Postcard Exchange Round 16 Results and Feedback ...

[Mick Fagan]

bpaties, good that you have received the postcard promptly, because of the weekend weather I was wondering whether mail was working.

Yes the fires are quite bad, lost three friends and one other person I knew reasonably well socially, so far. I hope that is all, but I'm not overly optimistic.

Borderless printing with this size of paper I think generally works better, not always, but most times.

Mick.

[drpsilver]

11 Feb 2009

My cards are all printed, and will go out in the mail by week's end. This has been a challenging round for me for several reasons...

1. I selected a negative to print and found it was covered with dust so I had to rewash it.
2. I pulled the next box of postcard paper form storage only to find that was very old (15 years+). This gave me some inconsistent results, and some loss of contrast. I overcame both of these issues.
3. I decided to try toning these prints with thiourea. This worked well, but had inconsistent results regarding the extent of toning (some of the shadow areas got too dark). This was my first time toning with thiourea "in masse".

So I am asking for understanding that not all my cards are the same. Hope you like the image I selected for this round.

Regards,
Darwin

[BWKate]

Sorry for your loss Mick. I think I speak for most people on Apug and wish that these fires are going to be put out and the weather to be cooler as soon as possible. I've been watching on the news some of the aftermath and it's looks devastating. We had some really bad fires in our Okanagan region a couple years ago. Not as bad as your area but still pretty bad.

[Pete H]

The first card of the round came from Barry (bwakel). It's a nicely composed misty scene. I just don't understand the concept of "too many shots" though

Thanks

Pete

[Jon King]

bwakel's postcard arrived today - a great early morning image! I can feel the mist rolling over the hill. Very well done!

[bwakel]

Jake's (Black Dog) postcard arrived today. A very sharp print with nice contrast of an unusual subject.

Pete and John, thanks for the feedback, glad you liked the composition. I must try and do a 'proper' print of this image as I think there's a lot more to get from it with decent paper and some split toning.

Barry

[Mark Fisher]

Mine went out over the weekend. Sorry, no county fair pictures. I needed a break. I did not write the details of the image on the card so here they are....35mm Tri-x in xtol 1:2 printed on Ilford Multigrade RC, taken with a Canon Elan 7 and 85mm lens (I think)...same as most of the county fair images!

[trotkiller]

Just finished printing mine, should be in the post by the end of the week

[Mike Wilde]

Mine went in the mail yesterday.

This time I decided to send out an RA-4 colour print. I have been busy with other things, and it has been a while - like before Christmas - since I spent any meaningful moments in the darkroom.

The colour developer and blix I had mixed and on hand were 2l each of Kodak RA-RT, with low activity additive in the blix. The mix date I had recorded on the jugs was 14 September 08. Kodak rates them for like 6-8 weeks after mixing before they are to be expected to start pooping out.

There was no 'crud' in the bottom of either bottle after I poured them into the roller transport machine. They had been mixed with pre-boiled and cooled reverese osmosos water, and the developer lives in a glass bottle. The darkroom is 'dark' when I am not in it, and cool - like 16-18C this time of year unless I have had the roller transport or a space heater going. I had not run more than 10 sheets of paper though these chemicals back in September. So I thought - lets give them a try, before resorting to mixing fresh chemicals for this print run of 30 or so 4x6" prints.

I programmed the master channels in my analyser to the paper settings that worked best the last time I used this stock some 6 months ago (it pays to keep good notes if you print colour). Thge image I wanted to enlarge was an outdoor scene, that was well suited to analysis on a neutral grey channel, with a diffuser held under the lens to scramble the projected image to get the recommended colour filter settings. Using this method almost always gets the colour right, but exposure is always off by a stop one way or other.

The settings for filtration seemed to make sense, and I exposed a first piece of paper to test for basic colour flaws and to start to fine tune for exposure. I was prepared to see any sort of wierdness with 5 month old chemistry being used. 5 mintes later a somewhat dark, but otherwise fine in colour balance print dropped out of the dryer. I cut exposure by a stop, and the second exposure was bang on. (Of course then, being unsure of my self I put though a 1/2 stop over and under that just to convince myself this was not a fluke). All of this, including the time it took for the paper to warm from being in the freezer, and the chemistry to warm in the processor took no more than 1.5 hours, mostly spent watching an Indiana Jones movie with the kids. Then it was time to go into production mode, and bang out the 30 prints I wanted to send as postcards. All on 5 months old RA-RT chems - love that stuff!

[Black Dog]

Mailed out the rest of mine today.