printing – Page 4 – Koraks tinkers

The Big Ugly, or building a LED color printing light source. Part 1: the beginnings

Previously, I bashed compound/integrated RGB LEDs such as RGB COB LEDs for the application of a color enlarger for RA4 prints. That was basically a lesson learned the hard way when building a LED-based color enlarger light source. In this series, because one post is probably not going to be enough, I’ll highlight some aspects of the system I’ve built. Or I should say: I’ve built so far, because it’s really just a prototype that will likely never be really finished. Hence the title, The Big Ugly. Because there’s one thing it isn’t, and that’s beautiful. But hey, it works! Sort of. Most of the time. Within reasonable limits. If I’m careful.

Tissue making – curl up and dye

Ok, sorry – inappropriate title again. Evidently, no dye is involved in carbon transfer tissue making. As far as I know, any attempt to add dye to tissue will cause staining of porous final supports, so it’s really pigments all the way. But the reference to the Blues Brothers movie was just too good to pass. Besides, the ‘curl up’ part is pretty accurate! Anyway, here’s part two of the blog I did earlier on making carbon transfer glop. With all the bubbles gone, it’s time to turn glop into tissue!

Making glop – and some words on sugar, glycerin and ink

Glop, gloop, pigmented gelatin – whatever you name it: it’s that pretty awesome looking slithery stuff that forms the basis of a carbon transfer image. Looking at liquid, bubble-free glop at the right angle is a bit like staring into a black hole. It surprises me Anish Kapoor never caught onto it, really. Anyway, today is glop-making day again as I’m running out of 8×10 tissue. I took some pics and will (probably) follow up next time with tissue-making.

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.

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!

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.