It’s not often I exhibit any of my work, I could probably count the number of times on one hand, Im not sure why, just never been a priority… but every now and again I must have an odd moment, and that started today in preparation for an exhibition at Spinners Mill in June.
It’s also not very often I use digital negatives, partly because I’m too tight to maintain an inkjet printer but also because I prefer printing from plates or film.
I’ll not show the actual work I’m producing, but here are the first tests from some random mobile phone pics I’m asking as negs. Which I have a seperate idea for.
These are generic acetate sheets for an inkjet printer printed on an Epson Surecolor P600. (I do have some decent acetate somewhere).
I tested a number of adjustment curves for tonal range, and the best was a platinum curve by Mark Voce from a good many years ago that I found on an old imac. Thanks to Gareth for his very useful curve files. ( And yes, I know I could have created my own, but if this ones good enough for my uses).
Printed on some spare fogged Ilford MG glossy just to see how it went.
The details pretty good really. Especially as I forgot to.flip the image orientation for a negative, so these are printed ink side up, just restjng on the photo paper. Now to print the actual images on some Kentmere ready for Bromoiling.
I’m not a huge fan of digi negs due to the time and effort to get things perfect. I did notice some tram lines in the ink with these. And I think Epson removed the capability of adjusting the platen gap on this printer. I’ll look into it.
So, this now has me thinking, if I want to go bigger, maybe I make a decent A3 print, and copy it onto 120 or 5×4 film. I can then enlarge that rather than faffing with making A3 digital negs.
I wonder if anyone still runs a Polaroid 35mm Negative Printer, like the one we used to have for making E6 transparencies when I worked for the Medical Imaging unit in Durham? And would a 35mm printed film neg work well?
Does anyone know?