Digital BW, The Print

Scott, you don't have to go to 8x10 and Azo to work with contact prints.

I am contact-printing my 4x5 and 5x7 negatives.  They are lovely.  In the SuperSized world 
we inhabit, people are infatuated with all things huge.  The advent of inkjet printing has 
enabled people to print at sizes that would be prohibitive in most darkrooms, so in the 
past few years there has been a shift upward in size expectations.

In that environment, a 4x5 contact print is a rare and beautiful thing.  It is sweet and 
modest and jewellike.  Big is clichéd.  Think different!  An 8x10 rig is more expensive and 
more difficult in many ways than a 4x5.  You'll shoot more negatives with a 4x5, and 
become adept more quickly at large format photography as a result.  And you have a 4x5 
camera at hand already -- don't be seduced so quickly by the larger format.

Azo ... there is a legion of Azo adherents.  Honestly, any paper will do.  Azo is nice, but 
there are many other papers.  Sticking blindly to Azo is akin to sticking blindly to Photo 
Rag in the inkjet world.  Different images require different papers, in the darkroom as on 
an inkjet printer.  Get your friend to give you his enlarger -- you won't be enlarging your 
negatives but you can use it to control the amount and color of the light for contact 
printing.  The latter is important because variable-contrast papers are controlled by the 
color of the light by which they are exposed.  

Have fun!  If your friend is in New York and looking for a home for his darkroom stuff, let 
me know.

Sanders McNew
www.mcnew.net


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Scott McLoughlin <scott@a...> 
wrote:
> Don't laugh. The idea of making an 8x10 contact print on the floor of my
> bathroom has a certain romantic charm to it :-) Haven't looked into 8x10
> cameras at all, but I imagine they're large beasties :-)
> 
> Brian Ellis wrote:
> 
> > If you want to really blow their minds don't mess around with little 
> > formats
> > like 6x7 or 4x5, go straight to 8x10 and show them your contact prints on
> > Azo paper. : - )
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Mark Rabiner" <mark@r...>
> > To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> > Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2005 4:55 AM
> > Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: Air fiber based vs. current photo papers>
> >
> > > In any case, one of these days I'm going to snag a 6x6 TLR, or a 6x7 or
> > > a 4x5 and really blow their minds :-)
> > >
> > > Scott
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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