Digital and/or conventional printing options

[james mickelson]

And there-in lays the problem with the digital realm. It is upon us and many can do amazing things with it but, no, the galleries and buyers aren't yet interested in fine art on run of the mill printers. Iris and the like are being offered, though they are extremely expensive, but don't command the dollars that prints made the traditional way do. It will become the norm in time but not yet. Lenswork Magazine has an offer that is wonderful for people like me that want to have fine art by great masters but can't afford the bucks to buy it. The masters (Wynn Bullock, Huntington Whitherill, Barnbaum, Dusard, ect) produce a print that is just as they want it to look and lenswork has that print scanned and outputted back(?) producing a negative of whatever proportions the artist wants it to be. That neg is then contact printed to the artists satisfaction and offered for sale through the magazine for substantially less than a similar print done by the hand of the artist. I purchased one and it is exactly the same as a print I see all the time in LA that I can't afford even if I sold my wife and first born. And it is done on normal photographic paper (FB). You have to see it to believe it. I am going to get my negs scanned to files(I have a very good scanner and very large memory) and take the files to a bureau to have them outputted onto neg material and print them as contact prints in my darkroom. Already burned and dodged. One of the questions I have though is what do the tonalities become for an enlarged neg? You have to fill in the spaces so what goes in between the original spaces and how does it look? James

[john costo]

First off, sorry that my list wasn't in HTML format. I looked for a link which would provide instruction on how to tag the sites, but couldn't find one. Second, the first Lightjet print is always a little pricey (about $150 for a 16x20), but reprints (at the same time or in the future) are cheap, and they're identical. So if you're selling your work, that's a relief. Last, the Lightjet prints I have are the best prints I've EVER had. They are of the jaw-drop variety, and I doubt it's because I'm a great photographer, because I'm not. The colors are so sharp and vivid and similar to the original chrome. You really owe it to yourself to experience the Lightjet just once.

[David F. Stein]

I agree about LensWork Quarterly-I think Brooks Jensen had hit upon a workable marriage of traditional and digital, getting the best from each medium. However, I remember John Swarkowski lecturing about 12 years ago that "soon" that the images in laser printed fine art books would be indsitinguishable from photographic prints!

[David F. Stein]

I agree about LensWork Quarterly-I think Brooks Jensen had hit upon a workable marriage of traditional and digital, getting the best from each medium. However, I remember John Swarkowski lecturing about 12 years ago that "soon" the images in laser printed fine art books would be indsitinguishable from photographic prints!

[Simon_443]

I'm guessing that Szarkowski was referring to laser-scanned negatives, the quality of which greatly impressed Ansel himself (see p. 251 and 364 of Adams' autobiography). Indeed, I'd wager that to the average person on the street, any of the laser-scanned duotones printed in any of Ansel's books or calendars produced by Little Brown and Gardner Lithograph (for more than 15 years now) ARE indistinguishable from an original print.

[Simon_443]

First sentence of my post immediately above SHOULD read,

"I'm guessing that Szarkowski was referring to fine art books that were printed from laser-scanned negatives. . . "

[Erik Ryberg]

Yes but by the time I've gone to that much trouble and expense to make a photograph, I don't really care much about the average person on the street. It's the picky people I'm out to please.

[Bill Glickman]

I like many others have come to the conclusion, digital is the wave of the future. So many unusable chromes can be saved and made into great prints...so I started using Photoshop and was amazed at its power, the ultimate photographers tool.

But, I became very frustrated with the exhorbitant price of drum scans at service bureaus, and the varying quality... and considering the amount of chromes I shoot, (4x5 & 8x10), I bit the bullet and bought a brand spanking new Howtek 8000 drum scanner, 8000 optical dpi, 4.2 Dmax, 4.0 D range. Although the hardware / software package was outrageously expensive, ($28,000) I felt it was my only missing link. Without a high quality scan, you are defeating the benefits of the digital process. Now, I am getting much better scans and in the long run, maybe many years, it might pay for itself?? If users on this forum are interested in getting high quality drum scans, but do not always need them "next day" I would be willing to do them at substantial discounts vs. service bureaus. Email me if you are interested.