Digital BW, The Print

Dear Paul,

Being one who has seen your own silver/gelatin AND digital prints shown
side-by-side at the Solvang, CA show, I might agree with you.

BUT, not everybody has the skill or the equipment that you posses. Many of
us 'mere mortals' are still content to stay in our wet darkrooms. Using a
digital negative is a nice way to bridge the gap between the analog
photography paradigm and the digital world of inkjet printing, a world still
filled with many landmines such as clogging print heads, paper material with
fragile surface coatings that flake off if you look at them funny, bronzing
and out gassing, and a whole litany of other issues that silver photography
does not have. Making inkjet prints that have the level of excellence that
you have achieved is by no means an easy task. I've told you before that I
think your 'carbon-on-cotton' prints are in many ways far superior to any
silver/gelatin print, but I also think that the process of making them, as a
whole, should be called very high maintenance! :-)
I'm sure that as inkjet technology continues to progress out of its infancy,
we will see fewer and fewer of these problems. But for now, I'm not quite
ready to give up my darkroom completely.

Best Regards,

David R. Spielman


  -----Original Message-----
  From: Paul Roark [mailto:paul.roark@...]
  Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 5:16 PM
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
  Subject: RE: [Digital BW] The Holy Grail?


  >By making digital negatives with an inkjet printer, and taking them back
  >into the traditional wet darkroom, I have made many fine prints on
  >air-dried, glossy fiber paper.

  >With digital negatives, you have the best of both worlds. You have all of
  >the great silver papers that many have come to love, and you have the
power
  >to modify and manipulate your images in Photoshop in ways that even the
old
  >darkroom masters could not hope to achieve.

  Or is it the worst of both worlds.  All the digital artifacts with the
  darkroom smells, non-buffered paper, non-washable gelatin coating, wavy
  paper from the water that needs dry mounting, questionable archival
quality
  without strong toning that turns the print purple, ...

  You get the picture.  ;)

  Seriously, I went this route once and, aside from temporary marketing
  advantages, I think the silver print is or should be considered an
  "alternative" process in the same category as the platinum print.

  Paul
  www.PaulRoark.com



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