I can't get very excited about the current craze for calibrating the perfect negative for each different combination of pigment, pigment concentration, etc, since I never use the same combination twice, and since it's always been my experience that printing variables have more impact on the final print than do negatives themselves. The negative is just the place you start from.

I have used just about everything for negatives. I list some here, with an example of at least one gum print made from each kind of negative:

1. Film or paper silver-gel negatives enlarged in the darkroom (callas)
2. or used in cardboard boxes fitted with a pinhole (backyard) (desire)
3. or in a large format camera, fitted with a lens (surf series)
4. or with a pinhole
5. digital negatives, either on paper or on transparencies, the earliest printed on a 300 dpi laser printer (apricots) then a 600 dpi laser printer, then after Epson started introducing photo-quality inkjet printers, I've printed negatives on a series of inkjet printers. My present printer is an Epson 1280 (kids) The bulk of my work is created from digital negatives; I'll try to specify which kind of negative when I show a particular image.
6. cliches-verre-- drawings or paintings in reverse (negative) on paper, glass, or plastic film (untitled) (untitled)
7. photograms (bottle)
8. photocopies (when I was first gum printing and didn't have a darkroom, I made crude negatives by taking drugstore prints to a copy shop and having them copied (reversed and enlarged) onto transparencies (hat).

Cameras: Through 1999, all my gum prints based on photographic images originated with a 35mm negative. In 2000 I got interested in pinhole photography and made a lot of pinhole cameras from cardboard boxes of various shapes and sizes. I fitted them with long strap-handles made of webbing, so I could sling the handles over my shoulders and carry six or eight of them at once. In 2001, an angel gave me an old Burke and James 8x10 with both 8x10 and 4x5 backs and two lenses; then I was able to throw away most of the cardboard boxes and use the Burke & James as both a lens camera and a pinhole camera. In 2006, I added a Mamiya RZ67 for portrait work.

I prefer to work with color film, since it offers the most versatility and creative flexibility, but when I switched to large format I also started working more with black and white film, and now use a mixture of 8x10 FP4 and 4x5 and 120 Provia.

For multiple printings I often use more than one negative per print; in the case of tricolors, of course, there are three, but I often use two or three negatives for monochromes as well, to cover the different parts of the tonal range, and often use the separation negatives for tricolor printings to print monochrome with.

A negative on the thinner side prints best, in my experience, but the great thing about gum is that it is such a flexible printing process that with judicious printing you can print just about any kind of negative. Very dense negatives are the most difficult to print well, but I've seen very nice gum prints made from absolutely bulletproof negatives.

Copyright Katharine Thayer, all rights reserved

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