Digital BW, The Print

Anyone out there still working on digital internegatives? A few 
weeks back I got a few sheets of a film called Super Clear/IJ from 
Michael Pach and Adveturecam Photo. I've tried it a couple times at 
this point, and I'm pleased enough with it to ressurect that 
particular project. I had been trying Pictorico products, but 
remained unsatisfied: I hate printing through the almost opaque 
white plastic paper, and the OTC showed printer artifacts: the 
printer dots where very clearly delineated, it showed microbanding 
when normal paper wouldn't and the film itself was milky, lowering 
the effective contrast, and has a lot of microscopic flaws. Also, 
and probably most important, the Pictorico won't build much density 
or color saturation. It seemed no matter how I went about it, I 
could get enough density, spectral or otherwise to get good 
contrast. Not a problem if you're using variable contrast paper, but 
I need the internegs for printing the hand coated emulsion, which is 
a grade two at best.

OTOH the Super Clear is, as its name implies, much more clear, at 
least in part because it is thinner, so carefull handling is a must. 
On the plus side, it is capable of producing much better color 
saturation, especially in the yellow range where the Pictorico was 
very weak. That makes it easy to produce an orange negative of 
enough spectral density to make a snappy print on VC fiber paper at 
a grade 2-2.5

Also, it shows printer dots less, and doesn't seem prone to showing 
microbanding either. I think this is becuase there is a bit more dot 
gain, which softens the edges of the printer dots a bit. Obviously 
this also means slightly lower max sharpness is possible, but the 
difference is not visible to the naked eye, and you have to look 
carefully even with a lupe to pick it up. The lower grittiness is 
definitely visible to the naked eye, and quite pleasing.

There is one catch: the material is available in 100 sheet boxes, 
and while the price per sheet is much lower than Pictorico, that's 
still a good chunk of change. Michael has agreed to split the 
packages into 50s that's a lot easier to handle, and puts the cash 
outlay close to what you'spend getting into Pictorico.

Hope this is of some use & interest

Steve Karafyllakis