Koraks tinkers

Getting organizized – A database for carbon transfer tissues

When it comes to workplace organization, I’m pretty schizophrenic. My desk is generally a mess, and open any cupboard in my darkroom only to find its contents in disarray. On the other hand, I can get carried away trying to properly organize things – to the point of being ridiculous! This blog is about the latter: a database system for keeping track of carbon tissue variants.

Ciao from Sicily – Some postcards

I’ve participated in the postcard exchange on Photrio recently, and I thought I might share some of the cards I’ve sent out. The month prior to the exchange, we spent a few days on Sicily, so I decided to use some frames from that trip for the cards.

Don’t look down – Getting your film x-rayed when flying

The impact of airport luggage scanning x-rays on photographic film has been debated ad nauseam. Many of those debates rarely involve much in terms of actual evidence. Apparently, the problem is feared much more than that it is encountered. Well, seems like I might have some news. Read on.

Rolling – Gearing up DAS carbon printing

Yeah, I’ve been silent on my blog. In case you’re wondering: no, I haven’t given up on anything, given my recent struggles with DAS carbon. In fact, quite the opposite! Since figuring out (at least as far as I can tell, for now) the process limits, I’ve been shifting into gear with monochrome DAS carbon and it’s been going remarkably smoothly. “I Ate’nt Dead“, as Granny Weatherwax used to write!

Ready, set, go – Stuff you need to get started with carbon transfer

This post is in answer to a question from Esmee (check out her work via https://www.eamy.nl/). Since others might somehow benefit from it as well, I might as well just put it up for everyone to see. So here’s a little shopping list of what’s needed to get started with carbon transfer using DAS sensitizer.

Knowing what’s right, but getting it wrong – Some silly color problems

Learning involves making mistakes and if there’s one thing I’ve learned by now, it’s how to make excellent mistakes – all the time. Most of them are silly ones, too: I know better, and then I do it wrong anyway. Recently I goofed hilariously badly when working with a batch of ECN2 films. Here’s to show that I’m by no means perfect. Far, very far from it…

A ‘contrast ceiling’ of DAS carbon with continuous tone negatives

Previously, I have written about my attempts to make DAS carbon work well for continuous-tone negatives. The main challenge is highlight rendition, with flaking problems destroying delicate highlights. After testing many factors, I think the only conclusion left is that there is a limit to what DAS can do. Moreover, this limit is different (and more, well, limiting) than with dichromate carbon transfer.

Peaks or plateaus – Light sources for DSLR scanning color negatives

Many people like to shoot film, but enjoy their images in the digital domain and the possibilities it warrants for post-processing, printing, etc. This means that the film images need to be scanned, and using a DSLR to do this has become very popular in recent years. But it does bring up some questions – mainly: what’s the best way to do this? And in particular, if you photograph a backlit negative, what kind of backlight would be preferable? I’m going to reflect on this for a bit on a theoretical basis.

Aching, flaking – A persistent problem with carbon DAS highlights

The problem that just won’t go away: disappearing highlights on DAS carbon prints. Twice so far I’ve declared this problem solved on my blog, only to have to revoke my ‘eureka’ shortly afterwards. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been systematically testing the process to find a cure. So far, to very little avail, I’m afraid. But perhaps that this writeup will (1) help me re-think the problem and (2) it’ll give some hints to anyone else struggling with DAS carbon problems by listing factors that can/should be evaluated.

Subtleties – Subbing intermediate supports for DAS carbon transfer and a note on pigment prep

In my move to DAS instead of dichromate for sensitizing carbon tissues, I ran into a highlight retention problem. Thin gelatin layers (highlights and upper mid-tones) would slide off the temporary support material during warm water development. In testing, I identified exposure unit wavelength as a critical factor. However, the problem persisted especially in very high-contrast tissues. It seems I have now identified another part of the solution: a different way of subbing the intermediate support.