Contact printing of inkjet created negatives

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dfoo

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I was looking over Dan Burkholder's website where he talks about his book "Making digital negatives for contact printing". Have any of you guys ever tried this? What did you use for the transparency film?
 
I attended a workshop where a platinum/palladium printer has deep scans made of his negatives, then printed out on Pictorio Overhead Transparency Film, which can be had in sheets of various sizes, and rolls. Freestyle sells it.

I did some quick experiments a couple of years ago using 3M Overhead Transparency using a cheap inkjet printer -- for Van Dyke Brown printing, but the results were less than satisfying. I just couldn't get the dots-per-inch resolution that I could with continuous film.
 
I have the Epson 1400 which claims 5,760 x 1,440dpi. I'm not sure what that means! Is it saying it has more dots in the X axis than the Y?

The prints I get from this thing with the UT14 inkset are good, but not nearly as good as real black and white silver prints.
 
dfoo said:
I was looking over Dan Burkholder's website where he talks about his book "Making digital negatives for contact printing". Have any of you guys ever tried this? What did you use for the transparency film?
Click to expand...

I use Mark Nelson's PDF system to create digital negatives for cyanotype, kallitype and carbon transfer printing. I print onto Pictorico OTF using an Epson R2400 setup according to Nelson. If you decide to go the digital negative route for contact printing, PDF is an incredible system.

Ash
 
I was just trying this on some 3M inkjet transparency paper. For my experiment I was printing 5x4 negatives. First I just took what was a decent print on paper, inverted it and printed onto the transparency. At this point I don't care if the contact printed image isn't the greatest, since I can play with the contrast and so forth after I get the basic process down. The negative is, in short, terrible. The ink has settled into blobs on the transparency. I printed on the rough side of the transparency, I tried the smooth side, and the ink ran like crazy. Looking at the negative tells me the contact print would suck. For the paper type I tried both ultra premium matte and glossy. The glossy print is better than the matte; the ink blobs are smaller, but still obviously blobs.

Is my problem the paper type, the inks, or is this transparency just garbage and I should look to get something decent like Pictorico?
 
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I definitely want to learn more about this process. Sounds interesting. Film camera + film records image, scan film, post process digital file of image, inkjet print a negative transparency, use this in an enlarger to print a silver print.
 
I have Burkholders book and have made/ contact printed a few negatives to 8x10, great results. I used pictorio white film to print the negative onto from an Epson 2200. Here is a sample on the printed image, FWIW. I needed to play with the exposure a bit, but it fell out of interest for some reason, need to revisit the process. BTW, This was printed in a contact printing frame with a bare bulb as the light source (ala Weston-Style).

386044526_39e58627e9_o.jpg


Todd
 
Nice Todd. Having done this, what do you see as advantages and disadvantages to this process. Is it capable of a unique look?
 
dfoo said:
I was just trying this on some 3M inkjet transparency paper. For my experiment I was printing 5x4 negatives. First I just took what was a decent print on paper, inverted it and printed onto the transparency. At this point I don't care if the contact printed image isn't the greatest, since I can play with the contrast and so forth after I get the basic process down. The negative is, in short, terrible. The ink has settled into blobs on the transparency. I printed on the rough side of the transparency, I tried the smooth side, and the ink ran like crazy. Looking at the negative tells me the contact print would suck. For the paper type I tried both ultra premium matte and glossy. The glossy print is better than the matte; the ink blobs are smaller, but still obviously blobs.

Is my problem the paper type, the inks, or is this transparency just garbage and I should look to get something decent like Pictorico?
Click to expand...

My experience was similar -- I had to let the ink dry for several hours, and yes, the pebbled side is the right one. I was using 3M film and Canon inks & don't know if that is either a good or bad combination.

In the end, I realized it was such a long-way around & essentially pointless if you've got an enlarger. Even at it's very best, it ends up looking rasterized or half-tone lithographed upon close inspection.

But if you do persist, I recommend making a step-wedge in photoshop (or similar), which is a chequer-board matrix of ink density from 0 to 100% in about 20 (or more) steps. Coat your paper in whatever altproc chem you want, then expose the step wedge. This will give you the response curve of your coating w.r.t. a linear neg density.
 
I´ve used 3M CG3420 inkjet transparency film. Worked quite all right. No problems with slow drying. I think the pictorio transparencies might be even better, never tried them though.
 
Todd, that is a beautiful shot! I bet the print looks amazing.

Thanks for the input. I discovered my issue was actually a clogged yellow head. Once I sorted that out, I printed another and it actually looks quite good. I contacted printed this afternoon at different times, and am waiting for the paper to dry. From a cursory inspection of the prints, the highlights look excellent in the print, but the darker parts are way too dark! I think the process has promise, except the 3M paper is very expensive! I payed $14 for 5 sheets (hence I'm cutting them to 5x4 for testing!)

David, I want to try this process because I have a bunch of digital shots that I would like to print with my enlargers.
 
My Epson 1400 has very high maximum DPI. I printed 5x4 negative at ~900dpi. Given that the ink will likely run together a little, I suspect there will not be visible grains on the negative at 5x4. I didn't inspect it with a grain magnifier, or a loupe yet though. I'm hoping the print will look very nice. Once it dries I'll find it!
 
I just started looking at the wet prints... they suck. They look grainy and terrible. Looking at the negative again I'm not really surprised. The 3M inkjet transparency printing surface is rough and grainy, so its hardly a shock that anything printed on it is rough and grainy. Is the pictorio (or even better the Arista substitute) better?
 
It does seem like the long way to go doesn't it? Wouldn't it be easier and better to simply buy a LF camera and do this from a real large negative? Seems there's too many steps in the process and the print is too many steps removed from the original negative. If you're shooting LF, even 4x5, I have yet to see any real difference between an enlarger print and a contact print. Today's film emulsions are so much better than in the past, although I wouldn't say that for the paper. If you're going to be doing specialized printing like platinum prints then you would want to go w/ contact printing, but there's no substitute for size. Meaning something from a real 8x10 neg or better would give optimal results.

You also could make an interpositive and print larger than your neg, but the work involved is not to be underestimated.
 
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dfoo said:
From a cursory inspection of the prints, the highlights look excellent in the print, but the darker parts are way too dark!
Click to expand...

Yes, the OT base is much more transmissive than normal film base. I mentioned the step-wedge previously -- that's your key to mapping. A few tricks for taming include biasing the digital negative with a uniform layer of 10% red, laying a sheet of fixed-out film on top, and suchlike.

By the way, what are you printing on, alt proc coated paper or just Ag?
 
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dfoo said:
I just started looking at the wet prints... they suck. They look grainy and terrible. Looking at the negative again I'm not really surprised. The 3M inkjet transparency printing surface is rough and grainy, so its hardly a shock that anything printed on it is rough and grainy. Is the pictorio (or even better the Arista substitute) better?
Click to expand...

I gather you are making a 4x5 negative with the transparency (using the Epson 1400) and then making an enlarged wet print? I've not played with this technique at all, but I had thought the idea is to make a full-size (8x10 or larger) negative from a digital file, then use that to make a contact print. That might beat some of the grain.
 
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