Simple pin registration

Thanks for the interesting link Ned.
After over 40 years making a living in photography in one way or another discovered in camera paper negatives in the last few years and am having a blast.When Photoshop became popular our photo composite business gradually tapered off enough to effectively close us down,thus after a few years of consulting and making composite internegatives for a local photo lab I retired.Needless to say was pretty"browned off"with photography and only took snapshots of my family etc.for about 10 years.Then discovered the interest in alternative photo methods and have been re-energized by you folks on the alternative forums and would like to support any/all of these processes with any information I might have that would be of any use.I applaud what Bob Carnie is doing to further the alternative processes and would like to visit his place some time.
Sorry if this seems a steal Ned I also applaud your work in this area along with some others.
Don

Don't even think it. I too applaud Bob Carnie's work to further all kinds of darkroom work. It's an honor to have the likes of Bob and Drew and yourself chiming in on a thread.

Thank you for the kind words guys... I may have to post all my future work here as it does not fit the gallery mandate..

we are now moving forward with a 4 month intensive investigation of , masks, negatives, pigments, and playing with the basics.

I wondered where former photo compositors ended up after the advent of computers. I too used the two pin system. I made 8x10 and 11x14 E6 composites. Amberlith, rubylith, ortho masks, vacuum frame, soft edge, etc.

I will keep tabs on this thread.

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PinRegistered said:

I wondered where former photo compositors ended up after the advent of computers. I too used the two pin system. I made 8x10 and 11x14 E6 composites. Amberlith, rubylith, ortho masks, vacuum frame, soft edge, etc.

I will keep tabs on this thread.

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I like your user name!

Speaking of rubylith, none of the art stores in my area still have it or can even order it. They only carry amberlith.

I think Blick Arts might be the only place left to buy it in per-sheet amateur quantities. I'm going to order quite a bit soon for contact printing purposes. Mainly to make neat borders on my salt prints, but I'll almost certainly use it for the gelatin pigment process that started this thread.

Off to google "soft edge" to see if that's what I think it might be....

Rubylith is the correct colour for use on photographic safelights.

I don't believe that Amberlith will serve for the same purpose, although it might be usable by those using alternative and traditional processes that require masking of UV.

I remember several years ago when I was looking for rubylith, the person at the art store told me something similar, and that amberlith is more convenient because it is easier to see through. She didn't even think rubylith was still made. Some of the Foma papers I use require a deep red safelight, so the red might be better for general photographic purposes. I'd like to get some for all kinds of masking...

( Matt and I were typing at the same time.... I meant similar to APUGuser19's story! )

As best as I can tell, Amberlith is no longer being manufactured, but Rubylith is still in production.

Your talkin with one, blind pig was another.. we both worked on a Lisle Camera system, in the 80's and we both did a lot of comp work, He was in Kansas and I was in Toronto.

I always used a three hole pin system and always under vacumn , some of the other people in our Photo Comp department used Kodak two pin and glass but I never liked that method.
We had a 16 x20 capability in E6 process so I made double page spreads on 16 x20 trans.. They were f.. k beautiful to behold.

Also we used a micro modifiyer unit to soft edge masks. It was amazing to get such lovely clean registration that sometimes exceeded some ot the stuff I see today done digitally.

I think the most complicated image I ever had to make consisted of 55 close cuts sitting on one sheet.. I think this took me over two to three full weeks to prepare and balance in.

PinRegistered said:

I wondered where former photo compositors ended up after the advent of computers. I too used the two pin system. I made 8x10 and 11x14 E6 composites. Amberlith, rubylith, ortho masks, vacuum frame, soft edge, etc.

I will keep tabs on this thread.

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After a stint making photo comps for a local color separator(are there still such places?),I came away with some money saving useful materials which performed as well as rubylith and some others.The best was orange vinyl in .007" thickness I think,it was opaque enough and stable enough to allow stripping images in position for multi-exposure composites.Haven't checked lately but probably still available from plastic supply company's as it wasn't a common material used for graphic reproduction so still may be around.Much less expensive than ruby or amberlith.
You might look into it.

Ned, regarding soft edge masking, I would expose the masking film with the cut ruby to make my "window"mask and then use that to make the "hold-back" mask, the edges of which could be softened with layers of diffusion film. All of this was done with the vacuum frame and pins.

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I have to laugh!

There is a huge world of print making and print compositing that you all have years of experience with, and I have sort of stumbled into because I like to make contact prints. The "soft edge" has been on my mind recently because a print that caught my eye on a different forum. I can't remember now if it was a VDB or salt print or what, but the edges faded out delicately and smoothly because of the way the sensitizer was brushed on. The person who posted it thought that was a flaw, but I thought it looked lovely and have been wondering how to do it on purpose. I was imagining trying crinkled up tissue or something like that. Now I hear there is something called "diffusion film" that I must definitely learn about. I'm starting to think the whole world of print making is a giant pandora's box that I'm about to get sucked into.

Thanks!

Ned the hole is very deep and what is great about it that you will never learn it all... Also with time advances like digital come along and open up another complete wormhole that you can travel through.

I have been doing this as a full time job, no other income other than photo printing since 1976 and I just signed a 10 year lease to keep on trucking..
One thing is to try to UNDERSTAND/LEARN WHAT YOU DO NOT KNOW- there lies one of the secrets of survival in this occupation. When digital came I reluctantly learned as much as I could and now years later it is helping my darkroom printing.

NedL said:

I have to laugh!

