22 Most Frequently Asked Questions About Printing-Out Paper

A. No. Once albumen paper is sensitized, it has a very short life. Thus it must be user sensitized. Since learning to sensitize and process albumen paper is the major part of the task, we expect people who want albumen paper to do the initial albumen coating themselves. POP bears a very close resemblance to albumen paper and is a shelf ready product.

A. There is an excellent and comprehensive website devoted to albumen printing. The site was developed by the photograph conservators Paul Messier and Tim Vitale, and its address is http://albumen.stanford.edu.

The following three publications are currently available and each has instructions for making albumen paper.

• Barnier, John, editor. Coming into Focus: a Step-by-Step Guide to Alternative Photographic Printing Processes. Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA, 2000.
  
  
• Farber, Richard. Historic Photographic Processes, Allworth Press, New York, NY, 1998.
  
  
• Webb, Randall and Martin Reed. Alternative Photographic Processes, A Working Guide for Image Makers, Silver Pixel Press, Rochester, NY, 2000. This is the American printing of Spirits of Salts, Aurum Press, London, UK, 1999.
  
  
• Out of print is Reilly, James M.. The Albumen and Salted Paper Book. The History and Practice of Photographic Printing, 1840-1895. Light Impressions Corp., Rochester, NY, 1980.
  

Two historical treatises that have been reprinted, but unfortunately are also out of print are:

• Robinson, Henry Peach and Abney W. de W. The Art and Practice of Silver Printing. (The American Edition). New York, NY, 1881. Reprint edition by Arno Press, New York, NY, 1973.
  
  
• Towler, John. The Silver Sunbeam: A Practical and Theoretical Text-Book on Sun Drawing and Photographic Printing, Comprehending all the Wet and Dry Processes aat Present Known,With Collodion, Albumen, Gelatine, Wax, Resin, and Silver….New York, NY, 1864. Reprint edition by Morgan and Morgan, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, 1969.
  
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Q. My child is doing a school science project with sunscreens and needs something called "photographic printing-out paper" - do you sell this?

A. Yes, our Centennial POP can be used for this project.

Q. I'm an art teacher and want to make something called a "sunprint" or a "photogram" with my students - can I use POP for this?

A. Yes.

A. POP does not require a developer. The image appears fully during exposure, i.e. it prints-out.

A. No. POP is a contact printing paper only, due to its slow speed. You cannot use the enlarger as a light source either. Reasonable exposure times, (e.g. 15 minutes or less) require light sources which are very high in ultraviolet output. Such sources include the sun, the Northern sky, certain types of fluorescent bulbs, mercury vapor bulbs, and various printers sold for platinum printing. If you want to make enlarged prints, you have to contact print from an enlarged duplicate negative.

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A. Visit our web page POP Links

A. In general, we recommend films based on traditional emulsion chemistry. Thus, for negatives up to 8x10” in size, Kodak Tri-X is a good choice, although we do know practitioners who work with Kodak T-Max 100, developed in T-Max developer.

Larger sizes will require purchasing a product such as "Pan Portrait Film ISO 125" from Photo Warehouse in Southern California [Phone: 800.922.5484; Web: photowarehouse.biz]. The characteristics of this film are quite similar to Ilford FP-4 Plus.

(Ilford FP-4 Plus and HP-5Plus are available in limited quantities and/or by special order in various sizes up to and including 20x24.” Consult your Ilford dealer for size availability and ordering information.)

A. The most accurate and flexible duplicate negatives are made using the two-step interpositive/duplicate negative process. Basic instructions are available in the section "Making black-and-White Interpositives and Black-and-White Duplicate Negatives" in Kodak publication M-1, Copying and Duplicating: Photographic and Digital Imaging Techniques.

With the elimination of Kodak's and Agfa's color separation films, there is no film on the market specifically designed to produce the long and accurate tonal scales required of duplicate negatives for POP printing.

Currently, we recommend that interpositives be made on Kodak T-Max 100 Film, developed in T-Max developer. This combination of film and developer is capable of producing very accurate interpositives.

Duplicate negatives exposed from the interpositives can also be produced on T-Max, however their size is limited to 8x10", the largest factory-stocked size for this film. Larger sizes will require purchasing a product such as "Pan Portrait Film ISO 125" from Photo Warehouse in Southern California [Phone: 800.922.5484; Web: photowarehouse.biz]. This characteristics of this film are quite similar to Ilford FP-4 Plus.


For more information on enlarged duplicate negatives, visit the following website: www.davidmichaelkennedy.com/tech_enlarged.html

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A. POP has only one contrast, which is equivalent to a grade 0 or 00 enlarging paper. Thus your negatives must be made to "fit" the paper, with a density range of about 2.

