How good are contact prints in reality?

[duff photographer]

Howdo all,

This may sound like a controversial question but it's not meant to be.

As the title says, how good are contact prints in reality?

The reason I ask is that I have thought about getting into ULF photography (or maybe sticking with the range 5x7 to 8x10) and doing contact printing - I lke the concept of a super sharp image showing a great range in tonality printed on silver (or platinum, etc.) where the image leaps out at you. However I've had a look at some contact prints, both 4x5 and 8x10 taken with good lenses, e.g., Goerz Red Dot Apo Artars, and have been distinctly underwhelmed with them.

I understand that images printed using the contact printing technique are supposed to ooze with detail (film and photographic paper allowing). I haven't seen this in any of the contacts I've seen. Even with the naked eye they do not appear sharp. Under the loupe there is no detail at all. Indeed, I've seen good (non-LF) inkjet prints show more detail (resolution rather than contrast) and even better tonality although under the loupe you see the pixelations (which I can never get used to hence my liking for silver prints).

Admittedly, none of the contact prints were taken with modern lenses but I can't imagine that the older 'good' lenses are that poor in resolving power even those which are a little compromised due to the larger image circle needed to cover 8x10. Is it that ALL the contact prints I have seen in person are just bad because the person making them had poor technique (some well known names here), a result of poor equipment (not likely), or, dare I say, contact prints aren't all they're cracked up to be?

I like silver prints - there's more substance to them and they're more marketable than an inkjet print (which can nonetheless be excellent in quality) so I'm hoping I am missing something.



Cheers,
Duff

[Bob Salomon]

You are missing not having seen properly made contact prints made on a real contact printing box with full control of each individual light in the box and with a properly exposed negative taken with a good lens at optimal aperture and within the resolution range the lens was designed for. And, with a properly focused camera with all movements under control.

[goamules]

A contact print is 200% better than a computer screen view, and 132% better than an enlarged print. As far as how much better than an inkjet computer print, I don't know. I'm sure there are ton's of sites that go into this.

I'm not sure what you were looking at, but none of my direct positives (large wetplate) or contact prints are "...do not appear sharp...lacking in detail..."

[Sal Santamaura]

A contact print is no sharper than the negative it's made from and the paper it's printed on.

The larger the format, and the more a scene deviates from being in one plane, the more difficult it is to keep an entire negative in focus without resorting to very small taking lens apertures. ULF exacerbates these challenges to an extreme. Thus, diffraction-inducing camera lens openings are quite common, and no chemical direct printing method will undo the resultant blur. Unsharp masks might help, but I've not heard of their use being common in ULF contact printing. Some papers/processes are incapable of rendering the detail present in even an optimally sharp negative.

Inkjet prints are usually made after sharpening is applied to a file in post processing. They are typically from sub-ULF originals shot with shorter focal length lenses, so larger apertures cause less diffraction loss. Sharpness of those prints is artificial and, in my experience, breaks down on close inspection.

Lately I've been shooting a bit at the Grand Canyon using my Phillips Compact II. The subject matter, as I frame it, is mostly at infinity. Contacts of the resulting negatives, made on Ilford Multigrade Warmtone RC, are as sharp as any I've ever seen on any material. Dick Phillips and I have exchanged prints recently. Since relocating to Texas, he no longer has a darkroom, and does new work mainly with small format digital cameras. Upon seeing one of my Grand Canyon prints, Dick noted that he considered 8x10 contacts to be photography's zenith, and said that, despite his current lack of facilities, he held onto one of his 8x10 cameras and some Tri-X still lives in his freezer. I hope he finds a way to use them.

[Pere Casals]

This may sound like a controversial question but it's not meant to be.

This is not controversial at all, it can be measured on your own.

If you contact print an USAF 1951 target on RC Ilford paper and you inspect the result with a powerfull magnifier you'll see that paper resolves some 50 lp/mm. Perhaps Fiber Based paper, being superior on other concepts, can resolve less...


If you have a sharp negative, from a technically perfect shot, probably contact print will put on paper all sharpness that an ULF lens can deliver. In practice a ULF lens providing a large image circle won't deliver these 50 lp/mm performance that a common paper is capable.

What I'm saying is that if you contact print what can limit sharpness is lens performance, shake, suboptimal aperture, or even film.

But... can anybody see 50lp/mm with naked eye? the answer is nobody can, until I know, even in the case he has a 140 sight score. One can see some 6lp/mm, normally.

It is very difficult that an LF enlarger can degradate from native 50lp/mm quality of a perfect shot and an paper can have ...to something under 7lp/mm that a "good" human eye can notice, with 1:1 enlargement.

