Digital BW, The Print

Martin,

Not having an extremely large amount of experience with the mid-price 
scanners, I can't comment on their output quality.  But at the uppper 
end of drum scanners, very little is lost in this part of the process.  
There is a very high level of acutance, and the tonal range is 
excellent.  Got to pay, though, unless you own a Howtek 8000 or 
equivalent.  The few piezo's I've made from these kind of scans beat 
silver prints at the same degree of enlargment, even using the best 
darkroom equipment I can get my hands on.  Granted, I have a diffusion 
enlarger, which softens detail a little, but the trade-offs with 
condensers and the burned out highlights/Callier effect are 
unacceptable for me, so they are not a consideration.  Would be 
interesting to have a comparison with the condenser head print, though.

Insofar as the 2 workflows you've described (if I understand you 
correctly): 1. Contact prints from negs from an inkjet printer vs  2. 
digital enlarger neg to silver via an enlarger- if the scan is tight 
and can produce good film from the inkjet (Dan Burkholder does a lot of 
this), it will work well and is cheaper.  But you're limited by the 
printer's size.  With a digital neg you depend more on the quality 
thereof, and your enlarging rig, and the determining factor in how 
large you can go is more related to these.

A friend of mine (who is a hand letterpress printer) and I recently 
tested printing out negatives for him from my 1160 onto Pictorico's 
display transparency film.  It didn't hold an adequate level of black 
for us, and wasn't nearly as sharp for type as the film he gets from 
digital enlargers.  And this was for contact printing to his polymer 
stage.  I suppose I'll get a chance to try this comparison directly on 
my own continuous tone images when I get my next batch of LJ negs, and 
will let everyone know.

Phil
http://philbard.com

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., mwesley250@e... wrote:
> Based on posts from the Epson 7000 users (George, Ron, Nij), 
> resolution discussion on Phil Bard's LVT work, and some observations 
> of my own, I have some questions about final print size using digital 
> methods verses traditional enlargement.
> 
> First of all the amount of enlargement and the acceptable sharpness 
> has a great deal of personal taste involved. For myself I have been 
> extremely conservative in the darkroom over the last decade. I once 
> routinely printed 35mm on 11X14 and occasionally 16X20. As I moved 
> more into 4X5 view camera work I now only print 35mm up to 8X10, my 
> 6cmX7cm negs at 11X14. The 4X5 has stayed on 11X14 paper due to lack 
> of darkroom space but from other peoples work I would be comfortable 
> up to 20X24. Beyond that and I start to think of 5X7 and 8X10 negs.
> 
> Now the impression I have gotten from digital is that there is a loss 
> of resolution and sharpness in the process of scanning. This led me 
> to believe that I would need to print slightly smaller. However, when 
> I got my first film scanner (Polaroid 4000) I was making a print from 
> 35mm on 8.5X11 paper which was looking good and I didn't see any 
> sharpness loss compared to a traditional silver print from the same 
> neg.
> 
> On a whim I stuck a sheet of 13X19 paper in my 1200. The results were 
> astounding! I would not have believed there was that much detail in 
> the negative or that the print would look that good. Granted if it 
> had been a 4x5 neg to start with it would have been even better but 
> my impression was that is was better than what I would expect to get 
> from a silver print of the same size.
> 
> While there may be loss of sharpness/resolution between the original 
> negative and the scan, there seems to be little loss between scan and 
> final print. My thought is that the total loss in sharpness in the 
> negative-to-scanner-to-printer process may be less than the loss in 
> the negative-enlarger-silver paper process.
> 
> If I am correct, please jump in here with you opinions. This would be 
> another significant reason to make the digital switch in addition to 
> the wonders of Photoshop and getting out of the darkroom.
> 
> This would also suggest that if your final output for your digital 
> file will be silver gelatin,  a neg-scan-digital printer-contact neg-
> silver paper might offer better sharpness over a neg-scan-digital 
> printer-enlarging neg-enlarger-silver paper.
> 
> Does any of this sound reasonable?
> 
> Martin