Dye Transfer Fantasy

Products fail by being used as merit badges, marks of distinction, instead of making art. With the online photoworld, it is enough to say you do, then hide behind a ready alibi. “You can’t see it on the web, it is too analog perfect to be digitized.” They abhor “art-speak” as they engage, mostly in “craft-speak.”

Parrots don’t print. They hate artspeak. They love craftspeak

The market for dye transfer Materials is nonexistent . it is a fantasy . they transfer materials must be made for someone who is using them intently consistently . The firms which can coat Silver sensitive Materials are reducing their small capacity or closing it completely . In 2010 there were several times more coaters than are available now . In the US, of the three firms that could’ve coded Silver sensitive emulsion, two have left that market . Both of those locations coat emulsions for dry lab photography .

For most of the 21st century dye transfer has existed as a small scale competitive conversation transacted online . very little of the discussion has involved experience based opinion .

— example order from Pickle Alley days.

 Why didn’t another able coater supply a version of matrix film to the still hungry marketplace after FK’s collapse? Certainly there were coaters with excess capacity along with the ability to formulate their version of the open source Browning/formulation. Even the clamor among the alt-print world for silver solutions to the “make it bigger” topic will not support a lab film. Digital negs rule, even among the darkroom adherents. Oddly, even after many complain about the inferior negatives produced using inkjet / overhead film workflow.

The question ONEIDA posed was about markets for a product once made. If a film sells, others will fill the orders.

EFKE (FK) wasn’t profitable. They couldn’t sell enough film. Matrix film was a risk that failed as revenue.

Bergger Printfilm was a toll coating based upon Efke Printfilm. It was designed, and released to satisfy the ALT photography printmakers searching for solutions to making enlarged negatives for UV sensitive contact processes.

Like AI’s arrogant children, they ignore the question in order to make a point: they know better, not just more, but more as well as better. They don’t need to read the question. Easy as Pie.

Time spent to learn:

Mr. Answerman has accumulated over two years talking about color photography, using as his merit badge knowledge of dye-transfer. This time is if he spends only 5 minutes reading and posting on each of his posts across three frequented forums. Two years is more than enough to master the process. More time than even the name-dropped heros spent.

NB: the durable dye-transfer groups — nope!


  • key patent by Wey and Whiteley.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debye–Hückel_theory
  • Russell, Chemical Analysis in Photography
  • Croome, Photographic Gelatin
  • Deryagin, Film Coating Theory
  • Zelikman, Making & Coating Photographic Emulsion
  • Gorokhseskii, Spectral Studies of the Photographic Process
  • Duffin, Photographic Emulsion Cheistry

This isn’t tuesday– suppose you were learning a subject that had deep, long-time history, would you start at the end? Which end? This from the early part, that which made the thing possible was a set of references, most of which are lost on the shelves of unvisited libraries. Nonetheless, here, 1945, photochemistry sources used by the original makers of color systems:

Duet

thinking about what matters .. Ursula

two pictures their meaning between them. meant for audience of one.

“A poem should not mean / But be.” MacLeish, Ars Poetica.

I stumble around, sometimes ,in the right direction the time comes along

2013, on the road. matching place overtime . The word, single word, “duet” suggests combination; some form of two. Standing still with soft eyes; my phrase from the 60s days, based upon the equestrian sense of riding a horse. Ride it with soft hands or hard. Different results, but then horses and terrain are different. If you can’t notice, don’t ride; you will choose wrong. At the SFAI, I talked about prints on the wall — variations in style of walking-looking. Be aware of your presence. You have a shadow; you aren’t one.

geometries or time . make the ‘or’ an ‘and’ ; geometries AND time. exposure and revealing .

The act of noticing. Action. la vie d’intérieur

Picking phrases that pick at me. One such: ‘they could calculate the exact mix of randomness and chaos..’

God moves the player and he, the piece.
What god behind God originates the scheme
Of dust and time and dream and agony? Borges (“The Game of Chess”)

[words proof diagram ]FOL, an abstract language.

flaneur / umsucht … The world is the collection of facts, not of things. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Each is a half-open door …

not Iq84 ish… not two worlds-times in same space-place.. at least not that i knew before shuttering

An indirect reference item:
“Gabriela Alemán has written a terrible and beautiful story about the delicate borders between what is known and what is invented, and about the places where intimate tragedy and the tragedies of history intersect.”—Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World

Is there any hope for the world? No, there’s too much work

PICTURE POSTs are additions to portfolio items. This is part of my 180s open-ended folios.

Index Prints

The idea print. Collecting visuals. Stages of the darkroom process. Beyond the wild guess. Looking more than once, while looking at more than one. Building the comparative response.

This index is from the librarians, not the linguists. /’ that it contains so much contradictory information that a verbal message is needed to fix its meaning ‘/ 

WHY make contact sheets — to see the roll, thereby providing selection by comparison.. provides an editorial overview as it reveals your progression of action in the event-scene.

The key point of this post is using “jigs” as aid to determining exposure of a print. They provide an efficient way to make several attempts, or tests of settings in making darkroom prints. Typically, they are used to determine exposure setting, however, they could also be used to test changes in contrast filters, or color balance filtration, since while the “flaps” are closed, enlarger settings may be changed.

These devices are the commercial form of what was frequently a kludge made by the printer from cardboard, tape, or, perhaps, scavenged sheet film holders. My initial, 1960s version was made using scrapped film holders. These were sold by the cardboard box full at the surplus stores.

The start point. finding a way in the dark. What is the exposure setting for darkroom materials. Color or black-white paper exposure must be tested; determined by making trial exposures. These are called “test strips” — strips, small samples of the material you will use to make your print.

Durst Test Print Tool
Ways of making test strips.

Drawing patterns, making conclusions.
Index prints are also known as “contact sheets,” or “proof sheets.” Most uses of these are as first edit device for selecting among negatives/slides. The exposure, contrast and processing controls are sometimes lax. I try for a first best use setting for the most interesting of the negatives. This sheet serves as my point of search into my file of pictures. Rather than shuffling through the negatives, I shuffle through my index prints. These prints, in some cases, provide my an easy notepad of what was printed and when. The details of the printing will be in a print/darkroom notebook.


What is the start point of making a darkroom exposure

By using test jigs, I was able to characterize film for making separations for dye transfer in as few as 6 sheets of film. A morning’s work. It was sixty years later that a boastful amateur told a student of mine that wasn’t possible.

Good to know. #OIC