So... why contact printing? First is that microcontrast is displayed with all its magnificiency, and then you can take a magnifier and to explore the paper to see an incredible detail. By naked eye not everybody will know if it is contact printed or enlarged 1:1, not me at least, and to me it will be difficult saying it with a magnifier if it is not a very, very sharp shot. If you project the USAF 1951 target with an enlarger and see it with a grain magnifier pehaps you can measure some 20 lp/mm in the target projection.


What is true is that a contact print is perfection, if you just want to print to the same negative size. And this can be checked even with a 20x magnifier.


About market value... some Adam's Monrise prints can be worth $700000, same with ink is $7.

Sebastiao Salgado since 2007 shot Genesis with a Canon DSLR, but later FF digital files were printed in film (I think TMax) to obtain enlargements, this was because desired analog consistency with shots made with MF Tri-X until 2007, and because market demanded silver darkroom prints from Salgado, not ink-jets.

[Drew Wiley]

Nice to know Dick P. is still at it. I own the ninth camera he made, and it will easily outlast me. But in terms of quality, or even that whole contact vs enlargement
debate, it's like asking if pizzas are really good or not. Depends who made them, what ingredients. Some are wonderful, some are awful. I don't contact print very
often, but when I do, I use the same papers as for enlargement, esp if they tone in a manner I like. MGWT FB is a favorite paper for 8x10 contacts.

[duff photographer]

Thanks everyone - that's reassuring to know it's the system and operator at fault in these poor contact prints.

Inkjet prints are usually made after sharpening is applied to a file in post processing. They are typically from sub-ULF originals shot with shorter focal length lenses, so larger apertures cause less diffraction loss. Sharpness of those prints is artificial and, in my experience, breaks down on close inspection.
.

Absolutely agree with this hence my preference for silver.

...and I tend to agree with Dick Phillips comment that 8x10 is the best compromise between negative size, lens performance and usability - the reason why I think I'll try contact printing at that and related sizes (e.g., 6x10).

There is a reasonable amount of information on the interweb about contact printing but can anyone direct me to a book or a site that really gets to grip with the subtleties of the art?

Many thanks,
Duff.

[Mark Sampson]

take a look at michaelandpaula.com. They are apostles of contact printing (and the contact-printing paper, Lodima, that they sell.) Both of them are very fine photographers, and viewing their prints will be the best modern explanation of 'why' people print by contact. No reso charts necessary!

[Fr. Mark]

Not having a working LF enlarger nor quite ready to jump into scanning, I contact print everything. usually as cyanotypes on typing paper or if I want a really nice print, not just a working proof, on de-chalked Arches Hot Press (an hour in 5% HCl takes the chalk/calcium carbonate out that will destroy cyanotypes over time). On my best negatives there's a lot more information on 5x7 than shows up on a cyanotype. I suspect this would be true of Platinum prints. In both cases there is not emulsion, the metal salt solutions penetrate the fibers of the paper surface and on exposure to UV light turn into very small insoluble prussian blue or platinum metal pieces. Thus, the ultimate resolution is limited by the texture of the paper and the fiber sizes and ability to trap insoluble particles. Normally, this doesn't bother me and the non-photographers all gush about my best work, but eventually I'm going to move to some sort of scanning so I can extract the detail and enlarge it and otherwise tinker more with the images w/o locking myself in a darkroom (I have kids I should see...). One of the reasons I'm afraid of ULF is that when done right there's still more information on the negative than you can see as a contact print and I'd want to enlarge and tinker with 14x17's. Run away run away... FWIW I'm using a Sinar P and sinar shutter and DB mounted lenses of at least 1970's vintage possibly more recent. All are coated Rodenstock or Schneider glass. I can resolve the moire patterns and general weave of overlapping sheer window treatment fabric on the negative at 5x7 I think I used a rodenstock 150 from across the room for that. but it doesn't come out well as a cyanotype. I've not tried, but I think I could resolve it fine on glossy RCMGIV w/o much trouble.

[Drew Wiley]

There are pros and cons. I like to enlarge because it brings out a lot of detail and visual information that just wouldn't show up in a contact print. And as far as tonality is concerned, there are advanced controls like masking that can bring out a lot of texture or microtonality to seriously compete with contact prints. You can have your cake and eat it too, esp since you can either contact and enlarge most 8x10 negs if desired. But it's not surprising how people prefer contact printing for the sake of special chlorobromide papers or alt media like Pt/Pd and carbon printing. It's all good, just different. But calling one path inherently better than another is nonsense. Depends more on the person than the materials. There are masters of both.