Digital BW, The Print

Steve, is your hand-coated emulsion platinum or palladium or a combination?
As you know these require a neg with a DR greater than a neg for silver
paper.  If this film will work for pt/pd or Ziatype that is good news
indeed.  Also, are you using dye or pigment inks?

Regards,

  --Ken Carney
    www.kencarney.com    

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Karafyllakis [mailto:steve@...] 
> Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 7:11 PM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Digital BW] New digital inerneg material
> 
> 
> 
> 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