David, I'm sure it's an imagesetter negative (with a pretty low screen resolution). See how he develops the print; with gum, fine continuous tone detail won't hold under that much torture... The result he gets and processing style implies a hard dot negative. Imagesetter negatives are much cheaper than inkjet negatives at that size BTW - at least here in Europe.
Regards,
Loris.
I am liable to agree with you Loris. I remember print shop days. Making plates from negatives. Making negatives intended for making plates from other negatives and using different dot sized filters. When I look at this video again and again, every time something else becomes more clear. Watch the video again and check out the facial detail, particularly the left side of the nose. Those are dots, are they not? Not grain, per se.
Well, someone who read this thread sent me a link to an preprocessor in Portland Oregon
http://www.rgraphics.com/film.html and they do very large imagesetting (35.5 x 44.5). The price seems crazy at first, but then it's way cheeper than shop space and outlay expense for the right machine that will handle that size. I think $159.25 seems reasonable enough. They also do a lot of other services which may interest the lurkers of this thread. You might want to check them out.
Still looking for someone closer.
By the way, forgive me for even talking about this on APUG. My immaturity regarding this technique was lacking the intimate knowledge of the use of digital input for imagesetting. Silly me, I thought this was an analog thing, where you send in a negative and they enlarge it and return a very large negative. Actually I would prefer that to be honest. I find film is so much more organic than anything digital. But with this Gum Bichromate technique, so much detail is lost that it almost seems like anything might do. Even 35mm perhaps....
Anyway, I'm strongly considering sending a few negs to this shop and having them make me a huge negative for each because I'd like to explore at some time making very large bromoil prints. Ahh, but this is also further down the road. Readers be aware please I'm thinking long term, just trying to set some goals and boundaries for the future. I appreciate the feedback here. FlyingCamera, you're right, start small, then work up to the big stuff. But this is my ultimate goal is to create huge mural sized works. Picking Gum Bichromate seems to me to be secondary. I'm exploring all the mediums. Whichever will give me what I want to do ultimately will be what I spend my time with.
I'm also thinking long term, hand crafted lithographs and also I've been watching some videos and reading other material on making etchings from photographs that are essentially made on copper plates like the kind that comprise circuit boards.
Anyway, I'm rambling now. Thanks again to the contributors.
