Digital BW, The Print

Mark:
Bear with me. I'll get to the point after a little background. I've been thinking about the issue of the silver print look for a while. Coming from a long background of silver printing, zone system, having taken Ansel Adams' Yosemite workshop with Ansel, etc, I have a pretty good handle on making a fine silver print. I have also (in the past few years, gone from film, through a Kodak 260, Nikon 950 and a 990. While at John Paul Caponigro's Photoshop Master Class at the Santa Fe Workshop last summer, I shot many CF cards full of images with the 990.
I made a dozen or so 11x14 prints with my 1270 (HWM, Enhanced Gen inks) and my wife (who has looked at way too many of my images over the last few decades) said, "They don't look like the old stuff" "What old stuff" "The old stuff that you used to do in the darkroom"
Wow! Reality check. Cut to the chase. The difference (for her) was both resolution and the look of the print.
After looking verrry critically at the images, she was right. The fine detail in aspens and other landscape elements at great distances is not there. It's subtle, almost sensed rather than immediately evident.
Revelation #2
I went to Gettysburg for a few days. I took Mamiya 7, NPS, 3 lenses and a tripod. 
Astounding.
The scans of the negatives were lovely. Detail, range, beautifully smooth gradations, no noise in the 90 second dusk exposures.
The prints were wonderful.
My wife said "Better, but they don't look like the old stuff." Huh?
While I was in Gettysburg, I also had an Ambrotype (wet plate) portrait made by Rob Gibson (one of the premier wet-plate guys).
Guess what? It was lovely. It had a marvelous range and quality. It didn't look like the old stuff either.
So what have I learned?
Different media and different technologies have their own unique look. No, this is not a revelation. This is obvious, but I think that sometimes we forget that those of us who are working either with scanned film or digital images and printing with our ink jets are working in new territory. Early photographers tried to make their images look like paintings. That didn't work either. We need to realize that we are working with a new medium, one that has its own set of visual perceptions. Perhaps we need to finally look beyond trying to match the unique qualities of the silver print and discover and refine the unique qualities of our own medium.

Stan Shire
Associate Professor / Dept Chair
Department of Photographic Imaging
Community College of Philadelphia
Adobe Photoshop 6 A.C.E.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mark Tucker 
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 12:20 PM
  Subject: [Digital BW] Reference Print/Reality Check


  Clark Thomas, one of the members of this group, brought over 
  an original silver print the other day. It's an Edward Weston, 
  printed by him as well. I'd think it's an 8x10 contact print, signed 
  "EW 1941". I found it useful as a kind of "reality check". I've just 
  been so immersed in this whole inkjet thing, that it was useful 
  (and pleasurable) to just sit and ponder this print. It's an image 
  of some kind of folk art piece; hundreds of glass bottles hanging 
  on a wood creation. Looks like it was shot about about 
  f/one-million, because it's tack sharp from about twenty feet 
  almost to infinity. Beautiful subtle shadow detail, even though it 
  was shot in bright sunlight in late afternoon.

  Note: Please nobody slam me. I am in no way "comparing" silver 
  printing to inkjet. They are each their own animals, with their 
  own great traits. All I'm saying is that I think I'm gonna start 
  keeping some silver prints very close to the area where I judge 
  my inkjet prints after they pop out of the printer. It could be useful 
  to have some "control" print to get an objective reference.

  -http://marktucker.com


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