right there. Photo galleries seem to have universally recognized the term "archival inkjet print" or (unfortunately) "Epson inkjet print" (unaware of the fact that Epson printers are designed for "pigment" or "dye.)" And unaware of the (IMO) superiority of Canon's pigments or dyes. They do do not us "archival pigment print" because (I think) they do by now recognize the two brands and that there are risks in calling anything "archival".

{moderator's deletion}

jtk said:

Three of those four "examples" exhibit unfortunately poor color balance and/or density (exposure). Louis Armstrong looks great.

Click to expand...

I think they all look great. Can you elaborate more on the other 3 with "poor" color balance? What's off and what can be improved?

One would have to see the prints in person anyway to make a fair assessment. Trying to do so over the web is "iffy", to say the least. But those different print media do have their own respective ranges of hue potentials as well as hue idiosyncrasies that simply come with the territory. Any of those techniques could come out looking either wonderful or miserable, depending.

And leapfrogging back to my previous post... What does slakecruster mean by "very archival" anyway, in relation to inkjet prints?
200 years like some galleries BS advertise? Well, just how many people have 200 year old inkjet prints on their walls still looking good, and what is the overall statistical rate of that? Kinda hard to say with respect to a medium that's still just the new kid on the block. And don't think brief accelerated aging torture test can weed out all the potential variables involved down the line.

There is no such thing as genuinely archival inks. And in fact, many dyes per se are more permanent than some pigments. Want truly permanent pigments that won't fade? Look at the surface of Mars - not much of a selection, and probably none of them would fit through tiny inkjet nozzles anyway. But if you can loot half of Europe as well as put a second mortgage on the Vatican, you might be able to afford the kind of pigments Michelangelo used on the Sistine Chapel, with red, greens, and blues made from ground-up semi-precious stones more costly than gold by weight, and often toxic too - likewise an inkjet machine non-starter.

By modern assessment, all Kodachrome images are probably off in terms of color balance.

No photographic film or printing media ever developed was free from color reproduction idiosyncrasies. The point is to understand that, and intelligently work with it to your own advantage.

DREW WILEY said:

No photographic film or printing media ever developed was free from color reproduction idiosyncrasies. The point is to understand that, and intelligently work with it to your own advantage.

Click to expand...

Christopher Burkett's masking/printing techniques using Cibachrome are just mind boggling.

He had his method, I had mine, equally effective, but more efficient. That's why I often state masking is a full tool box of its own, with lots of possibilities, and not just a single tool. But there was simply no way to iron out all of Ciba's idiosyncrasies. One could try to beat it into submission, but inevitably it was a lot wiser to dance with it instead, and led it lead. Today's Fujiflex Supergloss is way more cooperative.

DREW WILEY said:

He had his method, I had mine, equally effective, but more efficient. That's why I often state masking is a full tool box of its own, with lots of possibilities, and not just a single tool. But there was simply no way to iron out all of Ciba's idiosyncrasies. One could try to beat it into submission, but inevitably it was a lot wiser to dance with it instead, and led it lead. Today's Fujiflex Supergloss is way more cooperative.

Click to expand...

I used pin registered masking techniques making B&W prints and the possibilities were massive...hard for me to imagine another layer of complexity by using changes in colour filtration with multiple masks when printing colour.

The most sheets of 8X0 film I ever used for a single color image was 13. But that was to generate a final master dupe, which could be used by itself for repetitive printing. Normally a single mask would do. But it was routine for some dye transfer printers to use 15 or more sheets of film for any single image, including masks and color separations. Costly. I'm certainly glad I have all that punch and register gear still around, even though I don't use it as often as before. In black and white silver printing, masking can sometimes spell the difference between a good print and a great one.

kfed1984 said:

on another topic, I want to figure out the B&W process before stepping into color. I like the prints by Weston and J. Sudek a lot. Heard somewhere that Weston's negatives were extremely dark throughout, and that it is the relative contrast between the darks and whites that matters the most in the negative. Heard that his negatives looked extremely overexposed.

I wonder what were the reasons for him exposing like this, was he overexposing or its just the nature of the plates he used? What was the ISO equivalent of those dry-plates? I guess they were glass dry plate negatives.

I saw a documentary on his studio as it stands today and the exposures he took which lasted for half a day at f/64. What about the reciprocity effect of this? The contrast must have been insane, yet his prints look great. I think they were all contact prints. Maybe he did some kind of pre-flashing to get rid of the reciprocity contrast, to bring up the underexposed areas and even out the contrast in the plate? That's what kind of fixed a lot of my issues with the high-contrast film, when I shot it for a 15min exposures at f/8 on 8x10 format. This film has ISO 1-3 or so.

Yes I realize its not the right medium, but I will still explore it to full limitation. Not frustrated yet, as it's only for B&W contact prints, not for separation negatives.

Click to expand...

You should read Weston's Daybooks. He used film, some of it turned out bad, many long interior still-life exposures (I'm not sure about half-day ones) were ruined by cars driving by and rattling his set-ups. He also had fogging problems from leaky bellows and bad film holders. But he persevered and made many memorable photographs. His son Bret was a better printer and ended up printing many of his father's negatives, along with his other son Cole.

DREW WILEY said:

The most sheets of 8X0 film I ever used for a single color image was 13. But that was to generate a final master dupe, which could be used by itself for repetitive printing. Normally a single mask would do. But it was routine for some dye transfer printers to use 15 or more sheets of film for any single image, including masks and color separations. Costly. I'm certainly glad I have all that punch and register gear still around, even though I don't use it as often as before. In black and white silver printing, masking can sometimes spell the difference between a good print and a great one.

Click to expand...

Sounds interesting. Went to your Photrio profile page and noticed you don't have any 'media' or images in the gallery...do you have a link where I could see some?