8x10 poor man's enlargement

[fsibold]

I have some 8x10 negatives and I would like to enlarge them. I have no 8x10 enlarger, so I did contact prints.
I took pictures of this contact prints with a Pentax 6x7 (150mm lens and extension tube).
I enlarged one of the Pentax pictures to 16x20.
I'm a newbie in enlarging.
Did somebody use this technique with succes ? Has somebody a recommandation, except buying an 8x10 enlarger !

[ic-racer]

Seems reasonable, but I'd think that if you were there with the 6x7cm camera in the first place the results would be better than going though the trouble of the 8x10in negative.

How did they come out?

[Leigh]

I would suggest making an 8"x10" enlargement from your 6x7 negative and comparing it to the original print.

That will tell you what fidelity you can expect from your method.

As racer pointed out, unless you're planning to have an 8x10 enlarger in the future to take advantage of the high-quality negatives, you're introducing additional time, effort, and expense into the process but deriving no benefit therefrom.

- Leigh

[BetterSense]

That's not completely accurate. 8x10 cameras, with their different physics and movements, can still impact your photography the way a 6x7 camera cannot.

[Vaughn]

If your enlarger can handle 4x5's, that would give you a little more a little better enlargement with the 4x5 neg, it having about 3x the acreage of the 6x9 (everything else being equal, of course).

I am assuming you just have a few 8x10 negs to enlarge and this will not be your standard way of producing work.

The high-end way to go about it would be to have the 8x10 neg scanned, Photoshop the scan to your heart's delight, and then have a negative made from the file at the size you want the print , and just contact that onto sliver gelatin papers. The learning curve and the expense is a bit steep.

[matthew klos]

Yeah, there just seems to be way to much work here. To go out and make a 8x10 neg than to just go back to sizing it down, seems like a real waste to me. 8x10 contact prints can look really sexy.

[Brian Ellis]

Considering that you've made a 16x20 print from a 6x7 negative that was itself a photograph of an 8x10 print your print quality is considerably worse than what you would have gotten from an 8x10 (or even 6x7) of the original scene enlarged to 16x20. Buy a scanner that accepts 8x10 negatives, learn to use it, you'll get much better results sending the scan to a decent lab and you'll go to a lot less trouble once you learn how to scan.

[atlcruiser]

If your enlarger can handle 4x5's, that would give you a little more a little better enlargement with the 4x5 neg, it having about 3x the acreage of the 6x9 (everything else being equal, of course).

I am assuming you just have a few 8x10 negs to enlarge and this will not be your standard way of producing work.

The high-end way to go about it would be to have the 8x10 neg scanned, Photoshop the scan to your heart's delight, and then have a negative made from the file at the size you want the print , and just contact that onto sliver gelatin papers. The learning curve and the expense is a bit steep.

Vaughn,
I have messed a bit with digital negatives and i agree the curve is very steep...the expense is not all that bad really if you have a good basic set up to start with. The main expense for me was/is the time to fine tune the process.

One reason I went to 810 is to do away with enlargers! I am happy for now contact printing.

Do you know of anyone making digital negatives comercially?

I have heard rumor that there was a 810 convesion head for the bessler 45 series enlargers. Any truth to that?


thanks

[matthew klos]

There is a conversation head, but it was not well designed. We have one at my school.

[Vaughn]

Vaughn,

Do you know of anyone making digital negatives comercially?

I have heard rumor that there was a 810 convesion head for the bessler 45 series enlargers. Any truth to that?


thanks

No I do not. Years ago a photographer I know was having 4x5 negatives scanned and after working on the scans, he had 16x20 negs made by a service bureau (I believe they were made on film -- "Imagesetter" may be what it is called). He liked the process because he could make images from negatives that had problems with such things as local contrast that made if difficult, if not impossible to print in the darkroom. He said he no longer had to stand for hours in the darkroom -- but instead had to sit for hours in front of a computer screen! Always trade-offs!

I believe this was one of the images he showed me at the time of this discussion:

http://www.huntingtonwitherill.com/gallery/index/detail/529/21.html

But he had the process nailed down very well. He did not have to worry about exposure time, contrast, or burning/dodging -- that was all dialed in in the making of the enlarged negative. But it did take time and working closely with the service bureau to achieve it.

Vaughn

[Brian C. Miller]

I have some 8x10 negatives and I would like to enlarge them. I have no 8x10 enlarger, ...

Graflex made the Graflarger, which is a negative carrier and light source back for their cameras. If your camera's back is removable, you could make something similar for your camera.

[atlcruiser]

Thanks...I saw some of Clyde Butchers work last fall and got to talking to him about digital negtives in LF. He showed me some of his results and I was blown away!

I am interested but I have waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many other projects to addess right now

[Leigh]

Graflex made the Graflarger, which is a negative carrier and light source back for their cameras. If your camera's back is removable, you could make something similar for your camera.
That's true, although the camera might not have sufficient bellows extension for smaller prints (like 16" x 20").

- Leigh

[Leigh]

I have some 8x10 negatives and I would like to enlarge them. I have no 8x10 enlarger, so I did contact prints.
Some of the honchos at GetDPI.com use full-size inter-negatives for their larger prints, generally from MF negatives.

As I understand it, the negative is printed on mylar using a regular photo-quality inkjet printer, then the final image is contact-printed in the darkroom.

I purchased several of these prints and have been quite impressed by the quality, certainly as good as enlarger prints.

Perhaps a lab that normally makes digital prints could do this for you.


- Leigh

[jon.oman]

Bostick & Sullivan provide a digital negative service. You provide the digital file, and they will make the digital negative to the size you want, with a profile for cyanotype, etc. A guy by the name of Dave Hyams does the work for them. You may want to contact Bostick & Sullivan to get the details.

[johnielvis]

most expensive part is the lens---get a process lens that covers 8x10 at the smaller magnifications--I have a kodak ektar 203mm that I use--it's a camera lens that does dual duty--so it's "free" for me---it just has coverage for 8x10 to 16x20 and anything smaller. I use this on the beseler 810mxt--this is a factory converted beseler 45mxt with the 810 conversion kit---the kit is simple--basically a cold light head with slots for glass/glassless carriers and diffusion sheets--you canbuild one yourself---before I got that I was building (but did not finish, since I found the 810mxt before I finished) a diy enlarger---started as an overhead projector....way too hot--negatives curl on the light stage---SO--use a light box instead....but the lenses for those overheads suck---they're bright but blurry in the edges---and middle---so what I was going to do was use thelightbox on the BASEBOARD of the omega d2 I had---put the negatives on the lightbox..use darkcloth or a cardboard box as a "bellows" to keep the light in there---lens is a lens with 8x10 coverage like I said, process lens in the normal lens place---THEN---where the negative stage is, you take off the condensers and put in a MIRROR up there (like from the overhead projector) at 45 degrees...this allows wall projection/enlargement---this will likely work better than the converted overhead since you have a real lens mount and precision focusing/alignment.

SO try that--yougot a "small" (4x5) enlarger...get a cheap lightbox--youhave a cardboard box or darkcloth and black tape for "bellows"---you NEED adecent lens though---g-claron or smaller apo ronar will work very nicely...lens is the most expensive part.

[fsibold]

Thank you for all the suggestions. I'll try to make an 8x10 enlargement from the 6x7 negative and compare it with the 8x10 contact print. But first, I'll make a new negative with a Toyo view camera, using a 120 film back and a Rodenstock Ysaron reproduction lens.
The 16x20 I made from the 6x7 Pentax negative was not fabulous.

[Bill_1856]

That's essentially how Edward WESTON enlarged his 3x4 Graflex negatives to 8x10.