Triptychs. Anyone experienced?

[greydreams]

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience printing triptychs. I'd like to print three frames (from 3 negs.) onto the same sheet of paper, next to each other, spaced evenly. I'm shooting 6x6. Does anyone have any advice for the best way to mask and print something like that?

I was considering making a mask for the whole paper, but lining up and focusing could be a problem. Maybe just marking the paper and lining it up in the easel would be easier?

Any advice would be helpful!

Thanks.

[Robert Kennedy]

Quality triptychs like this are hard to do. I know Joanne Callis did some good work in that realm years ago.

Probably your BEST bet would be some kind of registration process and a VERY good 4 blade. The masking is the easy part really. It is getting every frame to line up that is hard.

I have heard of people using large 4 blades and 3 different enlargers. You set each easel for one image and use a registration system to move it along. You need BIG 4 blades though.

[Ian Grant]

I've done a few Diptychs and Triptychs, matching negs shot in the winter, foggy days and bright summer sunshine.

Now all these have been individual prints matted as Diptychs or Triptychs. However I have also produced B&W calendars where I've done multiple prints on a page.

All you need do is mark up some plain paper to set the easel for each exposure

Ian

[David A. Goldfarb]

I'd be inclined to do three separate prints and mount them as a triptych.

You can handle the registration issue with a 4 blade easel, as Ian describes, or with a single 3-window mask, but what about dealing with the dodging, burning, and other manipulation issues for each frame? What if two look good, but you feel you need to work on one? If you print them on the same sheet, then you've got to do all three for every proof. Of course you could proof them separately and just do the final on the single sheet, but if you are going to use a 3-window mat, then it just seems easier to do three prints.

[Ian Grant]

David's right

Mount cuttins far easier. However I wentto see a fellow photographer 11 years ago about a big group exhibition, to discover he was still producing his images the night before, when I asked about the portraits of all the photographers eshibiting there was silence, one piece of card 17 windows for the images & one for the title later - it worked

Three in frame yes, three on a sheet of papers not difficult but why add extra problems and work

Ian

[Mike-D]

No experience here, but why not make a three-windowed matte and place that in the easel over the sheet of paper? Uncover each window in turn for the exposures.

Mike D

[raucousimages]

I have done diptychs and one attempt at a trypych with good results. If you have or can borrow the room and equiptment use three enlargers, negs, easles etc. and after making notes on each exposure/dodge & burn just move the paper from one easle to another.

[jimgalli]

Every triptych I've done has been seperate sheets mounted on a common board. That said I would approach your problem by trying to make use of the good old "speed-ez-el". An 8X10 speed-ez-el is open at both ends of the 8" section. So if you had 8" roll paper cut to 24" (8X25 with 3 8X8 frames) you could mask the 10" section to 8", shove the first section in, print, shove it through so the mid section is in, print that part, shove it through so the final section is in, and print with appropriate masking of the exposed paper that is beyond either end of the frame. Speed-ez-el's came in 5X7, 8X10, 11X14, and 16X20 sizes with the smaller end open at each end so you can slide paper in one end and out the other.

This AM I worked on a triptych of 3 4X5's that make up a common vertical scene. A small waterful in Yosemite. Contact printed together in a common frame on a sheet of 5.5X14" paper. It's a do-over as I ran out of time but it shows promise. So in that case it makes a roughly 5X12" vertical picture of the 3 frames. Kind of unusual.

[Nige]

Hey Jim, you doing that for the print exchange? looks great!

[Daniel Grenier]

I can't help you with enlarging but doing a triptych with a view camera and contact prints is relatively easy, I find. When I do mine, I shoot all three negs identically (of course), process them together and print them together (but on different sheets). Afterwards, they can be mounted in a single frame or in three separate ones. I love the triptych approach, feel, and look and find it a resonable compromise to getting a panoramic ULF camera.