laser transparencies for cyanotypes

[winger]

Even though they only sorta worked, I have used inkjet transparencies to do cyanotypes. As mentioned here, they don't block the UV very well. Since cyanotypes take awhile, you do get an image however.
But... has anyone used a laser printer to make a neg for contact printing? Do they block the UV better? I ask before buying a box of transparencies for $40. If you don't use a laser, how do you make large negs (other than a LF camera)?

[Jeremy]

Using inkjet printers. Here is one system:

http://www.alternativephotography.co...es/art056.html

[winger]

I really just want to know if laser printers will work. I have an old inkjet and do not plan on buying a new one. But I can use the lasers at work.

[Jeremy]

I've never heard of anyone using a laser printer to make digital negatives other than Katherine Thayer on the alt process saying that she used them back in the early 90s to print out stochastic bitmap files to use for digital negatives. She has never explained further, though.

[Joost]

I have no experience with cyanotypes. but I did use digital positives for creating screens for screenprinting. These need to be black & white only, no gray scales, so halftone screens are a must. In that case I found inkjet positives not to be working very well. My laser print positives were much denser.

Not sure you want this for cyanotypes as well, since I understand that one uses continuous tone negatives, right? Laser prints can not do that (at least as far as I know), they will always apply a halftone screen (look at a "grayscale" laser print under a microscope). To use halftone screened negatives you have to experiment 1) what is the finest screen that works and 2) if that is esthetically acceptable (coarse screens can give you a "newspaper look"

[buggy]

I've never done cyanotype and I'm not sure how these relate but for VDB I have been using Keith Schreibers colorization method for making the digital negative via inkjet. I use an HP printer and I had heard that HP inks are not as good as epson at blocking UV. After applying his method, add 'auto contrast' to the negative. This works as a good starting point that got me over a bump in the road.

You mentioned you were just interested in the laser printer possibility but I thought I'd throw this in if you ever decide to go back to inkjet.

Good luck.

[L Gebhardt]

Bethe, I use a lightjet to make negatives on FP4 film. This device uses lasers to expose the film, so I guess I am using a laser printer. I have never used a laser printer as you are talking about, however.

[Harrigan]

I've used a bw laser printer to make negs for alt printing with good results. I've not made cyanotypes using these but I would assume it would work fine for that as well. I use the laser printer to make custom seperations for gum printing. I'll make a normal contrast neg to print normal colors as well as a neg to print just the black and one to print the highlights. I printed these on beinfang trace as long as your laser will get this material through without jamming in the machine. I has been years since I hvae done this and I dont remember what laser printer I used.

[Kai Hamann]

Hi Winger,

Christina Joch from Austria (http://www.alternativephotography.co...tina_joch.html) has printed with laser printer negs. Don´t know if she still does but the examples I´ve seen didn´t look that bad.

All the best
Kai