Evaluation: Printing on an Azo-like Emulsion

[sun of sand]

I wonder if it's like this stuff
or "better"
Has anyone tried this product

http://www.costaricacoffeeart.com/lu...ion_manual.php

[dwross]

I wonder if it's like this stuff
or "better"
Has anyone tried this product

http://www.costaricacoffeeart.com/lu...ion_manual.php

This is a good question if it refers to qualitative characteristics -- what do each of the commercial liquid emulsions look like on various substrates and how do they handle. I believe it's the only important question. Perhaps Martin Reed can weigh in here. I'm sure each brand has its own look and I've certainly seen some gorgeous work done with the 'liquid emulsions'.

What these products are not about is ease of use. Give or take a step or two at most, making your own brew is not a bit more difficult or complicated than preparing a commercial product for coating and it is far and away less expensive. The costarica stuff is insanely expensive. It's just salted gelatin. You still have to buy the silver nitrate.

I guess I might as well drop in a shameless plug here. I'll be teaching two silver gelatin classes at the Photographers Formulary next summer. Paper making in June and Dry Plate Photography in August. If Kirk Keyes can arrange vacation time, he'll be helping out. But, I have to say, I hope people don't wait for one thing or another to get started with emulsion making. There is a wealth of information available today, as close as your computer screen. Mostly, it's just a matter of deciding to give it a go.

Denise Ross
www.thelightfarm.com

[hrst]

I wonder if it's like this stuff
or "better"
Has anyone tried this product

http://www.costaricacoffeeart.com/lu...ion_manual.php

This seems to be just a rip-off. You have to read further and further and then it comes clear that this is not an emulsion at all. It has no silver halides, it's not light-sensitive. It's just gelatine and chloride (table salt). You have to make the emulsion by yourself, by adding silver nitrate and do precipitation, digestion etc. This "product" may save you a few seconds of measuring chloride but that's it. Buy plain gelatin, it's cheaper.

Or, I may be completely wrong. That manual makes no sense.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Commercial "albumen paper" sold in the 19th century was just paper coated with salted albumen that still needed to be sensitized with silver nitrate by the photographer--but at least it was coated evenly on paper, so it was something.