Creating Digital Negative

[Jerry Cunningham]

Dear Sir:
I am a beginner but serious. I shoot 4x5 and 8x10 Black and White. I want to take one of my silver negatives and create a retouched 4X5 negative that I can use in my conventual enlarger.
What kind of equipment do I have to have to do such a thing? Or is using an outside digital lab the most economical? I would GREATLY appreciate any help.
Sincerely,
Jerry Cunningham

[steve simmons]

If you want a traditonal neg you will need a film output device. I doubt you will want to buy one yourself. I would suggest finding a lab/service bureau to do this. You will also need to have your films canned which you may or may not want to do yourself.

An alternative is to make a neg to contact print. Many articles have been done on how to use a consumer table top digital printer to do this. CmeraArts magazie in their Dec 04/Jan 05 issue has a very good article on this. (I am no longer associated with CameraArts and will not benefit from your contacting them).

www.cameraarts.com

steve simmons

[steve simmons]

PS

You could use Polaroid Type 55 P/N film in your camera and not need a darkroom at all. This film scans very well and would be a great place to start.

If you are new to large format there are several articles in the Free Articles section of the web site listed below that might be helpful.

steve simmons
www.viewcamera.com

[Bruce Watson]

In the old days, people would retouch directly on the negative. The backing side of most negative material today still has some retouching tooth. You can use retouching "paints" like the old SpoTone materials, or retouching pencils, chalks, etc. When you are done, toss 'em in the enlarger and away you go. That was a serious art form all its own; people used to make their living as negative retouchers in commercial photography studios. Those famous 1940s Hollywood portraits were done that way, for example.

Today, it's much more likely that people will scan the negative, modify the image in a photo editor, then output the new image to a film recorder to make a negative for contact printing (no reason you can't enlarge, from a 4x5 original to, say, a 16x20 negative). You can also use an inkjet printer to make your negative by printing on clear film. There are books about how to do this. Burkholder comes to mind:


http://www.danburkholder.com/Pages/main_pages/book_info_main_page1.htm

I suggest getting a copy of Burkholder's book (or a similar book) and reading up on what it takes before you go looking for a service bureau that can make a film recorder or inkjet negative for you. That way you'll have a better idea of the terminology and capabilities - make life easier for you and the service bureau if you can both talk the same language. Might save you some expensive trial and error experiments too.

[steve simmons]

The technique described by Mark Nelson in the Dec/Jan CameraArts is a more up to date method and has gotten a lot of attention.

www.cameraarts.com

to get an issue or look in Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc.

steve simmons

[Kirk Gittings]

The Mark Nelson approach is very well laid out, very clear. Though I ultimately decided to fully explore inkjet before moving on to other tradigital methods, I learned an enormous amount from buying and reading his text.

[Ralph Barker]

Kirk - tradigital - is that the same as digalog? ;-)

[Kirk Gittings]

I'm not sure Ralph. Tradigital is a term I stole from Newman at Calumet at the last VC conference. He uses it in a different sense. To me it aptly describes where I am at right now, still shooting traditional film but printing digitally.

[Christian Olivet]

Jerry, I was just considering the same thing for some of my negatives. It would be great to do all burning dodging and retouching in photoshop and then output a new negative wiith all corrections made. The solution is to send the digital file to a lab and have them out put to film with a LVT film recorder. These machines have an amazing resolution and your neg will look just like an in camera neg but hopefully it will print very easily and better. I have never done it myself but have seen the work of Peter Gasser online with the use of this methot and let me tell you, it is impressing.
Now the counterpatrt it that this will set you back a couple of hundred dollars.

[Brian Ellis]

I attended a presentation by Mark Nelson a couple nights ago in which he demonstrated his method of making enlarged negatives from 35mm originals. He displayed some of his pt/pd prints made from these negatives. Pretty impressive. No special equipment is needed. He 's produced a CD book for about $60 and it should tell you all you need to know. Sorry I don't have his web site address handy, maybe Kirk has it or you could Google for it.