Pt/pd printers must be a superstitious bunch . . .

OK, this is a mysterious printing process at times, I've come to learn, subject to vagaries and variabilities that must plague even the most precise of individuals (of which I concede I am not). 

Do things exactly the same every time, and it seems you still end up with different looking prints. Not always, but sometimes. For inexplicable reason. It's something that flies hugely in the face of digital printing, where it's possible to churn out 1,000 identical — absolutely identical — prints without batting an eye. Computer technology gives rock-solid repeatability. Platinum/palladium printed from in-camera negs, on the other hand, well, not so much, at least not for me. Yet, anyway. Maybe it never will, I don't know. Perhaps that's even part of the charm. 

It's made me superstitious, though. I feel like an NHLer in the playoffs sometimes. Don't shave, same socks, one worn inside out. Take three steps (not two, not four) from the contact printing frame to the developer. Hold breath. Close one eye. Spin once. Curtsey.

Do it all just right, and it comes together. Miss just one teeny little (sometimes unrealized) step, though, and the print throws a tantrum and "things" go wrong. Black spots appear. Contrast vanishes. Highlights get muddy. Stuff like that.

Anyway, back to the "lab," I have a print under the lights. OK, 16 steps from computer to darkroom . . .

Impatience . . .

. . . it seems, almost always causes problems, at least when it comes to cameras and film and making prints. Probably other things in life too, but that's a worry for someone else.

The black speckling in this print was caused by the platinum/palladium emulsion on the paper, which was not quite 100 per cent dry when I brought negative and paper together.

I've read how pt/pd emulsions need to be absolutely dry before printing, in order to prevent damage to the negative. I guess this is the kind of damage they mean. The speckling is permanently scorched into the emulsion side of the negative, making this one a goner. I should have waited longer, to be certain the emulsion was dry. It would only have been a few more minutes, but impatience bit and the neg paid the price.

This was a first print of this neg, and it will be the last. Had I been able to print it again, I would have given it 50 per cent more time under the UV lights, to darken it down a bit. It is too light.

Oh well. I know where these grasslands are, and I will go back for a reshoot someday, because I like the image. There's something about roads going seemingly nowhere that have always caught my attention.

The camera was my 4x5 1902 Seneca Chautauqua, on Efke 25. Developed in HC-110 dil B for 12 mins. Printed on Arches Platine paper, developed in heated potassium oxalate.

First pic with the old Seneca . . .

I put eight sheets of film through my recently acquired 1902 Seneca Chautauqua this weekend — everything works as it should, it seems. The modified (see post below) film holders held the film, the shutter clicked, no light leaks, etc., what more is there on a camera like this?

The camera is a breeze to carry around, it's lighter than my 20D! No movements, of course, basically just a 4x5 snapshooter. Kind of like a 19th century Canon ELPH, or something.

The lens (a Wollensak 150ish mm in front of an Uno shutter) ain't exactly sharp. It's like a lot of vintage lenses — it has "character." It's quite sharp in the middle and softens up at the edges, kind of like an antique Lensbaby. At f8 it gets funky fast, but stopped down to f22 or f32, sharpens up very nicely. It's a fun camera to mess with, and will definitely be out this winter again.

The print is platinum/palladium (or more accurately, palladium/platinum, since it uses far more of the first metal), printed on a 5x7 piece of Arches Platine paper, developed in heated potassium oxalate (120 F) and cleared in Kodak hypo clearing agent, which I have discovered does a significantly better job of clearing the highlights of undeveloped metals than EDTA. Much, much better — no more stubborn, lingering residual yellow staining in parts of the print that should be white. 

The film is Efke 25, shot at ASA 40 and developed 12 minutes in HC-110 Dil B.

The scene is from one of my favorite places in the rolling Knutsford grasslands outside Kamloops. It was foggy and snowing and the place was stuffed with deer. Too much fun. Now, if only I could get the deer to stand still for a two-second exposure . . .

Making film fit . . .

