Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/11/11

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Subject: [Leica] RE: Digital FIBER Prints
From: mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)
Date: Fri Nov 11 15:35:37 2005

> I do hope to get to stop in your studio and buy you a beer a'fore you move
> to the big apple (don't mind the maggots), when is that going to happen?
> 
> Best of light -
> Norm
>      
Beers two bath maybe I'll watch you drink yours I'm a diet coke
affectionado!

I got to typing here. I type more than I shoot. Like Ansel.

The predominate idea in darkroom black and white serious printing for a half
a century had been as we are saying Glossy ferrotype (F) paper dried down to
a golden semi gloss almost mat naturally.
NOT ferrotyped to look like a real glossy as glass surface which the paper
was you'd think primarily intended for..
Something Bauhaus about Ferrotype though maybe they did it. On very cold
black paper maybe.
How much longer it took them to come out with that prebath to make such
ferrotyping a much more a sure even bet and not the crapshoot it was quite a
while A huge amount of paper was not recycled because of little
imperfections in the obnoxious gloss.

In my college darkroom there was a big ferrotype drum thing constantly
revolving in the darkroom lobby with that pre ferrotype solution right next
to it and a squeegee glass with squeegee.. You had the option of putting the
print NOT facing the drum but the semi contaminated canvas and this would
really give you a not gloss service but not dried down either. And you'd get
that flavor from the contaminated  canvas baked for freshness. Often you'd
get an imprint of the canvas on the surface of the fried print if you were
sloppy with your squeegee. I remember all this amazing.

Ilford GALLERY was the first paper to save us from the silver scam scandal
in the late 70's when all the papers went down the tubes silver wise with
the exception of Agfa Portriga which was unfashionably warm which we'd try
to counter chemically. And slow.  And cost just a little bit more. But
silver rich making we thought for a rich black.
They other companies realized after Gallery people would pay a few more
bucks or more for some non chinsey paper and it became by the end of the
80's a Renaissance of black and white paper paper options. I bet better then
the 50's with those papers made by Dupont and all those companies you'd not
think. Betty Crocker.
Knock knock Varigram!

RC papers may be as archival as fiber right now.
But the feel is not there in your hands and the SURFACE is not there.
SURFACE SURFACE SURFACE!!  (Avedon??)

They vainly try to duplicate fiber dry down with some fine texture
imprinting embossing and it's just not the same thing. Its a different
thing. Like Apples and Asparagus.
Pearl is the RC version of our beloved fiber dry down fiber. For Ilford.
Which I think dominates the smarter market.

I hung a show once behind glass as typical and I last minute made some RC
prints for some of them the idea being I'd make them wait a week while I
reprinted it with fiber if anyone bought a print.
Or they'd exhume my casket and yell at me. That was the glossy RC stuff.
Which I hate even more than the Pearl II. But behind the glass no one knew.
Gloss behind glass. Who knew!?!
It was Ilford Multigrade so it was the exact same emulsion as the fiber.
Even the subtle print color matched up.  And the plastic pages in a
portfolio sure hides any objectionable surface as well as feel.
Mat doesn't not even come into the picture in darkroom work it dries down a
grade softer and at least on stop or more darker. It's blackest black is a
grey card. But otherwise just fine. They don't even use it for hand coloring
like it says on the box.
Mat and Art both are not with us having gone over the top into a hail of
machine fire. But live on in practically every other of the dozen
"alternate" photo processes including inkjet. Which are not "alternate" to
the people who use them.
Soon it will be silver gelatin which will be called a viable alternate to
inkjet. In case you need a strangely high degree of detail which you see
with a loupe.
It may sound bad and have a bad ring to it but inkjet is a very big deal in
the development of photographic processes. A plural. It's an explosion. I'm
in on it. Like the invention of the silver gelatin process itself which came
32 years after photography was invented with the first Daguerreotype.
1839 minus 1871.
Which happens to be the amount of time I've been printing myself. And which
seems like a long time.

Why are we still using the silver gelatin process?
Its well known to not match the more major modern Platinum Print.
It's a scandal!

Taking the easy way out with this high tech enlarger filter garbage.

Mark Rabiner
Photography
Portland Oregon
http://rabinergroup.com/





Replies: Reply from richard-lists at imagecraft.com (Richard) ([Leica] RE: Digital FIBER Prints)
In reply to: Message from puff11 at comcast.net (Norm Aubin) ([Leica] RE: Digital FIBER Prints)