Anyone passing through NYC who wants to see what can be done with carbon pigment quadtone printing, just give me a shout. I have a body of work that's been printed both ways; silver prints (some of them contact prints) on fortezo with selenium and gold toning, and pigment inkjets, printed the same size.
I have yet to to see anyon compare the two without expressing surprise.
Inkjet is quickly catching up no doubt. Just plain prints on heavyweight paper from my Epson 1280 look tack sharp and quite nice. The only difference I can detect at the moment is in the texture of fiber vs. inkjet. Fiber wins in this case, dry mounted and on a nice piece of mat board. However I think that will come to pass at some time.
I'm leaning toward what Andrew had to say...
I love working with film, scanning and inkjet printing. In fact, I'm about to purchase a new printer...however, something is missing to me and it is exactly that tactile experience you get from massaging a print to life in the darkroom. That's why I just bought an Omega D5XL enlarger and am putting together a small 2nd-bathroom-darkroom. It's been years and years since I was in a darkroom, and I think the knowledge and technique will be greatly beneficial and feed into the rest of my work as well.
While it's true that I'm much more pleased with the results from digital printing, I'll also confess that I miss the sense of magic that came from watching an image materialize in the developer tray and conducting the rituals that attended the creation of a darkroom print.
Maybe it's best summed up in the old fisherman's comment that, "it's not the fish -- it's the fishin'" that really counts!
Dude, you need to search first. This is something that's been endlessly discussed.Originally Posted by Mahonri
But, since I'm here, I might as well contribute to the problem! A lot of people find inkjet inferior to tradition and yet often they have no idea what they're doing. (I'm not saying this is you.) They dodge and burn a little, do some curve adjustments, and then hit print, hoping for magic, when really things can get quite complicated. Have you calibrated recently, etc? Have first rate scans/files? All that jazz?
Inkjet can be breathtaking in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. Ever heard of Irving Penn? http://www.largeformatphotography.in...ht=irving+penn
And it's not just color. I have seen (the details are in that post) an exhibit at the Eastman House that convinced me the only purpose Platinum Printing serves is to waste my money!
Color inkjet on watercolor/matte paper (which seems to be an emerging standard) is a different process altogether, gorgeous in its own way, so comparing it to other processes is a silly waste of time. It's something no one has ever seen before.
I do agree that Inkjet printing when compared to silver gelatin is horrible. And yet... http://www.largeformatphotography.in...silver+gelatin
Oh and also, if you're actually a professional photographer of any kind, and you need to make MONEY, digital is a hell of a lot easier in so many ways. And no, I'm not talking about all you retired folks who sell your prints for extra cash, I'm talking about people who have dedicated their lives to the art and/business and actually survive on print or file sales or photographic services.
"Feeling the cold developer pour over your hands" and all that crap is really just an opulent luxury.
Well, it depends on who's making the prints and what they're trying to accomplish, right? In the hands of some people, the medium will be wannabe gelatin silver. In the hands of someone else, it will be something else.
Personally, there are things I love about gelatin silver and things I don't. I love the richness. I don't love the way the prints curl, and I don't love the surface finish of any of papers I've used in recent memory. I also don't love that you have no idea about the quality of the paper stock. They never tell you anything about it.
So with a new printing process, there will be some qualities of gelatin silver I'd like to mimic, and others I'm happy not to.
Your belief or lack of belief won't change reality.
Your point would be?
No it doesn't. Rehashing the same argument over and over again serves no useful purpose and is insane. Albert Einstein supposedly defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I'll let him have the last word on this "topic."
Bruce Watson
I really love the control of digital printing. The comparison I'm interested in seeing, is if it's worth making a digitial negative for silver contact printing, and comparing that to a straight inkjet print with B&W inks. (Pt is a little expensive for my taste.) So, anyone doing some Burkholder type silver work? Decent negatives out of an inkjet?
Jay
Ok, well, you obviously didn't read the details in the post, which is fine, maybe you were in a rush or something, or maybe you just like jumping to conclusions... Here are the details on that particular exhibit:
"There was an exhibit a while back at the Eastman House (not sure if it was travelling) by Craig Barber, called "Ghosts in the Landscape." A very excellent, very emotional landscape show about his Vietnam experience using 8x10 pinholes. There were many platinum contact prints, but there were also inkjet enlargements, often with the exact same image in platinum sitting adjacent, that were absolutely superb. Apart from the size, I saw little difference in tone/color, surface texture, and range."
So, if you still don't understand, my personal skill is irrelevant. This has to do with a comparison of prints done by a professional photographer (or a professional printer, maybe he only made the negatives, I'm not sure). I can't think of too many other purposes for displaying identical prints in different processes except to demonstrate their similarities or differences. Maybe he was getting paid off by Epson!
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