" Camera ready art" ?

[Frog]

Pretty funny question in a way; back then, if you asked that question, you would be considered totally ignorant. That was Graphics 101... It's already been explained, but let me say that I used film that originally we tray developed, then got a PMT processor and film (kinda like a polaroid). That certain sped it up. The first time I saw an Epson 3000 printing off a roll I knew we were changing that day. We used a camera for about almost 20 years...

Steve

I, of course, originally learned tray developing, which included the ability to tweak certain areas of the image similar to what one can do in photoshop today. Gently rubbing a portion of the film while in the tray would emphasize the developing there.
When I started my home based business, the diffusion transfer developer was nice and compact, and allowed a very small darkroom with no plumbing as once the films were spit out of it, they could be taken into a bathroom to rinse and dry. The inability to tweak post exposure was a small price to pay.

[bimmridder]

Of our six artists, I think only two have ever printed out film. One did camera work in our earlier days. NONE of my print crew, pre-press, or reclaim staff have ever seen film in the printing atmosphere. I do have one piece of film I snagged from another printer in town so I could try to explain what it is and how it works. I have a vacuum table I use when I make new screen (don't ask) and all my guys thing that's what it's for, not for exposing screens. Oh the times, they are a changin'

[whitewater]

pretty sweet info!

[rmonks]

I can remember the guy running our camera and darkroom also worked at the local paper, and he kept the old positives because they had silver in them. $$$$$$$$$$$

[Frog]

pretty sweet info!

Yep, we used to be able to sell our film (and I think spent chemicals) to recyclers

[Frog]

Speaking of silver, here's the Silver Genie Pen, which along with the Fixative would chemically remove unwanted image area cleanly. (I never throw anything away, LOL!)
The Opaquer is still available and used on any kind of positive, most often on the flip side of the positive for safety.

For some opaquing, we would also use a liquid brown clay based paint and a fine brush.

Funny story, I was opaquing a negative layout page at Rolling Stone. Flip side, upside down to not get distracted by the copy itself, yet, there in a photo of Little Feat, I thought I saw a familiar face.
Flipped it over, read the caption, and sure enough, an old school chum, Paul Barrere had joined the group!

[Dottonedan]

These big expensive cameras are now obsolete... but it was part of the package if you wanted to run a shop, not to mention the film and chemicals... and the dedicated space for a darkroom:

I ran that same friggen camera.  I loved it. I felt like a professional photographer or at leat a mechancial photographer. I hated the stipping tho and shooting all of the intermediate blow up shots. Can you imagine that I would shoot an art board of 17x22, (in sections) and blow each one up as large as it could be, often 13000% was the end target, but the camera did not go up that high, so I'd blow it up as high as it could and shoot the intermediates.  Then shoot another set of each one of those till I got it up large enough to fit a bill board or a buss back. Sheesh.


Ah, but there's more. I also used what was called a LUCY and blew up images (on the wall), laid rubylyth and amberlyth over top in large rolls across the image...taped them down...then traced it off...and hand cut it with a swivel exacto knife.  Yep.  I did that.


Did you know, I could hand cut lettering from amberlyth? I actually had some examples in my portfolio when I left that shop.


Did you know I could seamlessly strip fine halftone films together for a photograph...cuz it was so large, I can swivel the knife between each dot...and tape them together to hold as one unit.  Yep. I did that. The LPI was probably near 10-15 line screen.


Thus the name Dot-Tone dan was born.  Well, no, thats another story but it works here too.


And the dark room was air conditioned. Outside that room in my work area was in a loft style work room with a large drafting table. The temp in that work areas was often near 100 degrees. I like the camera room. :0

[Command-Z]

These big expensive cameras are now obsolete... but it was part of the package if you wanted to run a shop, not to mention the film and chemicals... and the dedicated space for a darkroom:

I ran that same friggen camera.  I loved it. I felt like a professional photographer or at leat a mechancial photographer. I hated the stipping tho and shooting all of the intermediate blow up shots. Can you imagine that I would shoot an art board of 17x22, (in sections) and blow each one up as large as it could be, often 13000% was the end target, but the camera did not go up that high, so I'd blow it up as high as it could and shoot the intermediates.  Then shoot another set of each one of those till I got it up large enough to fit a bill board or a buss back. Sheesh.


Ah, but there's more. I also used what was called a LUCY and blew up images (on the wall), laid rubylyth and amberlyth over top in large rolls across the image...taped them down...then traced it off...and hand cut it with a swivel exacto knife.  Yep.  I did that.


