Our photographer .in his darkroom 85 line screen 100 line screen unscreened, regular contrast high contrast, unscreene.d PREPARIN.G PHOTOS FOR THE PRINTER Ancil Nance If you have the money, the best way to have a photo reproduced for printing is to let your printer'do it. They have skill and experience and save you the time. Just give them a black and white print. Or, you can have a photo-mechanicaltransfer (PMT) made which will give you a screened print you can paste down with the rest of your text copy ready for the printer to shoot. PMTs can be made from b/w prints or color prints. For doiturselfers, however, there is an alternative. The equipment necessary to home-screen a print is a darkroom with an enlarger and the usual array of chemicals and trays. In addition, you will need a sheet of plate glass larger than the intended print, a thin sponge pad and a Kodak elliptical dot grey screen or any other of the numerous pattern screens available.· Starting with a negative is necessary. If all you have is a print or a slide, then you must recopy to get a b/w negative (more on recopying later). I prefer to make screened prints on Agfa TP-6 paper because it is very contrasty. To screen a print requires that you place a negative in the enlarger, put a sheet of TP-6 on the sponge pad, lay the screen over the paper, compress this sandwich with the plate glass and ptoceed as in normal b/w printmaking. Only ·touch the screen and the glass on the edges. The screen spots and stains easily and cannot be cleaned without putting more markson it. Screens cost about.$22 for the 8-1/2 x 11 size. Save spotted screens for doing small prints, using the unspotted sections. Using a screen over the paper reduces contrast and ordinary paper loses its snap. Resin-coated papers don't seem to .reproduce the dots as well either (that's just a guess). If, however, contrast is too great, it may be reduced by flashing a burst of light (variable, experimental, usually a split second) on the TP-6 paper'. Keep the screen in place, pull the negative out qf the enlarger and flash after the normal exposure. Flashing is often necessary to put dots into those brilliant white areas. Printers usually specify glossy prints because sharper reproductions can be made from a print that isn't sending light off in all directions, which happens on rough, non-glossy surfaces. PMTs look ,kinda gray but seem to produce just as good results as a home-made print screened on TP-6 (which is usually very snappy looking). , I I Sometimes a print or a negative has too much contrast to be able to see detail in both the dark and light areas. A cure'1 for this is to screen the print to look good in the dark area and use a flashing technique to produce dots in the white areas. Place the TP-6 into the developer and as soon as most of the image appears (15 seconds) and while the print is still in the developer, give it a short burst of even light from an ordinary 40-watt bulb. The time duration of the burst varies, bu·t usually I find it is only as long as it takes me to turn the light on and off as quickly as possible. This takes some experimenting to keep the print from solarizing or turning grey. If done correctly, more details will appear in previously all-white areas. Sometimes for special effects a photo with strong graphic appeal can be printed on TP-6 without screening and the printer can shoot it directly with the copy. Grays drop out, leaving high-contrast blacks and whites. Heavy patterns such as tree limbs, or silhouettes, work well. Earlier I mentioned making copies of slides and prints ... here is what I do. I use a j\1acro lens on a 35mm SLR camera, or I reverse the lens on my 2~1/4 camera. I then,recopy a slide placed on a Maxwell slide duplicating box, using a small strobe as a light source. Other slide copiers will also work, of course. My setting for recopying a normal slide onto Panatomic X film is f16 at 1/60tli of a second. This will vary with slide density" or light sourfe. Usually, b/w photos printed from slides tend to block up and lose detail. One way to avoid · much of this problem is to shoot fine grain film at a slight over-exposure and then under-develop by a minute or so. Special effects can be obtained by recopying with Tri-X (grainy) or Kodalith (stark b/w) film or paper. Recopy photographs with the .same films as for slides for the same effects. Be careful to avoid glare and reflections on the print. If you don't have use of a copy stand with lights at a 45-degree angle to the copy ·surface, a cloudy day outdoors will work well. A tripod or copy stand is necessary for work done at less than 1/125 second shutter speed. Macro Lenses aren't necessary to recopy photos larger than 8xl0, but a single-lens-reflex camera with a buiJt-in meter is really a worthwhile expense. .
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