New Printing Cycle

As I mentioned earlier, I am coming to an end to the printing cycle in silver, for now. With the completed Tombstone Portfolio, palladium toned and what I have of Portfolio II, which consists now of eight prints, developed in sodium acetate for the rich black and white base image, gold toned for deeper blacks. The aforementioned printing was practice for what's to come, printing in platinum/palladium using the double sodium Na2 method. This will be pretty much the standard for my printing now, with exception to the gum printing, which is part two of this post.

Today was a testing day for platinum/palladium, using test strips to begin. Much was learned from today's tests. The first thing I came to learn is that palladium is slower than silver when printing. The palladium can easily handle the density scale that silver can, it just takes twice as much light or double the print time, plus a skosh. The negatives I used for printing the Kallitypes were very consistent 10 minute prints. Same negative printed in palladium, using the 2.5% Pt solution (4 drops) printed for twenty minutes, leaving the zone 7-8 whites still almost blank white. That was the fourth test strip, and comparing each one, beginning with 9 minutes, then 12 minutes, then 15 minutes before the final 20 minute final time, shows another 3-5 minutes is needed to bring everything into textural range.

The first course of action was to reprint the digital negative, leaving off the <Curve> function I added. That returns the tonal range back to a standard density range, tweaked a bit to separate the tones a bit better, in Lightroom. I made the black and white image look like how I want it to look when it's in final form. For silver, I add the <Curve> function I made. The test print for this negative printed in at 10 minutes, for my taste, a bit too printed in, dulling the zone 7 area. I could simply print less time, but the rule of blacks still follows, that more time equals deeper blacks, with caveats of course. Overall, the image appears dull and flat. Not my type of print. There are two courses to take at this time; alter the <Curve> function to better conform to the palladium, about half the density as for Silver. Or, increase the platinum solution to 5% or even 10% for increased contrast.

Being I am more into finding the correct density range on the contrast index curve than throw more concentrated platinum at the problem. That can still be added later for tuning things ever further. What I want out of the print is a full scaled image with deep blacks and crisp whites, with good gray scale in between. Just takes a bit of testing. First off I will redo negative bringing down the density nodes to about half what they are now, and that, theoretically, will bring the print time somewhere in between the 10 minute and 20 minute print time. A 12 to 15 minute print time would be fine.

There is a third option, which is print the negative in direct sunlight, but that would likely necessitate adding even more density, or spectral density to the negative image to be able to keep the print time above a minute or two. For me, a direct sunlight print time would be between 5-8 minutes. But that's just me, for the image I am after. I don't like dull flat print images. Soon I should have a finished image to show. I'm getting close.