Digital BW, The Print

At 11:22 PM 10/22/03 +0000, you wrote:

>Thanks for the great information, Martin.  It really helps to give me
>an idea where I'll stand in relation to wet darkroom work.  Overall,
>I'm beginning to get the impression that I'll be quite satisfied by
>inkjet printing as long as I'm willing to accept it as its own
>medium.  Of course, only looking at prints and doing my own
>experimentation will tell (neither of which I've done yet), but I
>mainly just wanted to get a sense of where B&W inkjet printing was at
>before making the commitment myself.  I had given some thought to the
>other options you outlined, but quickly realized that inkjet printing
>would be just the workflow I'd dreamed of, so long as I was
>comfortable with the results.  I think it's safe to say that I've
>received enough assurances and am ready to commit.
>
>Thanks again,
>
>Mike


Mike,

I stayed completely away from the dark room for over two years doing only 
piezo ink jet prints - delighted with the whole thing, excepting the 
technical frustrations. This week I was cleaning out the dark room and saw 
that I had quite a lot of Multigrade paper that was going to waste.  I took 
three 35mm pano negs I'd been working with piezo into the dark, smelly 
chamber and banged out three prints.  They were easy images to print - and 
they look marvelous!  Dry mounted and examined next to the same size 
piezo's on EAM, on the whole, I prefer them.  These particular images look 
qualitatively better to me when evaluated as expressions of the 
photographic idea, objects of craft, etc.  -  I don't have a densitometer. 
Under glass you have to get closer and squint harder to see - if you can - 
those qualitative differences. For some the holy grail is the look of a 
selenium-toned silver print on air-dried, glossy paper. I think that the 
silver print can't be replicated - but why should it be?  I'm showing both 
sets of prints to some master silver printers to get their judgments this 
weekend. Their skepticism with digital output has eased considerably over 
the past few years - that is, they have agreed that the prints look "OK, 
but..."  :-)

For me the digital working environment greatly increases productivity and 
satisfaction without reducing craft quality - it's just a different medium. 
It will continue to get better as the materials and equipment become more 
predictable.

AZ




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