Digital BW, The Print

Julian wrote:

>I've seen samples and I guess for some things they are fine. I'd certainly
>use Lambda for colour. But for BW, IMO, they are NOT 'fine art', and there
>is an inherent inflexibility in paper choice. Having seen some prints on
>Ilford FB warmtone, i want the option of getting MY version of my prints
>done on something similar.

I agree that the color paper solution is not what I was looking for when I
went through this search.  However, I could find no
direct-to-B&W-fiber-paper digital output at that time.  So, I used
imagesetter negatives for contact printing, and I used several types of
negatives that I enlarged.

None of these internegative systems gave me the image quality or
satisfaction of the inkjet prints we are now using, but I understand the
latest imagesetters are better than the one I was using in the early-1990's.
Also, after spending substantial money for an LVT internegative that turned
out to be soft, I decided it was just getting too expensive and too much of
a hassle.

I have kept my wet darkroom, but I must say what I'd really like to find is
a direct-to-fiber-silver-print method that I could use after perfecting the
image with the inkjet outputs.  If there was a lab with a digital output for
color paper, I'd be interested to see if a silver print could be exposed.
Perhaps there are inherent, technological limitations to this, but I suspect
it is economic.  I suspect the market is too small to bother with.

If I can get to know some lab in Santa Barbara with one of the color
machines, I'll volunteer my time to calibrate the machine for silver.  If it
can be calibrated such that a standardized inkjet output (perhaps Piezo
driver?) could be used as a proof, then I would think that a mail-order,
very large geographical (world?) B&W market might make the system economic.

I will continue to search for such a solution, because (I hate to say it)
the archival silver print is likely to remain the favored output with
collectors for a long time.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com



_________________
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Atherton" <timphoto@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 7:48 PM
Subject: RE: [Digital BW] digital neg


> >
> > If you are going to "get" a wet print enlargement done, as
> > opposed to wanting
> > to mess about in your own darkroom with it, then you can avoid this
whole
> > process, and have wet prints made directly from your digital files with
a
> > LightJet or Lambda.
> >
> > C. David Tobie
>
> Has anyone got B&W Lightjet prints made (presumably on colour paper) from
> B&W scans?
>
> How well do the come out?
>
> tim