No, this is nothing to do with consistency., sorry, you misunderstand. This is not using interim media, for whatever reason, 1 per year or 500 per year.
No, this is nothing to do with consistency., sorry, you misunderstand. This is not using interim media, for whatever reason, 1 per year or 500 per year.Sunlight is fine if you are a casual printer with these processes. Anything more than that and you need consistency and availability that sunlight can't provide.
More or less any kind of enlarger is a commercial dead end. It's all niches within niches, lots of R&D effort for tiny volumes and only 'sensible' if the combination of hobby and a small remuneration is feasible for someone.
I can imagine. Digital negatives are great - if you like that way of working. I personally didn't. The digital part and the inkjet step took the fun out of printing for me. I can imagine I'm not the only one - and that it would make the whole endeavor worthwhile. Yes, as a hobby/enthusiast exercise.
I thought you were talking about a UV enlarger, not a reducer!
Respecting your view, but adding something positive rather than rejecting the view might be a better approach. Funny how people still take film photos and expose that and then digitise.I'd much rather deal with digitally enlarged negatives - no dust, you can deal with any contrast issues or mechanical flaws your original might have prior to printing, and once you learn how to do it properly, it's a very simple set of repetitive steps to make it. And if you're feeling lazy, you can just use curves other people have posted on the internet to skip a lot of the boring, repetitive steps that go into making a digital negative. Plus, if you damage the negative, you can just reprint it.
Having done the digital negative step several hundred times now as part of a project I'm working on, it's a superior technique. I don't want/need a UV lamphouse that is so powerful it can set my negatives on fire and/or blind me. For an investment of $200, I have an LED light source that covers 16x22 inches completely evenly, and produces a properly exposed Palladium print in 2 minutes. I can use it 24/7/365, in any weather.
I won't say the UV enlarger is a waste of time - there's always something to be learned by attempting, even (or especially) if it ends in abject failure, or does not produce a result that is immediately obvious as an improvement. But I would argue that a UV-based enlarger is, commercially anyway, a dead end, as it caters to an increasingly small audience of people who want to do things the really hard way.
I spent 40 years in IT in network engineering, so IT does not phase me to use digital means, but is just not inspiring to get a great image result, hence I would prefer to enlarge from the source which is what I am trying to achieve here.
This sounds very promising; I think it's worth a try. If anything it will tell us how bad the problem of IR radiation is vs. direct transfer. If IR is the main culprit, the fans won't help. But to be honest, I think they will help - a lot.I have a design ready to 3D print which incorporates some cooling fans between the diffuser and the neg holder.
Respecting your view, but adding something positive rather than rejecting the view might be a better approach. Funny how people still take film photos and expose that and then digitise.
Of course much better to use 100MP digital cameras and just move on and simulate the film in digital......I do use High end digital with Phase One, Leica S2 and Nikon D810 cameras , I am not a luddite, but ..............Nothing wrong in that per se, but do we want to deny the artists using paint, ink, watercolour etc and other media just because digital methods now exits? Think about it, please. All methods are valid.
Of course much better to use 100MP digital cameras and just move on and simulate the film in digital
This is exactly my feeling as well. There is amazing alt-process art being made with digital negatives, but as I spend all day staring at screens it is simply not enjoyable for me to make photos this way, and so I appreciate the challenge of working through the UV enlargement possibilities.
Would it be worthwhile to create a collaboration space, either here on Photrio or through something like Groups.io, for those of us willing to put in time on this effort? For my part, the optical science is far beyond my background, but I do like to play.
Currently I am working with a 100W 395nm LED adapted onto an Omega B600 condenser enlarger and cheap El-Omegar lens, and getting ~30min exposure times for cyanotype with manageable heat issues, but I have plans to build a diffuser enlarger as well. I have a design ready to 3D print which incorporates some cooling fans between the diffuser and the neg holder. Will post results here once I get around to it, but also happy to try out other pathways that would benefit our common pursuit here.
Yes, burning and dodging should be possible with a projection enlarger method if exposures get to around 20 minutes or less - A bit laborious but still should add more ease and control than doing so above the contact image, which does have some validity but is hard to get right.
Dodging tools?
Certainly. The eyes are a real risk and protection MUST be ensured!!I would be more worried about the eyes
The UV levels at the stage where you'd hold your hands for dodging will be far lower than outside on a sunny day.should be just like protecting yourself on a beach from the sun.
I don't think that's an accurate comparison. Remember we're talking about an enlarger setup here. The actual luminous flux is far lower than under a barely-shielded lamp. Also consider that old-fashioned discharge lamps put out a much broader spectrum which does in fact include significant amounts of UV light of shorter wavelengths than the relatively benign >365nm (i.e. they tend to emit some UV-B next to UV-A, while most UV-C will be mostly filtered by the glass). In leds, we don't really have to worry about UV-B and UV-C as they're simply not being generated in the first place. From a safety perspective, this is a major benefit of leds over discharge lamps.This is currently somewhere like 30cm below a 600WQ UV grow lamp and canopy
The UV levels at the stage where you'd hold your hands for dodging will be far lower than outside on a sunny day.
The total flux that party-goers receive on a night out won't be sufficient to cause damage. You generally have fairly limited amount of UV light in the mix and exposure would be limited to a few hours a night. Like I said, much (MUCH!) less than one hour of sunbathing on the beach.On the other hand, a lot of the BLB bulbs are sold for use in disco parties - I wonder aren't those guys worried about exposure to skin and eyes?
The UV levels at the stage where you'd hold your hands for dodging will be far lower than outside on a sunny day.
I don't think that's an accurate comparison. Remember we're talking about an enlarger setup here. The actual luminous flux is far lower than under a barely-shielded lamp. Also consider that old-fashioned discharge lamps put out a much broader spectrum which does in fact include significant amounts of UV light of shorter wavelengths than the relatively benign >365nm (i.e. they tend to emit some UV-B next to UV-A, while most UV-C will be mostly filtered by the glass). In leds, we don't really have to worry about UV-B and UV-C as they're simply not being generated in the first place. From a safety perspective, this is a major benefit of leds over discharge lamps.
Btw, to the best of my knowledge plant growth lamps are not engineered for their UV output. In fact, today's solutions seem to rely mostly on a combination of (visible) blue and (deep) red leds. No UV or IR or other arcane stuff.
I suspected this. Using one of those for UV purposes is an extremely inefficient choice. It used to be a common choice, but given the availability of UV tubes and now LEDs, it's completely outdated. You're basically wasting something like 550W (if I'm generous) out of 600W input.The "grow Light" I have is a 600W Metal Halide working from a ballast.
That's roughly similar to what I get with 200W worth of UV tubes.7 minute exposure with SALT printing
I print salt and find that I do not need the very contrasty negatives everyone describes as required for salt, so I am not too surprised. I can get a good toned salt print from what looks to be a normal G2 silver negative without doing anything special - Extra sizing does help a bit.
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