Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Carney" <kcarney1@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 5:52 PM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Digital Negatives with 1160
>
> > With the hope of combining the strengths (while avoiding the
> > weaknesses) of the digital and wet darkrooms, I've been exploring the
> > possibility of creating digital negatives with my 1160. I've read
> > that this can be done --
> > http://www.danburkholder.com/Pages/misc_pages/digital_neg_faq.htm --
> > however, I'm not sure just how much work, problems, troubleshooting,
> > etc. it would involve. If anyone on this list has gone down this
> > path, I'd be interesting in hearing about your experiences.
>
> I have.  As you no doubt know, this is a contact printing technique.  I
> think success will depend on what printing method you use.  If you print
> silver prints, I would give it up and use a tried and true darkroom
method,
> i.e., an enlarger.  Silver paper, e.g., air-dried glossy fiber paper, is
> pretty unforgiving.  OTOH, if you print "alt", such as palladium, it may
> work out for you.  These prints are made on essentially watercolor paper
and
> hide a lot of faults.  OTOH again, a pt/pd print will have a much greater
> tonal range than a silver print.  A digital 8x10 neg is just not going to
> give the same range and impact as an 8x10 in-camera negative.

Ken,

I would agree with you on the results with silver fiber but I have seen
palladium prints up to about 12X17 made from negatives done on a 1270 with
Epson dye inks. I find them indistinguishable from direct in-camera neg
prints. I doubt if an 1160 would be up to it though. Beautiful way to work
and none of the carbon ink sets really matches the hues. Interestingly the
Dmax on these prints is around 1.3 to 1.4 suggesting a much smaller tonal
range than current inkjet prints. I have only tested a couple of samples
though and these may not be representative of the Dmax the medium can
achieve.

I have a couple of silver prints from Lensworks done with imagesetter negs
that you would not be able to pick out from prints made by traditionally
enlargement. Really high quality but as you say 3,600 or higher dpi is a
must.

>  If I were
> you, to try it out without a lot of cost, I would use the service bureau
> that Dan recommends and have negs made on at least a 3,600 dpi
imagesetter.
> The 2,400 dpi imagesetter you commonly see won't cut it.   If you don't
like
> the results, the desktop solution (inkjet neg) sure isn't going to work.

Chris, if you deal with a service bureau by all means use one that has done
this kind of work before. Otherwise you can waste a lot of money while they
try and figure out what you want.

Martin Wesley

(snip)