Tag: dye transfer

did we kill it by making it seem a killer thing to do

Posted on Posted in olden waysTagged

A Student Asks

I recieved a comment/ observation from one of the students who attended my dye transfer workshop this past july. she wondered if dye transfer had been killed because people thought it an unsurmountable mountain. She noted that in her case, she had collected the supplies more than 5 years ago. She never got started. She didn’t want to ‘waste’ them until she knew she would be able to make dyes well.
Since everything she read, or saw on the net gave her yet another thing she would have to have, and yet another course of study before being able to use that, she said her “sand castle would have to wait. with every tide it got knocked over.”

I don’t expect there was anything that could have been done. Probably not even much that will be done by some future “others.”

In my learning, I encounted dyes the 3rd day I was in a photo school, so I never had enough time to think they would be overwhelming — it all seemed like a day at the beach. Just grand fun. I was making pictures — all day — everyday.

Request to You

Anyhow, use it up, or pass it on. Please.

My Old Friend

Posted on Posted in olden waysTagged

It is odd to see this, to have found it while looking for other items. These people hired one of the technicians I knew, had worked with…

 

 

the important piece of this is how physical the process is. The skill that dye transfer required was confidence of action. Doing the task without hesitation. Trusting your hand to your eye, knowing that you will get the print correctly, and only, when you do that.

Mixing Kodak Tanning Developer

Posted on Posted in dye transfer, How To, the LabTagged

adage: mix for 4, use for 3

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To make a set of mats, expose them and set aside the three mats in a safe-box. To develop, use the mixing directions, amounts as though you were souping 4 mats, but use that mixed developer in thirds. Take 1/3 and develop each mat in your developing tray. This assumes a very standardized procedure that has controlled balance and contrast. Clearly, if you are processing mats to different contrasts, then you cannot develop using the same mixed working solution.
Time is not a good adjustment to matrix contrast change. Tanning of the gelatin does not occur directly with development time. The oxidation of the tanning developer does not affect the matrix tanning as much as it would intuitively seem. The experienced darkroom tech coming to dye transfer cannot wholly bring their prior B&W experience to the matrix phase of dye transfer.

dye transfer

the matrix is the matrix — another world with other meanings

Sadly, none of this instruction will be useful to you these days, since none of the Kodak materials are useable. Any matrix film you could find is too old for proper dye transfers. They will have ‘age fog’ of the gelatin itself. Even if using the Efke film (sponsored by Jim Browning)it is so old that I wouldn’t use it as a reference to dye transfer from the age when fresh supplies were available in great quantity.

Even the most recent incarnation of Matrix films (Gecko, and Del Rio), which were being made when this post was originally made (2014), are out of production(2018 was the last date).

some links to formulas: Tanning Developers …& … PRIVATE page