Black and White book printing, what is the best quality option?

[analoguey]

Bound RC paper books, printed in the darkroom, bound by a book -binder?


/Tossing the idea. Yet to try it myself.

[Larry Kellogg]

Bound RC paper books, printed in the darkroom, bound by a book -binder?


/Tossing the idea. Yet to try it myself.

Well, that's kind of what other people are suggesting. I'm not in love with RC paper. I print RC for quick work prints to see if the image is worth working more thoroughly in fibre.

[analoguey]

Scan the prints and Print them? It seems like the criteria set are going to clash at one point or the other. You might want to rejig some of them.

[Larry Kellogg]

Scan the prints and Print them? It seems like the criteria set are going to clash at one point or the other. You might want to rejig some of them.

I'm scanning prints, and the quality of the scans from my finished prints using the Epson 10000XL is stunning, but I'm not going to print on an inkjet printer. I don't like the results at all.

I guess the answer is that we're stuck with CMYK printers for printing black and white, even though the output is far from ideal. Kind of a bummer.

[Oren Grad]

I should have mentioned that I'm not interested in inkjet printing. The day I sold my Epson 3880 was a good day for me. I hated the printer and its output. I'm also not going to scan negatives. I love working in the darkroom producing silver gelatin prints and I'm not going to redo all that work in Photoshop to only have it come out looking different when printed on an inkjet printer.

Even if you're starting from prints, once they're scanned, you or somebody else is still going to need to do a lot of tweaking to get the final product to look right to you.

So, the question is, how can I get a book to look as close to my silver gelatin prints as possible? I'm afraid that bound fibre prints is not really what I want, and that duotones are only for the rich, as someone pointed out. Where does that leave me?

Mostly out of luck, I fear.

Toward the end of his life, David Vestal made a few little books starting with mostly print scans but also including a few digital monochrome jpg captures. His output medium was inkjet on inexpensive matte paper, and he "bound" them himself inexpensively - I'll have to dig out one of mine to remind myself of exactly what he used for that, but it wasn't fancy. Certainly, they look quite different from his silver prints. The relevant point was that he was in your position - didn't want to scan negatives, didn't have money to burn - but decided it was worth investing some sweat equity in doing the work himself with the tools readily available to him, to see how they came out and to be able to offer his work in a form that was far more affordable than what his silver prints were going for by that point.

Dick Phillips showed me some of his "books", too - spiral-bound sets of RC prints.

So I guess the advice is to see whether you can get away for a while from the idea of closely mimicking your FB prints, and just experiment with whatever forms of output may be more easily within your reach, to see whether you can make something of them that might be different but will still be pleasing to you.

[Larry Kellogg]

Even if you're starting from prints, once they're scanned, you or somebody else is still going to need to do a lot of tweaking to get the final product to look right to you.



Mostly out of luck, I fear.

Toward the end of his life, David Vestal made a few little books starting with mostly print scans but also including a few digital monochrome jpg captures. His output medium was inkjet on inexpensive matte paper, and he "bound" them himself inexpensively - I'll have to dig out one of mine to remind myself of exactly what he used for that, but it wasn't fancy. Certainly, they look quite different from his silver prints. The relevant point was that he was in your position - didn't want to scan negatives, didn't have money to burn - but decided it was worth investing some sweat equity in doing the work himself with the tools readily available to him, to see how they came out and to be able to offer his work in a form that was far more affordable than what his silver prints were going for by that point.

Dick Phillips showed me some of his "books", too - spiral-bound sets of RC prints.

So I guess the advice is to see whether you can get away for a while from the idea of closely mimicking your FB prints, and just experiment with whatever forms of output may be more easily within your reach, to see whether you can make something of them that might be different but will still be pleasing to you.

This has been an interesting discussion. I'm led to the conclusion that the world has not improved much for black and white photographers, in terms of getting their work printed, but that it has improved for color photographers. To make matters worse, the color photographers have foisted their problems with color casts onto the black and white photographers, something we should not have to deal with, LOL.

