It doesn't tire me but it is an unanswerable question. All depends on where you are coming from with your photography and weahter you do it for fun or for a living. If you do it for a living the world is a very differrnt place. As most here know, I shoot film for all my personal work and a lot of comercial work ... mostly 5x7. However, when it comes to working for a living I o wahtever will bring the job in at a satisfatory level to the client and a satisfactory profit to me.
BTW, the onky point on which I disagree with the OP is that it is far easier to scan and print digitally than it is to make an analog print. Yup it is easier to do it in a way tha arrives at a medicore or at best acceptable print but a brilliant print takes every bit as much work to produce digitally as does an analog print.
Next month Craig Roberts http://www.abqartists.com/roberts.html and I are going to Death Valley. We'll be out there 2/26 to 3/1 if you want to join us. Just for grins, Because he's film and I'm film and digital, I'm going to ask him to make the best 8x10 contact print he can and I'm going to do the same with my D70. We'll try to do the same scene. Then we'll mat and frame them in identical manner. We'll have people, photographers and non, look at them under identical lighting at a reasonable distance, and see which one they like the best. I did this with two of my pictures last year and guess what? Just about a 50/50 split and the photographers were hard put to tell one from the other. Most ended up guessing. Now I know the protests this will start, but the facts speak for themselves. It's apple and oranges. Two different ways to make a photograph you enjoy. I think the bottom line is that people are out making pictures.
> but a brilliant print takes every bit as much work to produce digitally as does an analog print.
Maybe more, but the next 1000 prints are a piece of cake. What I love most is that you can work on a print incrementally, so I might spend days on a print, spread over months or more. In that sense, you will put a LOT more time and effort into a digital print. As Paul Butzi said, you can always burn in one more pine tree in background.
Ed Richards
http://www.epr-art.com
"but the next 1000 prints are a piece of cake. "
Aye, there's the rub! That's a large part of the reason folks won't pay as much for a photograph that's arguably more beautiful than a mediocre watercolor, whether it's made in a wet or dry darkroom. Having made many of both, I understand the differences between silver and digital printing, but the spectre of reasonably easy reproducibility haunts both.
Do "limited edition" guarantees really help? Do customers really believe them? Should they?
hmmm...never intended the discussion to degrade to this point. Just wondered who preferred chem prints to digi prints. Guess staying on a specific topic is not easy around here.
I prefer digital for color, and film/paper for B&W.
Bill,
The printers most often used for this level of quality are those made by Epson (4800, 7800, 9600) using their newest K3 pigment ink system. In conunction with Crane's Museo Silver Rag or perhaps some of the fine Hahnemuhle papers, the prints are magnificent and fully archival. Though very impressive with color, this combination is at its best when working with B&W images.
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