My recently acquired  Seneca Chautauqua 4x5 was built as a plate camera — glass plates. While the plates are 4x5 inches in dimension, the fact is they are also a great deal thicker than sheet film causing a couple of problems if you want to shoot anything other than glass plates. Which, as intriguing an idea as it sounds (there are still people who such things), is beyond my interest.

I got three original wooden plate holders with the camera. They are nice little bits of construction, well made and still quite functional. Two of the holders still had glass plates in them.

The bed for the glass plate is too deep for film. A sheet just bops around inside, jiggling from side to side a little as well as a great deal from front to back. With the holder's dark slide removed, I'd bet it might even tumble inside the camera. That aside, the other problem is it would be impossible to get the image focussed, as the ground glass is set at a depth to match the thickness of the glass plate. 

I needed to find a way to hold a sheet of film in proper focus position, securely and as flat as possible. I've read elsewhere about people using a variety of substances (including things like honey or jam) to stick sheet film to the glass plates, in order to hold them in place. The sticky stuff washes off in water at development time. I didn't like that idea much. Messy. 

There are metal film sheaths available that do the job, slipping in the holders in place of the plates. They have metal lips, etc., and are supposedly the right thickness. Sounded like the perfect idea, but try to find one. They are an elusive item.

So I decided to fashion up my own, not from metal but from mat board. I discovered a piece of 4-ply mat board (I think it's 4-ply) is almost the same thickness as the glass plate. With a 4x5 piece of heavyweight matte photo paper inserted in the holder first, the depth was perfect. 

I cut two "rails" of the mat board about 3/16s of an inch wide and four inch long and taped them to each side of the 4x5 piece of mat board, forming two lips I could slide the film underneath. The lips hold the film pretty flat. 

I also had to shave down the wood lip where the ground glass is seated by about one millimetre, to bring film plane and ground glass into proper alignment/co-ordination with each other. Measured it all using the "toothpick trick" I wrote about in May.

The improvised holder keeps the sheet film in what appears to be near bang-on position in relation to the ground glass, which means focus should be more or less correct. We'll see, the field trials take place this weekend. . . 

The inner workings of clever little devices . . .

I picked up recently what might be the smallest 4x5 camera I've ever seen, a 1902 Seneca Chautauqua fold-out camera. 

It has bellows, attached to a front lens board on a rail, which slides out from the body of the camera, much like an old folding Kodak Hawkeye, for those who have seen such a thing. On the front of the Seneca is a Wollensak 150 mm (ish) lens in front of a Seneca "Uno" shutter. It has three speeds, T, B and I. The aperture ranges from f8 to f128.

When I bought the camera on eBay, (a sheer impulse purchase,) I was told the shutter worked. When it got here, it clearly did not, although I understand why the guy thought it did. Lifting the shutter lever (shown at F) made the shutter click. The only thing was the shutter was perpetually open, and clicked shut for about 1/25 of a second when fired. In other words, completely backwards, and utterly useless. T and B did not work at all. As I want to shoot with this camera, this all proved a setback.

With nothing to lose, and not wanting to spend money to get it fixed, I pulled the shutter/lens off the camera and loosened the screws on the back. I've never seen inside a mechanical shutter before. What a sight — a complex little arrangement of stamped metal parts, screws and teeny little springs.

In the end, by playing with the shutter a little and watching it try to work (like I said, it was stuck open, and fired closed when the shutter was lifted), I figured out the metal post E., the part that sets the shutter speed, had come out of position in relation to the parts D it guides. Once I got the little post E. back in the grooves of the parts it was supposed to govern, the shutter miraculously came together and now works perfect. The 'I' speed fires at about 1/25, I would guess, and the B and T setting work flawlessly.

