Digital BW, The Print

I have a photographer client, I would say very much in the west coast
tradition, likes red filters, good strong tonality and came from the
darkroom tradition, including workshops with Allan Ross and others in
the past.
I've been drum scanning his 4x5s and printing with Selenium inks on
PhotoRag for him for a few years now. After some new papers came out I
finally liked for PK, and I got an ink setup I found acceptable for
them for now, we made several prints from the same neg...
One as always, Selenium on HPR.
One UCK3PK on HPR Baryta with a dmax a fill one point higher.
and he had a silver print output from the file as well from one of
these new offerings.

To his surprise, after wishing for years for some digital solution
with the feel of his older silver prints...
He liked the Selenium HPR prints the best.
I respect the wishes of those like Bruce and others who want something
with more reflection density range than the fine art papers offer, and
I think it will come along at some point.
But I don't think the finesse is there in the look of it yet, and the
monochromatic inks and fine art papers have had time to evolve into
something that really speaks for those whose work the approach really
suites. Hope that makes sense.
Also, you just can't take the same file and print with all those
processes and have the process be the criteria, you have to optimize
the tonal qualities in the file to make each set of materials shine in
their own way. In some ways the old S curve made lovely silver for
those who knew how to print.
Tyler
http://www.custom-digital.com/

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "pr_roark"
<pr_roark@...> wrote:
>
>  Bruce Watson <bwyg@> wrote:
> >
> > ... It seems like an excellent idea. The only problem is that 
> > it's really expensive. ...
> 
> As an aside, I tried all sorts of ways to make silver prints from 
> digital files early in the digital transition.  For a couple of years 
> what I did that was the most affordable and very satisfying (I kept 
> final control in the darkroom) was to have the local Samy's camera 
> store make 8x10 internegatives using their Fujix Pictography 
> machine.  The machine was never intended for this purpose, but I 
> found their 400 ppi (true RGB pixels) overhead transparency media 
> made fine internegs that enlarged to 16 x 20 very nicely.  My Beseler 
> 4x5 enlarger was easy and cheap to make an 8x10 head for, and an Apo 
> Rodagon process lens was also very affordable and did a great job.
> 
> I think there clearly is demand for silver prints from digital 
> files.  While I probably won't be going that route for my own prints, 
> if a customer wanted to have a silver print of one of my images, I'd 
> farm it out to a service bureau that had a good laser to silver 
> process.  Maybe I ought to even have that as an option noted at the 
> gallery.
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com
>