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Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 8:51 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Dave Tolcher
OK guys.... some help needed. I no longer have a darkroom and am getting a 10x8 camera to play with. I had thought about the scanning route but wondered whether I had any options where I could contact print without a darkroom. I looked a Azo a few years back even getting as far as getting some Amidol & Lodima paper but a house move knocked the whole project on the head (I had an old whole plate Gandolfi also sadly gone).

Thanks

Dave

Re: Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 9:22 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Andrew Plume
Dave

I would have said 'contact printing by sunlight', but..............errr........................

difficult to find contact printing holders in the UK..........to cover 10 x 8, presumably they should be at least 10 x 12, although the excellent Bostick & Sullivan have them in the 11 x 14 size and those made by Lotus are plain right over expensive

I believe that I'm fairly confident in saying that your former Gandolfi whole plate now resides at an address in Twickenham and on the part that's fairly close to Richmond Bridge.....................

regards

andrew

Re: Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:36 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Dave Tolcher
Andrew Plume wrote:Dave

I would have said 'contact printing by sunlight', but..............errr........................

difficult to find contact printing holders in the UK..........to cover 10 x 8, presumably they should be at least 10 x 12, although the excellent Bostick & Sullivan have them in the 11 x 14 size and those made by Lotus are plain right over expensive

I believe that I'm fairly confident in saying that your former Gandolfi whole plate now resides at an address in Twickenham and on the part that's fairly close to Richmond Bridge.....................

regards

andrew
Thanks Andrew, yes I think that is where it went. Much undervalued, whole plate but film was a bit of a pain and I hadnt foreseen the demise of colour sheet film so clearly then. I wanted to shoot B&W but couldnt carry some spare colour film in that size for those special moments when colour is great. The 5x4 back just added weight and bulk.

I was thinking contact direct to 10x8 and then matt initially but I agree that contact on to something bigger would be better.

Re: Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 11:43 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Andrew Plume
thx Dave

seems to me that if you go down the 10 x 8 route, then using a 11 x 14 frame, will give you a large enough surround if you wanted to then immediately frame these

whole plate film was available at the last Ilford annual printing run, no reason why your 10 x 8 images couldn't be cropped down to that size, as an alternative

regards

andrew

Re: Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 4:02 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Martin Jan Köhler
I'm also mostly into scanning,
but what I plan to try with my B&W 8x10 portraits is
simply use a Jobo print drum in a space-saving daylight CPP2 processor (CPE2 even smaller),
and simply expose fixed grade paper in a contact print frame using a bare bulb or other "simple light" sources...

I think I will try the Foma papers.

Best,
Martin

Re: Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 12:28 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Clive Gray
I was having a look about and found some references to contact printing machines but even then you are still faced with how do you load the paper.

I can not help but think one way or another you are going to need to create a darkroom tempoary or otherwise, I made myself a small darkroom if for no other reason it makes loading 10x8 film holders a whole lot easier also if you are looking at drum processing you need a fair amount of space to load one. Perhaps see if you can find a Nova darkroom tent ?

With reference to your wanted ad Dave do you still have a Jobo CPE 2 ? I seem to remember that you had one last time is was down your way. If you do all you need is a suitable drum a 4531 is probably the cheapest option although various 25 and 28 series drums would work to, I do not use this method myself but there are plenty of people using such a set up to do two sheets at a time. i can let you have a CPE2 on long term loan if you no longer have yours.

@ Martin

With regard to your Z3200

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu ... ct=1142684

Scroll down to step 7 clean the printheads manually.

You need to go through the menus to be able to remove the printhead for manual cleaning and afterwards do a printhead alignment.
That uses way less ink and actually works whereas just going through the inbuilt cleaning cycles will waste vast amounts of ink.

Note although that guide is for the B9180 the printheads are the same in the Z3100 / Z3200 series.

I was lucky enough to win a 44" Z3100 on ebay for 1000, less than 180M3 paper through it and still the original inks but had not been used in two years I replaced two of the heads but all of the others came up ok after manual cleaning with just distilled water and a cotton bud (I did get the other two heads to behave but they would play up so I just replacesd them).

The Mat Black is definetly more prone to playing up than any of the other ink colours if left for a few weeks without printing but a quick manual clean always sorts it out.

I've found Fotospeed papers work well with my printer

http://www.fotospeed.com/Fotospeed-Phot ... logue/212/

Not sure if they are distributed in Austria but they do at least ship there directly.

Re: Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 12:35 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Dave Tolcher
Thanks Clive, hope you are well and had a good xmas & new year.

Thanks for your feedback. Yes, I fear that my film tent may not be big enough for the job, we'll see. I can possibly rig up a darkroom.

I dont have a Jobo, never used it so passed it on when the garage was cleared out.

Best regards

Dave

Re: Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 1:44 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Clive Gray
Hi Dave hope you and yours are well as per my voice mail give me a call and I can sort you out a suitable Jobo set up if you like.

At the risk of raising the usual rabid respone's from some I dropped into MrCad's yesterday options there that might be of use to you, Besller motor base and drum 29, Ilford motorised base and 20x16 Cibacrome drum also 29. I picked up a Photax 20x16 Fibre print dryer for 29 as I would much rather pay 29 for something I can examine at a dealer than double that which is what they seem to go for on ebay.

Re: Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 3:33 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Martin Jan Köhler
Clive Gray wrote: @ Martin
With regard to your Z3200
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu ... ct=1142684

Scroll down to step 7 clean the printheads manually.
You need to go through the menus to be able to remove the printhead for manual cleaning and afterwards do a printhead alignment.
That uses way less ink and actually works whereas just going through the inbuilt cleaning cycles will waste vast amounts of ink.