Did you know, I could hand cut lettering from amberlyth? I actually had some examples in my portfolio when I left that shop.


Did you know I could seamlessly strip fine halftone films together for a photograph...cuz it was so large, I can swivel the knife between each dot...and tape them together to hold as one unit.  Yep. I did that. The LPI was probably near 10-15 line screen.


Thus the name Dot-Tone dan was born.  Well, no, thats another story but it works here too.


And the dark room was air conditioned. Outside that room in my work area was in a loft style work room with a large drafting table. The temp in that work areas was often near 100 degrees. I like the camera room. :0

Nice! Yeah, I did most of that stuff too. I still have my swivel knife.

Art done in layers of pencil drawings on Duralene or ink washes shot thru halftone screens on a contact table to blend like sim process when printed, scratchboard on exposed film used as masks for the next color underneath, Rubylith cut as mask for low-pressure airbrush stippling... and a buddy of mine invented (and patented!) a pneumatic "stipple mouse" to mount a Rapidograph into.

I worked in a sign shop that had HUGE cameras (Walzburg or something) that used 4 ft wide rolls of film stuck up on giant vertical vacuum frames. The darkroom WAS the camera, with the lens and bellows mounted in the wall... after all, the word camera means "room."

Wow, we learned a lot of skills that we just don't use any more.

[Sbrem]

These big expensive cameras are now obsolete... but it was part of the package if you wanted to run a shop, not to mention the film and chemicals... and the dedicated space for a darkroom:

I ran that same friggen camera.  I loved it. I felt like a professional photographer or at leat a mechancial photographer. I hated the stipping tho and shooting all of the intermediate blow up shots. Can you imagine that I would shoot an art board of 17x22, (in sections) and blow each one up as large as it could be, often 13000% was the end target, but the camera did not go up that high, so I'd blow it up as high as it could and shoot the intermediates.  Then shoot another set of each one of those till I got it up large enough to fit a bill board or a buss back. Sheesh.


Ah, but there's more. I also used what was called a LUCY and blew up images (on the wall), laid rubylyth and amberlyth over top in large rolls across the image...taped them down...then traced it off...and hand cut it with a swivel exacto knife.  Yep.  I did that.


Did you know, I could hand cut lettering from amberlyth? I actually had some examples in my portfolio when I left that shop.


Did you know I could seamlessly strip fine halftone films together for a photograph...cuz it was so large, I can swivel the knife between each dot...and tape them together to hold as one unit.  Yep. I did that. The LPI was probably near 10-15 line screen.


Thus the name Dot-Tone dan was born.  Well, no, thats another story but it works here too.


And the dark room was air conditioned. Outside that room in my work area was in a loft style work room with a large drafting table. The temp in that work areas was often near 100 degrees. I like the camera room. :0

Nice! Yeah, I did most of that stuff too. I still have my swivel knife.

Art done in layers of pencil drawings on Duralene or ink washes shot thru halftone screens on a contact table to blend like sim process when printed, scratchboard on exposed film used as masks for the next color underneath, Rubylith cut as mask for low-pressure airbrush stippling... and a buddy of mine invented (and patented!) a pneumatic "stipple mouse" to mount a Rapidograph into.

I worked in a sign shop that had HUGE cameras (Walzburg or something) that used 4 ft wide rolls of film stuck up on giant vertical vacuum frames. The darkroom WAS the camera, with the lens and bellows mounted in the wall... after all, the word camera means "room."

Wow, we learned a lot of skills that we just don't use any more.

Ditto, all that. Our first camera at my original shop was a NuArc 18 x 22, a nine foot bed, and our darkroom was 16' x 16'. Yellow flashing lamp for shadow control, bump exposures without the halftone screen. But if we hadn't learned these skills then, how foreign would the concepts have been when we started using Photoshop? My last camera here was a sexy Agfa like above... revolving darkroom door, the whole deal...

Steve

[Parker 1]

Wow you guys are old .  Really enjoyed the history lesson, thanks for sharing.

Chris

[tonypep]

Remember how to make chokes with those?

[mk162]

the way we did it was in the art before we printed it to paper...I didn't start here until we were doing that.  the days of rubylith were for the most part before my time.

Although i have cut my fair share and I have a huge box of it out back

[tonypep]

You could put a sheet of blank film, sandwiching it between the glass and film to be printed and the resulting undercutting would choke it.

[bimmridder]

We used to choke like that on exposure table, too. Glass, positive, clear film layer(s), screen.

[mk162]

ahh, we used to do that with film on the expo unit...