Digital Negatives etc..

[Sylvester Graham]

Does anyone have any experience working with digital negatives? Or should I say, does anyone have any succesful experience working with them? I am coming across a living sitiuation where I'll no longer be able to have an enlarger, and am instead thinking of scanning in film and outputting it to an 8x10 digital negative for contact printing on silver paper.

I friend of mine tried this for a few months, with very little sucess. He ended up hating Dan Burkholder. (Dan's a great guy I'm sure)

Does anyone else have better strories, or maybe tips for beginners? Do you think it's possible for a digital negative that's been scanned from film printed onto traditional silver paper to reach the level of a regular silver print?

Would sending a file to a professional service be a better idea, and have them output onto a film?

Thanks-
-Alex

[Marko]

Just like with any technical discipline, you need to be able to comfortably control all three aspects of the process (input, processing and output) before you go into the more exotic techniques.

If you don't have much experience in any of those three aspects, perhaps you should start with regular paper inkjet prints before you move on to digital negatives. You will invariably make mistakes in the process and working with paper is both cheaper and simpler, since you can experiment in smaller formats at first and work your way up.

[Brian Ellis]

A few years ago I attended a lecture/brief workshop by a guy named Mark Nelson, who has a system for making enlarged negatives digitally that works well for him and also worked for a friend of mine who tried it. Like everything else digital, it's a slow learning process and I remember my friend had to call Mark a few times to get help but eventually he mastered it. You can learn more about the system, and order a CD that contains the teaching materials, at www.precisiondigitalnegatives.com.

[bob carnie]

I will second Mark Nelsons methods, He and Sandy King did a workshop here at Elevator and the students were easily producing platinums from digital negatives in three days.
I

A few years ago I attended a lecture/brief workshop by a guy named Mark Nelson, who has a system for making enlarged negatives digitally that works well for him and also worked for a friend of mine who tried it. Like everything else digital, it's a slow learning process and I remember my friend had to call Mark a few times to get help but eventually he mastered it. You can learn more about the system, and order a CD that contains the teaching materials, at www.precisiondigitalnegatives.com.

[Wayne Crider]

http://www.hybridphoto.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=8

[windpointphoto]

If your friend had problems with Dan Burkholders methods, he was not following the instructions. I got the Inkjet Neg Companion, an Epson 2200 and the first one worked great for platinum printing.

[Sylvester Graham]

Thanks for the tips. I just wanted to clear up that I'm only a beginner in the realm of the digital negative. I'm very experienced with traditional film develpment methods, silver printing zone system etc... and I know my way around photoshop and an inkjet printer. I was just wondering if the results from a hybrid digital negative workflow can be comparative to the results I'm getting now.

I'm not looking to do platinum, probably more silver. Just wondering if there are any satisfied users printing onto silver, or if somone has seen great examples.

-Alex

[Mark Carney]

I've heard of success stories about digital negatives and platinum or some other alternative process. What if you just want to print to silver paper like Alex mentioned. Are the negatives produced by inkjets, Epson style, printers suitable for just plain old boring silver paper?

Mark

[Brian Ellis]

At the lecture I attended Mark Nelson exhibited some of his contact prints made from enlarged negatives using his method. I thought they were pretty impressive, especially since the original negatives were mostly 35mm or medium format IIRC and the contact prints were in the 11x14 range.

[D. Bryant]

I've heard of success stories about digital negatives and platinum or some other alternative process. What if you just want to print to silver paper like Alex mentioned. Are the negatives produced by inkjets, Epson style, printers suitable for just plain old boring silver paper?

Mark

Mark,

Since you asked, my experience using an Epson 2200 to make digital negatives for silver gelatin is that there is a lot of substrate grain visible in the print. I've tried VC and graded papers and find neither to be satisfactory or at least what one would expect by contact printing or enlarging LF in camera negatives.

Now I have heard from some users that have used the Epson 2400 that they have made prints from digital negatives for printing SG that are excellent, however I've never seen the actual prints so I can't substantiate that claim.

I've also looked at silver gelatin prints made from digital negs printed with an Epson 3800. Those look pretty good but the prints still have substrate grain. The substrate used for the 3800 negatives was Pictorico White Film, which is quite expensive, The are other brands of this type of material which are much more affordable which will probably give equal results.

In addition to the substrate grain there is the issue of ink grain that results from different colored inks being used to create the digital negative.

In short I've yet to see a silver gelatin print made from an inkjet negative that matches the look of a print made optically. I'm not saying it can't be done, I just haven't seen one.

For the record, I've used Mark Nelson's PDN system, Roy Harringtons Quad Tone RIP, and Michael Kotch Shulte's colored ink arrays and all failed to produce the results I wanted for silver gelatin prints. This really isn't a failure of those respective systems but rather a limitation of the resolving power of ink jet technology.

There have been new printers introduced in the past few months that may prove to break the silver gelatin barrier and I hope someone will report on those as time passes.

Don Bryant