anybody using albumen paper?

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do any of you use albumen paper? i understand there is an outfit in chicago that produces it commercially. in lieu of actually using albumen paper, does anybody know how to acheive that same kind of tonality with bromide papers?

-- jnorman (jnorman@teleport.com), January 29, 2001

Answers

Chicago Albumen Works is actually located in Masterchewsex. Er, Massachusetts. And I believe they now import their paper from La Belle France, Non?

Ici: http://www.albumenworks.com/

Chad Jarvis has a recipe and how to on his page here: http://www.redhillphoto.com/albumen.html

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), January 29, 2001.


Chicago Albumen Works manufactures a product called Centennial, which is not albumen, thought it is silver chloride. The tonality of it WAY exceeds bromide... WAY exceeds. You won't be able to duplicate the range with bromide unless you can find an enlarging paper that will accomodate a negative density range that exceeds 2.5 (beyond grade 0). I don't think any companies actually produce a true albumen paper any longer; that's why I make my own.

-- Chad Jarvis (cjarvis@nas.edu), January 30, 2001.

Oh, I should have stated that finding information on alternative processing and groups of people on the web who do any of that sort of thing is limited to a few spots. Dick Sullivan of Bostick and Sullivan runs a webboard specifically for alternative processes. It's mainly a Pt/Pd crowd, but there are boards for albumen/salted papers, gum, carbon, etc.

Also try Stanford University. They have a great albumen page here with a link to an online version of James Reilly's The Albumen and Salted Paper Book, which is kind of like the bible of albumen-related stuff.

Good luck.

-- Chad Jarvis (cjarvis@nas.edu), January 30, 2001.

Actually there's an excellent alternative process list, alt.photo.process, on the web. Although the discussions can become rancorous at times, most of the people on the list are very knowledgeable. You'd be hard pressed to ask a question that someone couldn't answer from their own experience. The list also has extensive archives, which are an invaluable source of information about every alternative process known to man or woman. I believe you can subscribe by sending an e mail message to alt-photo-process- requset@sask.usask.ca, with the message "subscribe alt-photo-process- l" (the last digit is the letter "l," not the number 1).

-- Brian Ellis (bellis60@earthlink.net), January 31, 2001.

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