Steve, Chris, Andrew, Greg, others, Thanks for the suggestions. This is feeding into the brain machine and is very useful material. There are no crackpot ideas here. The first crackpot idea was to do a giant pinhole, of course. (Actually, the friends who are with me on this say that I don't have to smoke grass with a brain like mine and they are trying to find what it is in my brain that gets me to do these things so that they can also activate it without having to smoke grass...!) <gr...> We're taking a couple weeks of break from this project now. I'll keep everyone posted on the next step. Thanks again for the suggestions, Guy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Hodges" <shodges@wantree.com.au> To: "List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students" <photoforum@listserver.isc.rit.edu> Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 6:59 AM Subject: Re: Printing the Giant Pinhole Negative: A Technical Question > Guy Glorieux wrote: > > > > Printing the giant pinhole paper negative is proving to be a much > > greater challenge than we ever anticipated and new issues keep surfacing > > along the way. > > It wouldn't be so much fun if it were easy :-) > > > This weekend, we thought we had solved every problem along the way and > > we went ahead with doing the final print. But we've encountered one > > more problem in the form of a weird chemical reaction when printing the > > wet paper negative onto wet unexposed RC paper after squeegeeing the two > > together, emulsion to emulsion. > > Had you one your testing with wet paper? > > > The paper had lost about 1 full stop in sensitivity > > Yeah, it will do that. > > > (compared with the > > tests we had done just before using the dry paper negative over dry > > unexposed paper strips) > > Ah. First mistake. Test using the same method as you intend to use to > print. > > > Any thoughts or suggestions are most welcome. > > I assume you're wetting the paper and negs to make the whole lot sit > together without curled edges? > > Assuming you're printing the three negs onto 3 pieces of paper, I'd > print one at a time and get a single *HUGE* sheet of something > transparent (plastic?) to sit over the paper. > > Naturally the position relative to the light source would have to stay > constant, but it would give you a chance to pay full attention to > whatever dodging and burning you were doing on each neg. > > if you could get a sinle piece of plastic 12.5 by 8.5 feet that you > could actually maneuver around you could do it in one piece (I suppose) > but it would be way too awkward I think. > > Another possibility would be to place elevate the paper a small amount > off the floor (say an inch or so) and cover the whole area with > plastic. tape the plastic to the floor (I hope it's concrete or > something smooth and non porous) and seal it down. Then use a pump to > reduce the pressure under the plastic. Air pressure will force the > plastic hard onto the paper. You'd probably have to play around a bit > to get rid of bubbles, but it may work. > > Maybe nothing but crackpot ideas... :-) > > Steve >