There is a huge world of print making and print compositing that you all have years of experience with, and I have sort of stumbled into because I like to make contact prints. The "soft edge" has been on my mind recently because a print that caught my eye on a different forum. I can't remember now if it was a VDB or salt print or what, but the edges faded out delicately and smoothly because of the way the sensitizer was brushed on. The person who posted it thought that was a flaw, but I thought it looked lovely and have been wondering how to do it on purpose. I was imagining trying crinkled up tissue or something like that. Now I hear there is something called "diffusion film" that I must definitely learn about. I'm starting to think the whole world of print making is a giant pandora's box that I'm about to get sucked into.

Thanks!

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Byers 5500 micro modifier


google this , This will show you a simple system I used in the 80"s for making all my expansion, contraction and soft edge masks.

actually here is the link http://www.recycledgoods.com/byers-5500xp-micro-modifier-graphic-imaging-system-package.html

momus said:

This is also a neat idea for another way to register multiple pieces of paper

http://www.printartsnw.org/edu/Registration System.pdf

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I received pins and tabs (their package 4) from Ternes-Burton today. I think it is the right system to build your own registration system. They have an online shop for North-America, but they also deliver to other countries. Just contact them by e-mail.

these could work very well...

the difference that I see is very subtle between the strosser system I use.. the punch and pin system has a circular center pin/punch but the two outside on either side of the circular are more rectangular. also the punch hole for the two outside is slightly larger than the pins... I believe this allows for the film and receiving substrate to contact, register better with a slight variation or movement left or right .. This may not make much sense, but two rigid holes are like the old conduit system and they did not allow for any movement or settling to happen.

chrisaisenbrey said:

I received pins and tabs (their package 4) from Ternes-Burton today. I think it is the right system to build your own registration system. They have an online shop for North-America, but they also deliver to other countries. Just contact them by e-mail.

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How was Photo Shop accomplished in the 80's- here is a brief description of the Lisle Camera System both Don(blindpig) and I worked on. I was asked in a Conversation to describe it as there are no
records on line about this unique camera.

Any questions I will try to go back in time and bring out all the little tricks we used in Toronto, Don may jump in and talk about he used the system in Kansas City.

Lisle Camera - made in California 1984/85 time line, I know of three of them made, one in LA one in Kansas City (blindpig on APUG owned it) and one in Toronto BGM Labs the one I worked on.

Basic Principle - Over head rail system that moved back and forth with front lights for reflective art and an HK Enlarger head on back. The Art was vacuumed onto the glass either front lit or back lit with pin registerd
lexan holders creating vacuum and putting the stripped in art in exact place. This whole unit rotated via stepping motors that were controlled in the back when editing.

The lens turret had two lenses on belts that were operated aperture by stepping motors.

The dark side had a vacuum easel that rotated and moved that was controlled by stepping motors.

On the set up side was a X Y coordinate table that was linked via bubble memory computers . the art was stripped into the lexan and the art placement coordinates were recorded on the two corners of each image , whether it was reflective art or transmitted.
For any job we could have multiple lexan art panels to record into position.

The layout was stripped into position for the back and masks were produced to create boxes within the layout to drop the images in place. We were butting images within one one thousands of an inch using a thousands of an inch ruler to move the inside blades in the back of the unit to create boxes.
From these we created lith masks that would allow us to do multiple images blends and overlaps.

The computer station was all bubble memory controlled by sequence hits on the keyboard.

This unit took me 9 months to figure out.. once we did we were able to do layout pages for magazine with multiple images on each page that went to the film strippers already in position or for interneg
to mural advertising purposes.

the next stage was the Premier Imaging Station that made this unit Obsolete . I can say I was one of maybe 10 people worldwide that worked on this kind of equipment.


Imagine Artists books like Creative Source, I did hundreds of pages. The most images I put on one film was 50 - and the largest photo comp I made with this unit was 100 meters in numerous lightboxes.

We were charging $150 per element in each page at that time, no wonder PS came along.

Bob, you are sure bringing up a lot of old memories...As it happened we acquired our Lisle system from a color separation lab attached to a printing company in California and Phil Lisle converted it to a disk operating system relieving us of messing around with the bubble memory system.It seemed to make life easier but there was a lengthy de-bugging period.Pretty high tech for the time but as you will recall our little photocomp company wasn't flush with that kind of equipment at the time of your visit.We did build a piece of equipment that would allow using contact masks and projection masks on the same piece of film giving us both sharp ans soft edge image ability.But all things must come to an end and Photoshop finally took over our business.
Any way thanks for the walk down memory lane...

Interesting stuff from Bob as ever.

Bit late to answer this ...

chrisaisenbrey said:

Those Ternes-Burton pins look quite interesting. I wonder if the have a reseller in Europe.
Just a warning: if work with paper you have to consider that it might shrink in water. So you have to find the right paper or do some pretreatment in hot water.

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... but http://www.handprinted.co.uk/printm...ng/tools/ternes-burton-registration-pins-pair have them in the UK. There may be others of course but that was the first one I came up with.

As to the latter point, I experimented a bit with cyanotype over Namias sepia earlier in the year, and found that while with care I could manage the registration OK on "dry runs" (using pencil-marks-and-bits-of-tape), once the paper had been been through the first process, it did change dimensionally. This was using a very robust mixed-media paper which I had already put through a pre-process acidification.

The effect was quite nice in a couple of cases, but more refined work would need research & testing to find the right paper and/or treatment as Chris points out.