Making my first digital negs

Colin Graham said:

Is that the post-curve step, or just the plain linear one initially used to generate the curve in chart throb? You say 'the curve it's producing is off the wall', so I'm not sure where this step tablet is in your testing.

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This is the linear one from chartthrob. Could anybody give me some advice for using the MKS. I printed the HSL colour array onto some pictorico earlier and want to expose it tonight to work out the right colour. Ideally without exposing the whole of the chart. What area could I put a test strip in? Also, what square should I be looking for, im a bit confused. There are many options of white squares next to gray.

Can you do a screen shot of the curve that chartthrob generated? Your step wedge looks alot like many of my uncurved steps. Usually chartthrob curves will compress my midtones, not the blacks.

As to MKS's RNP, print the whole array, it saves a lot of time and second-guessing. Look for a smooth gradation with no big steps in tonality, and one with clean highlights to midtones especially. I've found with the K3 inkset and epson drivers, well, this ain't easy. I used RNP for a year or so with my old B9180 and loved it, but could never replicate that success with a 3800.

Its why many are using QTR with the x800 series of Epsons. QTR lets you use the light and dark inks independently, specifically tailoring the blocking inks to problem areas it's difficult to fix with a curve. I'd again second the many recommendations to start with a QTR profile, and go from there.

Here's the curve. Charthrob isn't objecting to it but it's not working right with my images. QTR sounds the best bet seeing as I don't particularly like the look of using the colour array much. looks like I'll be working with pure palladium for the time being. Does anybody know well the pd curve for the Epson 4000 may work on the 4880?

Hmm, I was thinking you'd gotten an odd output from chartthrob, but that looks pretty typical, so there goes my theory. You might be able to drag the curve to add more density ink to the shadows, but that might just move the compression to the midtones. Probably easier to start over with a better blocking color.

It sucks, but you should be prepared for some dead-ends with digital negatives. There are so many 'butterfly effect' particulars to individual processes, sometimes the only way round em is to embrace the tedium.

I doubt that a profile for the 4000 will work with the 4880 because these printers use a different inkset. A better match for the 4880 would be a profile for a 3800 but I am not sure this would be an exact match either. You might ask Ron Reeder about this as he has a good profile for pure palladium for the Epson 3800.

Sandy King

Jarvman said:

Here's the curve. Charthrob isn't objecting to it but it's not working right with my images. QTR sounds the best bet seeing as I don't particularly like the look of using the colour array much. looks like I'll be working with pure palladium for the time being. Does anybody know well the pd curve for the Epson 4000 may work on the 4880?

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Jarvman said:

I'm using a hell of a lot of materials in doing this and haven't got a decent neg yet. I never realised how time consuming and frustrating making digi negs would be, let alone sifting through all this new information. I've done it backwards again, should have tried the MKS colour array before making the neg buy wasn't aware of it. Doesn't help that I'm having to do this between home and college. I'd use PDN if it wasn't so rediculously expensive. Is it worth getting? Will it stop me wasting all this material? Maybe I should just stick to palladium and the existing QTR profile.

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If you are going to use or learn to use digital negatives plan on having failures. They really aren't failures but learning experiences.

Making enlarged negatives on film isn't a slam dunk method either and consumes time and money. I'm not trying to be insensitive here but either method for enlarged negs isn't a weekend project.

If you really want to concentrate on keeping things simple and less expensive use Chart Throb and MKS arrays and print on silver gelatin paper. Use cheap glossy inkjet paper instead of OHP. That will help eliminate the learning curve for understanding the mechanics of an alt. process like palladium and help you focus on how to produce a good digital negative.

Whatever you plan on doing just expect that you will have to spend time and money to reach your goals. That's what we all have done. It's all confusing at first but struggling to learn these methods makes them more rewarding in the end.

Good luck,

Don Bryant

Cheers Don, reading the literature on the subject like Ron's digital negatives book and the step-by-step online instructions makes it sound too easy. I never bargained how difficult it would be. I certainly won't quit at it now. The only reason I seem agitated or impatient is that I'm doing a project for the second year of uni in which is the only assignment this year that involves creating a portfolio of work. So there are marks and my end of year show resting on making some nice prints. It's tense stuff :S

Jarvman said:

Cheers Don, reading the literature on the subject like Ron's digital negatives book and the step-by-step online instructions makes it sound too easy. I never bargained how difficult it would be. I certainly won't quit at it now. The only reason I seem agitated or impatient is that I'm doing a project for the second year of uni in which is the only assignment this year that involves creating a portfolio of work. So there are marks and my end of year show resting on making some nice prints. It's tense stuff :S

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Well I can understand your position. Best I can advise is to slow down and break the challenge into parts and learn the stepping stones. As I've read along I could tell you are trying to swallow the whole hot dog at once. I tried that as a child and discovered that didn't work and learned that small bites are easier to swallow and digest.

Don