Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Just a feeler to see if there is any interest in a platinum/palladium print workshop or similar alternative contact print workshop/demonstration.

Please indicate if you're interested in:

A) hands on workshop - print from your own digital neg (limited to 3-5 participants); or
B) hands off demonstration of the pt/pl print process (open to up to 10 participants).

If A) you would have to either produce your own digital negative or pay someone to make one so that you have a negative to print from as well as cover the cost of materials (paper and chemistry).

Ken

I'm interested in both or either one.

Yes to A... Does it have to be digital?

another for A

I'd be interested in either A or B.

This sounds interesting. Silly question - when you say digital negative do you mean the process of using photoshop to create a digital negative from a digital positive?

Count me in for both.

Digital negs are 'negatives' produced from either a film scan or digital capture, for the purpose of making contact prints.

It's not as simple as reversing a positive image to create a negative one. Digital negs are typically created using pigment based inkjet printers on a transparent media (think overhead projector film) and use a range of ink colours to create a negative that is designed to block/transmit UV light.

I can arrange to have digital negs made but there will be a cost associated with doing it as well as the chemistry involved in making the Pt/Pl prints.

I suspect the cost wil be in the range of $100 (material cost including digital negative made from a file you provide) and you'll get one 5x7 print on 8x12 sheet of paper as well as a digital negative. The entire workshop/printing session will take about 6 hours (two hours for prints to dry) for a group of 4-5 participants.

Stay tuned.

By the way - this workshop would be run by an experience pt/pl artist/printer with 10 years of experience (not me but someone I've learned to print from)...

No you can print from a film negative but unless the exposure is perfect for contact printing, the resulting image may not have the tonality and dmax black you would want.

My suggestion is to scan the film negative and then produce a 'better' digital negative for contact printing.

Two examples:

+1 for option A

I'm interested in #1 as well. I assume this is with Bob Carney?

Dang this is just what I'm looking into right now. Either of the two options is good for me.

No, it's not with Bob Carnie. This workshop would be with Roger Hein.

http://www.rogerhein.com/

Just to be clear, Roger doesn't offer these workshops commercially. He and I are friends and he's been very gracious with sharing his technical expertise with me. I thought that if the TPMG membership was interested, I could convince him to share his expertise with a wider audience.

The cost of the workshop is to cover materials (pt/pl solutions are VERY expensive - over $200 for 25ml of each) as well as paper and chemistry. The cost will also include the production of a digital negative from a digital file, something that takes quite a bit of time as well as materials.

I'll post an event shortly and reserve spots for those who have expressed an interest on this thread for a day or two, then open it up to the rest of TPMG.

The workshop will take place in North York (walking distance to Don Mills subway station).

QuadtoneRIP is the software used to create the digital negative from an image file. There are other options as well but GTR is probably one of the more popular ones and therefore there is quite a large user based knowledge database on the internet.

QTR is also cheap - $50.

I'd be interested in trying it.