photography – Page 10 – Koraks tinkers

Why RGB LEDs suck for a color RA4 enlarger

Not many people are crazy enough to build a light source for a color enlarger. From time to time, someone picks up the challenge and posts about it online. Most of the time, the concept revolves around some form of RGB LEDs, whether that be led strips, Chip-On-Board (COB) LEDs or even addressable LED ‘beads’ such as the popular WS2812. All of these are in my opinion doomed to fail miserably to produce quality RA4 prints. Let me explain why.

Some light to the darkroom

What’s the essence of a darkroom? That’s right – light! Seriously though, I think good light makes all the difference in darkroom work. First and foremost, it’s just pleasant to have ample and good-quality light to work with. But it’s also essential for judging print quality and properties such as hue/color balance, toning etc. In this post, I’m showcasing my current darkroom lighting setup and I will also discuss some lessons learned and loose ends/issues.

What a 300W UV floodlight is not

Yesterday, I did a quick test with my newly acquired Chinese ‘300W’ UV floodlight. It was immediately apparent that there is one thing very big about this floodlight: the exaggeration of its rated power. The whole thing made me curious, so I did two things: (1) opened up the unit and had a look at it, and (2) order 3 more of them. Yes, that’s right! Read on about what I found inside this unit and why I took up the ungodly plan to quadruple this mess.

UV tube vs led: a quick comparison

I already announced in my previous journal entry, but it arrived even quicker than I anticipated: the 300W UV led source I ordered from China. Although it was also laundry-and-house-cleaning day, I couldn’t resist giving it a go. And in particular, seeing how it would pitch against the bank of UV tubes I’ve had around for years. Here are my expectations when I ordered it: (1) higher total luminous flux, so shorter exposures, (2) better collimation, so less bleed and better detail rendering. How does it pan out, you think?

Corn print

Yesterday I made a print that I’m very pleased with. The negative just about perfectly suited my current carbon transfer skillset and as a result, the very first print of the negative is about as good as it’s going to get. Alright, there’s a few minor issues that need ironing out, but the image is quite presentable, I think. Here it is:

Relieved

Today, I decided to straighten a print I made yesterday from the series on corn I’ve been working on. When rewetting the print for taping it down, I couldn’t help but noticing the relief on the wet print, which stands out particularly nicely on this one. Look:

Making black, making white

There are many things to like about carbon transfer printing (and at least as many to dislike about it…). One of them is that essentially, you’re making the black and the white separately and then marry them when making the actual transfer. The black is the tissue, the white is the final support. Combined, they make for a continuous tone image. Pretty neat if you consider that they start out as pure black and pure white!

PVC development tubes for sheet film

Warning: again a total lack of originality on my part. The upshot is that apparently I don’t suffer too badly from the not invented here syndrome because I proudly ~~stole~~ reproduced this idea from Tim Layton whom in turn was inspired by Phil Davis and his “Beyond The Zone System” approach. The whole idea is essentially just a hollow tube with two end caps in which you put a single sheet of film, fill ‘er up with developer and agitate in whichever way you fancy. This could be a fancy water bath agitator like in the official BTZS approach, or, as in my case, simply turning the tube over and over like a regular daylight tank, or rolling it on a counter top.

Beginner’s luck

Well, not an appropriate title, that’s a good start… this post is about carbon transfer printing, which is something I did quite a bit of a few years ago. I don’t think I even had a large format camera back then, so I just used digital negatives instead. And grew very tired of it, very quickly. Well, after making a couple of hundreds of prints (mind-numbingly boring calibration charts as well), that is.