Tutorial: Illustrated Guide to B&W scan & processing

Very interesting, I’ll study it in detail when I get chance. How do you make the negs for the Cyanotypes? I’m assuming they are contact prints (the ones on your fliker) or are they direct from LF negs?
 
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I've got a few rolls out of the Holga to run from Saturday's "Shoot With a Toy Camera" day and will try your process. Thanks!
 
How wonderful of you to take the time and effort to present this for us. I find it extremely useful, and will try it soon.

This is highly appreciated.

Larry
 
Sparrow said:
Very interesting, I’ll study it in detail when I get chance. How do you make the negs for the Cyanotypes? I’m assuming they are contact prints (the ones on your fliker) or are they direct from LF negs?
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They are a mix of pure large format negatives (the easier, and "cleaner" way) done with my Crown Graphic, and digital negative from 120 film or even 135..

For digital negatives I take any B&W photo, invert+mirror it, fix a bit the contrast so there is not too much "black" (black = highlights in cyanoland, and highlights are very difficult to keep since they tend to wash out in the water) and print the image on transparency film on my cheapo Inkjet printer... I then trim the prinouts and use it to do the contact printing...
 
what type of transparency film, how do you get that density on the negs
I've been looking for a way to make a large dense neg on an ink-jet any tips?
 
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Sparrow said:
what type of transparency film, how do you get that density on the negs
I've been looking for a way to make a large dense neg on an ink-jet any tips?
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I got some "IBM" Inkjet transparency film (from PCWorld). The trick is to find the setting in your printer driver that gives better result. In my case, with my el-cheapo HP inkjet it is not "transparency" but "Photo Paper"; the inket transparency film has a side that is slightly rough, and one that is very smooth; if you print with the driver's "transparency" setting it /assumes/ you print on film that doesn't drink ink (the smooth kind), and you end up with something very thin.
If you print on the "rougher" side of the film, this one can, and does, drink more ink, so you can tell the driver that it's photo paper and you get good, deep black (in fact, a bit too good in my case, thus my reduction of the contrast...)

In any case, you need to sacrifice 2 or 3 transparency sheets to see what kind of settings works best for your printer...

I'm still waiting for my extra chemicals to do vandykes/kallitypes; a lot more fun to come :D
 
Nice write up.

I have some other projects around the house first but the next "for me" project is Kallitypes and POP from digital negatives.

You may want to look at this monograph by Ernest Theisen about his bromoil transfers. He uses "safe light" colors for his negatives for contact printing.
 
Hmm.. using profiles to adjust contrast.. interesting :)

FYI, if using vuescan and scanning in b&w mode on a PC, the actual profile scanned is the gray gamma 2.2. I discovered this through experimentation. I wonder what it is on a mac? gray gamma 1.2?

Leaving the image as-is and assigning a profile is similar to appplying a curve, if you want to be "anal" about it, you should do that in 16-bit mode ;) I believe profile changing like that does degrade the image ever so slightly. *shrug*

Good points on local contrast, now I only wish I had a beefier computer to handle MF 6x6 at 4800 dpi in 16 bits :eek:
 
jano said:
Hmm.. using profiles to adjust contrast.. interesting :)

Leaving the image as-is and assigning a profile is similar to appplying a curve, if you want to be "anal" about it, you should do that in 16-bit mode ;) I believe profile changing like that does degrade the image ever so slightly. *shrug*
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Nope, "assigning profile" doesn't change a single bit in the file, it just change the way it is /displayed/ on screen. This is the beauty of this method. The only thing that gets changed, eventualy, is when you convert it to RGB. If you were to kept the image in monochrome JPEG with that embedded profile the pixels wouldn't change at all...

"Assigning Profile" doesn't change the image. "Convert to Profile" does and /will/ degrade the image, that is why this is the very last step I do...
 
Buze

thanks for this write up - it looks very interesting and i will work through some recent scanned negs with this workflow.
 
Notice how the histogram has breaks in it, this is because you are scanning as 8-bit. If you scan the image at a higher bit sampling you extend the level of grays beyond 256 and diminish your chances of posterizing the image which leads to banding in prints.
 
Buze,
I'll have to try telling the printer that my transparancy is paper. My first 'negatives' look way to thin on my cheap printer.
 
kmack said:
Nice write up.

I have some other projects around the house first but the next "for me" project is Kallitypes and POP from digital negatives.

You may want to look at this monograph by Ernest Theisen about his bromoil transfers. He uses "safe light" colors for his negatives for contact printing.
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Can anyone help me with this quote from that monograph?

A colorized negative has been converted to "safelight" color so you don't need dense black ink to develop the highlights.

There are three jpeg images

I'm afraid I don't understand how using saflight colors helps.
 
Buze said:
Nope, "assigning profile" doesn't change a single bit in the file, it just change the way it is /displayed/ on screen. This is the beauty of this method.
Click to expand...

I bow down before you, oh wise one! :D
 
thurows said:
Notice how the histogram has breaks in it, this is because you are scanning as 8-bit. If you scan the image at a higher bit sampling you extend the level of grays beyond 256 and diminish your chances of posterizing the image which leads to banding in prints.
Click to expand...

You haven't read the article, have you :rolleyes: :)
 
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