Category: dye transfer

One Picture More

Posted on Posted in dye transfer, exs notebook, picture post, Theory, Theory: landscape

Making across picture manners. consider this a continuation of my recent “Picture Post” .. the images in that, with this additional, are from the same situation, bounded by the same initial consideration. My prompt was the same. In that PP, I consider only the first points of making a picture. Often, that is enough. The first place is the last place.

Subjects have powers — these come from their prior treatment, by the naive consumer, the amateur producer and the needs of the driven “by any other means.”

conceptual work has no shadow; is without dimension.

These are two variations on simple structural relations. This [oct22,23] is a first rendering. Rather than make added posts, I will add to this post.

[this method has become my revised mode of postings … add to existing. ]

I won’t be writing about the “how” they are done… I am reminded of a conversation with John Orentlicher: my position on answering didn’t go well for my time at EXS. [To John Orentlicher ( or liquor) because it makes it more powerful to me and I have no interest in translating them; spending my life as a translator of rather than an author of. My first react comment to him was: That’s a question I’d expect of a student, not the head of the department. — I didn’t make tenure track… and so it goes.]

Added Monday Oct 24–> heading along the edges

Using TMax

Posted on Posted in dye transfer, Getting Stuff, overnight notes, the foraTagged , , 1 Comment

Formulations change even without a branding change. This is done for reasons their maker knows. We can guess. If the item is intended, or is expected to serve the same utility, why introduce a New Name?

Super-XX and Kodak Pan Matrix film become one example

Super -XX1938 – 1955was the founding emulsion in speed and sensitization for Pan Matrix Film.
Super -XXafter 1955 became the film used for seps.1953 Kodak had moved to Safety Base
Pan Matrix 55111949dye washed out. see Defender process notes
Pan Matrix 51491957black didn’t wash out
Pan Matrix 4149(63 ->) the Matrix film most knewblackjet
Pan Matrix

open questions

The past can be used to provide answers for those open to reading.


TMAX, Super-XX, and Separation Negative 1 &2 were sold during dye transfer’s ending days.
tmax was not the replacement film… it just became so after Super-XX was dropped. After separation negative film (I and II) was dropped, TMax was the Kodak film that many experimented with. 
The Versamat also fell to the change in commercial photography world. The change had begun in the 70s, accelerating in the 80s. Retouching was the key to the kingdom.
With dye transfer’s passing, several lab films were not longer needed. 
They were replaced by the scanner.

this date (1985), the process was ending. 
These are list prices. Labs got discounts over 40%. Our discount may have been a secret kept from other labs. Nothing much else could be. Certainly nothing about the process. We hired from the same schools. Hired from each other. Some printers worked different shifts at different labs. 
I, for one, travelled among labs across country working on projects.

TMAX as the savior

One Film to rule the world.. often repeated — the repeat began with one person. Seemed reasonable. No one disputed it. Some out of ignorance, some, likely, out of politeness. In one case out of knowing better than to spend time making repeated corrections.

TMAX and Pan Masking film co-existed… TMAX was not the suggested fillm for masking.

Optical Printing… isn’t enlarger printing. At least it wasn’t. Notice the guidance for exposing duplication film. Use an optical printer, an enlarger, or a camera.

the great OPTICAL print.. sitting alongside the Enlarger and Camera.

Calling a photograph an OPTICAL seems like a call for help. A big word for something very common.

The optical printer has short enclosed separation between original and duplicate — or, negative and positive (print). An enlarger was also called ‘projection’ or ‘arial’ printing.

Optical is a code word of those who oppose this century’s vocabulary for inkjet printing.