Watching the shutter work, I couldn't help but be amazed at the cleverness of such construction. I wish I had a video camera so I could post a clip of the shutter firing, it's cool to watch. Essentially, lifting the shutter handle F. raises a metal post inside the shutter (also F.), which causes Part A to rise, which sets Part B, in motion, which lets Part C rise, and then 'click.' the two leafs of the shutter suddenly spring open and fall shut. The D pieces only come into play if the shutter speed is set to B or T. Then they catch Part B, and hold it until released. The pics show the shutter fully closed and fully open, when on the T setting.

Very cool little device. And clever. And it still works, more than 100 years later. I wonder how many D3 or Mark II shutters will be functioning 100 years from now . . .

A different look . . .

When you cruise the Net in search of info or examples of pt/pd printing, you inevitably find a lot of glowing descriptions about the "wondrous beauty" of the process, prints so incredible they make silver and inkjet prints look silly.

There is no doubt platinum and palladium prints have their own unique look — and beauty — but I'm not sure it is more  beautiful than silver or inkjet prints. Just different. Pt/pd prints are softer, less contrasty. The image becomes part of the paper, with the grain and texture of it very apparent. They are warm toned. They have their own look and feel.  The thing I like best about the prints, however, is they are real. They exist in their own right, by virtue of the process that created them.  To me, that has value.

There is no doubt I could scan a negative (or capture a scene digitally) and with Photoshop and a bit of time, simulate the look of a pt/pd print. Printed on high-quality matte paper from a good quality printer, it would be hard a distinguish a real pt/pd from a Photoshop version.

But a simulated look is just that. In other words, fake. There is no faking the process when you contact print a real neg on real paper that's been hand-brushed with a photosensitive emulsion you mixed yourself. It's as real as it gets. I could simulate the warm tone, and softer contrast — even the brush strokes that show around the edges of pt/pd prints —  in Photoshop, but again, is doing so a real process? 

The problem with simulating a process digitally is one never knows when to stop, in other words, when is it good enough? When does it look real? When you stroke in fake brush strokes on a computer screen, you will always wonder, was the last tweak really needed? Did I go too far? Or not far enough? Hand brush an emulsion onto real paper some time — you will never wonder. Every brush stroke that shows is exactly perfect, because it's the way it happened.

The pt/pd printing process is genuine and like silver printing, (or cyanotypes or van dyke prints, etc.) creates its own, sincerely authentic product. And that's the look I like best.

The lab . . .

Part of the reason I wanted to try pt/pd printing was because I don't much like darkrooms. Too much gear, and way too restrictive. I always disliked making prints when I worked as a newspaper photographer. Printing with enlargers is a tedious process, that requires a fair bit of work and thinking. It's hard to pick up and leave when you're in the midst of making prints. 

With platinum/palladium printing, I don't need much gear, nor do I need to pay it much attention. My printing set-up consists of two sheets of glass and some clamps to hold negs and paper tightly together, and the three lights you see (more on them in a bit). There is also three trays nearby for the chemistry (a developer, a water bath and a clearing agent).

Pt/pd prints are exposed under ultraviolet light. In the late 1800s, that came from sunlight. I considered using the sun as a light source, but realized where I live, it is a rather poor choice. In about two weeks, a large southern hill will block the sunlight from my house through the winter until late February. No direct sun at all. Yahoo. As well, I like to print early, before little pitter-pattering feet get up and demand attention. There's not much sun at 5 a.m., at least in these parts.

So I picked up three blacklights (one 15W spiral fluorescent, and two 60-bulb LEDs), the kind that make white clothes and teeth look goofy. They put out UV-A rays in the 390 to 410 nm range, which happens to be just right for this kind of process. The three lights together give me exposures of between 12 and 18 minutes, depending on the density of the negative. That's not so bad. From what I've read, sun exposures range from four to 30 minutes, depending on conditions.

The nice part is, I don't need to be there as the thing prints. I can walk away, and let it do its crazy magic. And I can turn on the lights.  While this pic of a contact print in progress looks all dark and dramatic, the fact is, I can switch on the room light (a 15W yellow fluorescent) whenever I please, which means I can get a coffee, read a book, etc. Which I kind of like.