A. The density range of a negative is the difference in density between its highlights and its shadows. Density is a precise numerical value that can be determined only by measuring with a densitometer. There are several densitometers on the market, many advertised in such magazines as View Camera, that are quite resonably priced.

If you own a spot meter, you can make approximate density readings by placing your film (negative or positive) on an evenly illuminated light box and viewing the shadow and highlight areas with the spot meter. For the purpose of finding the density range of an image, you do not need a calibrated meter (assuming your meter is reasonably accurate): merely measure the difference in stops (or EV numbers) between the minimum and the maximum densities and multiply the result by 0.3. Thus if your meter says there is a five stop difference between the shadow and highlight, you have a density range of 1.5, slightly low for a negative intended to print on POP.

If you want to make actual density measurements, you can calibrate your light meter by measuring the patches of a Kodak Step Tablet, or other density step wedge, having known densities.

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A. Perhaps you have mistaken the interleaving paper for POP. Each box of DW POP comes with an interleaf sheet of paper between each sheet of POP.

A. You need to fix your prints, and you MUST use either Kodak Fixer or plain sodium thiosulphate (HYPO crystals). DO NOT USE A RAPID FIXER OR ANY OTHER FIXER CONTAINING AMMONIUM THIOSULPHATE, as these tend to bleach the image and result in less than optimal colors in the final print.

 

A. Reread the DATA SHEET to be sure that you are following correct procedures, i.e., using clean trays, containers, and utensils; mixing and replenishing your toners in the correct proportions; washing your prints in running water before toning. Also, be sure to agitate your print while it is in the toner and fixer. If these steps do not solve your problem, send us a sample print and we will try to help you find out what is going on.

A. No, this color cannot be retained or replicated, but there is a variety of colors possible depending on toner formulas and length of time the print is left in the toner. These tones range from sepia/browns to deep purple/blacks. If the print is merely fixed (no toner), the color will be an orange/brown. The standard toner formula recommended by CAW is in the DATA SHEET, but there are several other excellent formulas on the supplemental toner sheet that we also include with every purchase. This sheet is also posted on our web page Toning Formulas.

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A. As with any manual process, consistency comes only through practice and experience. Start by making your working conditions as consistent as possible: expose your prints to the same level, pre-rinse your prints for exactly the same time, use a good volume of toner and replenish it carefully, make sure you have full spectrum lighting over the toning tray, and keep the temperature of the toning solution constant from session to session.

Also, when judging the degree of toning, it is sometimes hepful to note when a certain portion of the image changes color, rather than concentrating on just what color the image has become. Thus, you will find for each image a certain area, that, when it changes from warm to cool in tone, acts as an indicator: whether the toning has been fast or slow, when that area changes, toning should be stopped and the print placed in the fix.

A. POP can be stored indefinitely in dry, cold conditions, preferably in a frost-free refrigerator or freezer. Left in an non-air-conditioned room, especially in the humid climate of the East, noticeable yellowing will occur within a year, and this will affect the highlights in a print considerably.

A. Print-outs may be stored in black plastic bags, sealed from any light, heat, or humidity, for many weeks.

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A. Yes, POP can be cut down, as long as you are working in dim light.

A. Visit our web page POP Links.

A. Oddly, and due mostly to a quirk of historical fate, most fine art and museum collections of photographs contain few historical POP prints. The medium came on the market almost simultaneously with the aesthetic urges variously known as "naturalistic photography," "art photography," and "pictorialism." The practitioners of these movements desired printing media that were both easily manipulated and substantially different than the ubiquitous albumen paper of the previous generation. They gravitated toward such processes as platinum, gum bichromate, bromoil, and gravure.

Photographic historians and curators tend to concentrate on the emergence of new trends and ideas. Thus, there has been a tendency to ignore photographers and studios that may have printed on POP, as they have been seen as the last and stale practitioners of the old (albumen) school. The work of Eugene Atget is a notable and singular exception.

POP was a medium heavily used by commercial and portrait studios, and POP prints from these studios will most frequently be found in family portrait albums of the period and in historical society and archive collections relating to the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.

With the resurgence in interest in historical printing processes, POP prints by many contemporary photographers are now to be found in museum collections. To see modern examples of POP printing, look for examples by such photographers as Alain Clement, Linda Connor, Dudley Cowles, Anita Douthat, Martha Madigan, Judith Ross, and John Yang, to name a few. We have some links to contemporary artists using printing-out paper on our POP Links page.

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A. Yes. Given its printing speed, relative to other photographic products, printing-out paper will pass through without a problem.