It's too bad that there can't be one single print on demand service dedicated to printing black and white work, on printers that do not use color inks.

I love David Vestal's photography books, I have "The Craft of Photography" and "The Art of Black and White Enlarging". I'm still not willing to print on an inkjet printer, though. ;-) Thanks for acknowledging that the output is quite different, I'm grown tired of people telling me that they can emulate silver prints with their inkjet printers.

I think spiral binding looks cheap, sorry, although I do have a copy of Edward Weston's work at Point Lobos which is spiral bound with wide, flat, white plastic spiral, that sets it off nicely against the black cover. I kind of like the idea of drilling holes through the RC or fibre prints and binding them with screws and a metal edge, as was done for Bryan Schutmaat's book: Grays the Mountain Sends

http://cm.silasfinch.org/t/r-7FE8967...40EF23F30FEDED

[bigdog]

Film and Darkroom User (FADU), the British photo forum published a yearbook using Blurb. I think it was well done, especially for the price. I wouldn't totally ignore this option. The success of the FADU book probably had to do with the prep of the images. It was all done by Les McLean, and he knows what he's doing.

http://www.blurb.co.uk/books/5745601-fadu-2014

[jnantz]

hi larry

i am not sure if you have ever thought about making books yourself
keith smith's series on making books is wonderful
http://www.keithsmithbooks.com
there is also a book called - books boxes and portfolios by franz zeier.

its really not hard to make your own books by hand, you can do it a few different ways using
both rc and fiber paper. i've been doing them for a while ...

you can make closed spine books ( like a hard cover book ) by stitching the pages together and pasting the front and back page
to the cover (you make by hand of course ) its helpful to have nipping presses and all sorts of sophisticated book making equipment
but you can also find lesser expensive things through places like gaylordbrothers library supply who sells conservation "stuff" to archives and libraries.
another route is to make an open spine book. you just make the pages (not stitched + glued together as packet )
and you stitch the front and back cover together, and the stitching become part of the beauty of the book.
its also called by some a japanese binding ..

keith smith's books have all sorts of beautiful and intricate stitches explained in them, and he really explains everything in
detail. franz zeier's book is more of a basic hands on manual.

as i said, i've been doing hand made books for a while, some are for gifts, others donations to archives, and on commission
last count i think i have made between 25 and 30 of them.

if you live near an art school, sometimes they have workshops and classes on bookmaking ..

good luck !
john

[Larry Kellogg]

Thanks a lot, John, perhaps this is the way forward for me. I would love to see a photo of your fibre and RC books.

I don't think the problems with Blurb books have that much to do with how much you know, but are a result of using four colors to print black and white. Colors shift during the printing, and you're left with unsatisfactory output.

[DannL]

Though I have little to add in the way of wisdom here, I have always been a big fan of tipped-in plates as found in some books. Whether it be actual photographs, original etchings, early lithographs, color plates, etc; I have always found this method of presentation both stimulating & elegant. My interest and fascination with tipped-in plates was a learned appreciation. It occurred when I started collecting "original" photographic prints. Within a short time of starting, spotting ordinary reproductions became second nature. I would never expect the average patron to recognize the difference between a reproduction print and a photograph, but a collector of photographic works would recognize the difference immediately. I have always felt that the only authentic way to present one's work is to display the "original work". If I were to accumulate a collection of photographs worth presenting in book format, I would prefer to have the books printed without images and affix each photograph in by hand. Actual book printing costs would be lower I must assume, as the photographs would be affixed after the book was bound. But, not having any direct publishing experience myself . . .

When I am referring to tipped-in plates, I mean plates that are placed into the book by affixing the plate to a page by adhesive points near the corners at the back of the plate. In some cases the plates may be affixed to a page only at the top of the plate in several locations. Glued-in plates are another option. But, I think that would be a more difficult process to get right, unless the photographs were affixed prior to binding. Some random thoughts following six cups of coffee.