Caught in the Web Pt 3
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An Occaisional Series of Interesting Items found caught in the threads of the World Wide Web.
Additional masking
Highlight protection masks:
Ilfochrome has a fairly pronounced toe to its characteristic curve. I.e. not a lot of contrast in the highlights. And transparency
films have the same. So highlight contrast, or lack thereof, can be a problem even without masking. This can be exacerbated
when a mask is introduced which decreases contrast in the highlights. Also, sometimes a sense of “sparkle” is lost when
specular highlights are increased in density in the print by a contrast reduction mask. One answer to either of these problems
is to make a “highlight protection mask”. The highlight protection mask is made using Kodalith film. It’s made sharp. i.e.
Emulsion to emulsion with the original in the contact printer. It’s exposed so that only the brightest highlights in the original
show any density in the highlight protection mask. Sometimes ferricyanide bleach is used to remove unwanted density from it.
This mask is then laid on top of the original when exposing the contrast reduction mask. I.e. it goes between the original and
the light source. It “increases density” in the highlights so that they result in less density in the contrast reduction mask and
print brighter in the final print. I know one person (Charley Cramer) who has gone so far as to make a pre-highlight-protection mask which was used when exposing the highlight protection mask. The effect was to darken a small area in a highlight in the
final print. I haven’t gotten quite this far into it yet.Highlight Bump Masks:
An alternative is to use Kodak LPD4 positive litho film to make a “highlight bump mask”. This mask is exposed such that
it’s all black except for little clear “holes” where the brightest highlights are. This film can show significant chemical fog so
it may be helpful to lightly bleach the entire mask in dilute ferricyanide to clear the highlight areas. Don’t forget to either mix
a little fixer in with the ferricyanide or to dunk the film in fixer after dunking in ferricyanide. The fixer is required to dissolve
silver which was converted to a fixable form by the ferricyanide. After exposing the print with the contrast reduction mask,
the negative carrier is removed from the negative stage and the highlight bump mask is laid on top of the original and an
additional burn or “bump” exposure is made to brighten the highlights. Obviously this type of technique can only be used if
one has a full pin registration setup. Once the registration equipment is available and some experience has been gained there
are lots of other possibilities. Contrast increasing masks. Area masks - evenly toned masks which “dodge” an entire area
of the print. Kodalith area masks which are all black or all clear and allow printing different parts of the print completely
separately from the others. Lots of new worlds to explore!Area Masks:
Sometimes you want to lower the value of the brighter areas of an image without lowering contrast within them, as will happen
if you simply expose a sheet of b/w film to the image. Often, lowering the contrast within bright areas leaves them looking too
flat (contrast-wise) in the print. My technique doesn’t always work, and will only work for larger sized transparencies, but sometimes it does work. I register a sheet of clear film with the original and, using Kodak Opaque black, carefully paint on the clear film everywhere that I’ll want to have mask density in the final mask. Sometimes I just paint outlines and then cover the
areas in between with Scotch Black Photographic tape. After this dries, I contact print it onto a sheet of Kodalith, developed in Kodalith RT super-high-contrast developer. At times you can use litho film to separate out the areas as well. Now I have a b/w negative that has no density in the areas of the original that need to be held back. This is now used to produce an unsharp mask
of the appropriate density, as described above. I call this an “area mask”. It will hold back the bright areas without reducing contrast within them, helping them to retain their sense of brilliance. I make the contact print of the “clear film with Opaque
Black” onto Kodalith because the Opaque black often doesn’t dry completely and if I’ve used black tape to fill in areas the
whole assemblage is somewhat bulky and damp.Colour Area Masks:
Recently I was printing a picture taken under extreme lighting conditions (a slot canyon in Arizona). One area, which in the
16x20 final print measured about 1”x2”, was grossly overexposed. There was some detail running through it, but mostly it
was just clear film. Looked awful. Dodging it back during exposure just made it look grey, which looked wrong when
surrounded by the brilliant yellow/orange/red rocks of the canyon So I registered a sheet of clear film with the original,
broke out my set of Ilfochrome retouching dyes and mixed up a colour which matched the rocks near the blown-out area.
I painted this onto the clear film over the areas which lacked tonality. The cure was perfect. In the final print you’d never
know that there are totally overexposured areas at all. It was just a little more complicated: it’s difficult to paint on film like
that and get it sufficiently even to be unnoticible. It was important that this “colour area mask” was laid on top of the contrast reduction mask because this left the painted portion separated from the transparency emulsion (and the plane of focus) by
three thicknesses of film and made it sufficiently out of focus for any unevenness to be unnoticible. Had I not been using a
contrast reduction mask, I’d have used a clear sheet of film as a spacer between the coloured area mask and the transparency.
In addition, I found that I’d painted the area mask a little too dark and so wound up giving about 80% of the exposure with
the area mask in place and then removing the negative carrier, removing the area mask, replacing the negative carrier and
giving the remaining 20% of the exposure. Being able to do this is one of the biggest advantages of using a factory made pin registration system. In addition, sometimes when the contrast reduction mask turns out to be a little too strong, you can do
the same thing - give a partial exposure with the mask and then remove it for the remainder of the exposure. But first you have
to invest in the registration equipment. Hope this helps get you started!Copyright 1998 by Barry Sherman. Reproduction forbidden without the Author’s permission. All rights reserved.
Notes and comments... If members want to try Kodalith or Kodak LPD4, contact me. if there is enough interest I will make
up some cassettes.The address of the The Condit Manufacturing Company is Philo Curtis Road, Sandy Hook, CT 06482 USA. (e-mail elcondit@juno.com)
The “partial re-use” system of print development involves dividing the (once) used solution in half, making up each half to
volume with fresh solution, and using each half once more. This means that you get three prints from two lots of solution.John Pearle.