Note although that guide is for the B9180 the printheads are the same in the Z3100 / Z3200 series.
I was lucky enough to win a 44" Z3100 on ebay for 1000, less than 180M3 paper through it and still the original inks but had not been used in two years I replaced two of the heads but all of the others came up ok after manual cleaning with just distilled water and a cotton bud (I did get the other two heads to behave but they would play up so I just replacesd them).

The Mat Black is definetly more prone to playing up than any of the other ink colours if left for a few weeks without printing but a quick manual clean always sorts it out.
Thanks for helping me out, Clive!

In the meantime the support/repair guy was already here and exchanged the printhead.
Default diagnosis print comes out clean now...
But I also expect cleaning manually would have been enough!
Such a great pleasure with these Z printers to have a simple way to do this ;-)

So you're always just using distilled water + cotton bud to clean them?

BTW, Did you also experience the issues with stripes related to the upper star wheel position?
I've found Fotospeed papers work well with my printer
http://www.fotospeed.com/Fotospeed-Phot ... logue/212/
Not sure if they are distributed in Austria but they do at least ship there directly.
Thanks about the paper tip! I've ordered two rolls of Canson Baryta Photographique now...
And have a roll of HP Professional Satin.
Which of the Fotospeed papers do you prefer?

Best regards,
Martin

Re: Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 4:55 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Clive Gray
Hi Martin the cotton bud and distilled water has always worked for me, when I first got the printer it took several cycles of this but then it had sat unused for over two years and it does mostly seem to be the mat black that plays up, it has done it a couple of times again always easilly cured with manual cleaning. I shouls add that I haven't needed to do that since October now mostly if you leave them on the printers seem to behave really well

There is an unofficail wiki page for the Z3100

http://z3100users.wikispaces.com/

I know yours is the later Z3200 but the information there might still be usefull to you.

Ignore any comments by people making comparrisons to the B9180 printers which are also great when they work but sadly have a much lower build quality and reliability compared to the Zseries

I'm suprised you had trouble with star wheel marks I have only had these when experimenting with incompapable papers (I got some paper rolls with the printer some of which were designed for hp's dye range of printes).
When you profile papers there are some advanced options tucked away as they say some where in one of the manuals if you chose the right or at least a close paper type to start with the results are usually good but you can get at advanced settings to put the wheels up and also allow longer drying times.

These printers work great with Hahnemuhle photo rag I have some smaller sheets of that from a printer i in fact purchased from Dave and was considering buying some rolls but can not justify the price to myself which was the reason for trying the Fotospeed Matt Ultra which gives good prints and is not criminally expensive.

I have some sheets of the hp pro satin and that works well but wanted something larger so got a roll of the Fotospeed 270 Lustre which I really like the look of.

There is a rotating add on the photospeed site with some quotes and images from well known photographers, I noticed this quote from Joe Cornish on his site
My printer is an Epson 7900. I always use Epson inks, and generally Fotospeed High White Smooth Ultra paper.
If you can find a local dealer I would be inclined to go see if they have some paper swatches you could look at or see if Fotospeed will send you some or failing anything else you buy some small sheets to experiment with and see what works best for your images.

Trying any paper is simple with the inbuilt spectrometer, I have done a few A3 prints on Gold Fibre Silk that came out fine they were for someone else as a favour and only okish digitail images so no real feeling as to the quality.

I got a small amount of hp pro matt canvas with the printer which seems to have magical qualities in that just about anything comes out looking great you can get away with larger prints from digitail because of the texture inherent to the canvas.

Re: Contact Printing without darkroom - options ?

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 2:55 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
by Martin Jan Köhler
Dave Tolcher, sorry for hijacking your thread, hope you don't mind ;-)

Hi Clive, thanks for your tipps!
Clive Gray wrote:There is an unofficail wiki page for the Z3100
http://z3100users.wikispaces.com/
I know yours is the later Z3200 but the information there might still be usefull to you.
Thanks!
Clive Gray wrote:I'm suprised you had trouble with star wheel marks I have only had these when experimenting with incompapable papers (I got some paper rolls with the printer some of which were designed for hp's dye range of printes).
Actually it was the other way round!
I did not get star wheels marks, but horizontal stripes all over the paper width at the beginning of the print.
Here's an image: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/ ... 1357052209

I was using the very curly 4,5 meter roll of HP Everyday Pigment Satin Photo Paper (which came with the printer).
Now the default profile for this paper has the star wheels up!
And what the support guy said was that I needed the star wheels down!
If you can find a local dealer I would be inclined to go see if they have some paper swatches you could look at or see if Fotospeed will send you some or failing anything else you buy some small sheets to experiment with and see what works best for your images.
Will try a test pack!
Trying any paper is simple with the inbuilt spectrometer, I have done a few A3 prints on Gold Fibre Silk that came out fine they were for someone else as a favour and only okish digitail images so no real feeling as to the quality.
Canson Baryta Photographique must be very simular to the Ilford Gold Fibre Silk (some even call the Canson paper a "clone", but is has a nicer stipple micro-"texture") ...
I got a small amount of hp pro matt canvas with the printer which seems to have magical qualities in that just about anything comes out looking great you can get away with larger prints from digitail because of the texture inherent to the canvas.
Cool! Will also do a Canvas at some point.
From what I've heard low-res pictures are not in issue with canvas,
I was told to simply sharpen extremely (like 400% USM) because a lot of detail is lost with the canvas texture ...

At the moment I'm concentrating on preparing an exhibition of matted + framed prints under glass with the Canson IBP ...
The first print (60cm x 80cm, = 24" x ....) was stunning ...
I was a bit afraid about the IQ coming from the Epson x900 series,
but judging the prints subjectively the Z series are at least en-par ...

Best regards,
Martin