LensWork: repro superior to original print

[Blacky Dalton]

Just remember, when your long gone there will be fresh blood to fill your shoes and most likely they won't be using film.

I agree 100%. But, if we don't pass along what we know, it will be lost forever. That is the burden we carry. It is up to us to educate those that are new to the medium so that film will not be lost forever. I don't care what medium anyone chooses, I just want to be sure they have the choice.

B. Dalton

[Joe Lipka]

Only read page one of these comments so will post and go back and read p2 and p3.

So far all have missed the point. What Brooks states very succinctly is that offset printing can achieve more sharpness and a greater range between the darkest area and the whitest area than the finest traditional silver gelatin paper. .

What he said.

[Wayne Lambert]

Jim Galli, Joe Lipka--- educate me. How can a reproduction of a gelatin silver contact print be sharper than the original gelatin silver contact print?

[Donald Miller]

Aparently, the folks over at apug strongly disagree - there are 18 screens full of indignant rants about Lenswork betraying the holy cause and - gasp! - introducing digital at the same level as analog in the magazine! To them, the equipment is obviously sufficiently more important than the photographer or even the photograph itself that they are swearing to cancel their subsciptions to Lenswork because of it.

To be fair, there are a couple of rational souls who beg to differ and, to be even more fair, they have not been banned or even deleted yet. Which is a tremendous change in attitude. Tremendous enough, when I stop to think about it, that it may cause mass cancelation of subscriptions to apug itself...

Let's recognize one thing and that there is a form of fanaticism inherent for some on this issue of film and digital. For some there appears to be some form of insecurity that translates to digital being a threat to the holy grail of film based photography. There are even those who have voluntarily taken the position that they have been blessed by the Gods on high and that by consequence they have a responsibilty to further this pure art form for succeeding generations. I do not feel, nor do I accept, any such mandate...apparently my Gods do not speak to me about what photography is or is not.

Apug has, if nothing else, been a propogating force for this viewpoint. I am saddened by this attitude on Apug and it is one of the reasons that I voluntarily took the steps to remove myself from that corrosive and destructive atmosphere. Please understand that I am not saying that all on Apug are fanatics...but if one spends a little time there and observes the outright flame wars and vitriolic comments by some than you can readily determine for yourself who will fit into the camp of "film based fanaticism". Fanatics, by and large it has been shown, are usually those who have not developed a sufficient sense of self to allow for alternative means and views. That is as much true of those who are fanatics on Apug as it was the Nazis in WWII Germany.

When one mistakes a given process for artistic expression than it would appear to me that artistic expression will ultimately be lost.

Having said that I use both large format film and digital. I believe that both have the ability to depict photographically what I wish to depict. Both engender the ability for individual artistic insertion and thereby subjective translation of a given objective reality.

There is nothing about film that is purer in this respect. Both film and digital capture become a translation of some aspect of objective reality...nothing more and nothing less.

I applaud Lenswork for having the maturity and for taking the well reasoned position to recognize the reality of that.

[tim atherton]

I don't think the point has been missed, I think it's the "craftsmen" among photographers feeling threatend and defending their turf. Some people simply have too much invested in one particular aspect of photography - the craft - and are unable to adopt to the ongoing transition. So they try to fight the new, and in that fight there is no place nor use for facts, they pick any and every roof to scream from, no matter how distantly connected to the topic, or not at all. It's about appearance, not substance. Hence all the distortions, screaming and lunacy.

It is essentially the same thing that drove Nedd Ludd back in his day. And it will, in the end, be equally successful.

On the invention of his colour daguerreotypes by Levi Hill in 1850:

"When Hill announced his process, he was visited by a group from the New York Daguerrean Association. They told him to keep quiet or they’d wreck his lab. Daguerreotypes were becoming obsolete and they feared for their livelihood.

Hill bought a revolver and a mean guard dog, and he forged ahead. People like Samuel F. B. Morse inspected his work and declared it sound. In 1856, Hill published a rambling account of what he now called the Hillotype process. But he also used the book to attack the Daguerrean Association. They, in turn, got a court order requiring all copies of the book to be destroyed..."

http://photo-muse.blogspot.com/2007/...rreotypes.html

[paulr]

While I fully respect the idea that print quality is subjective, I've seen quite a few cases where the reproduction in a high quality book has appeared to be more thoughtfully done and better crafted than the original prints. This is most common with photographers who just didn't care much about the printing process (and who often had someone else do their printing). Walker Evans comes to mind. Many original prints of his are done quite carelessly ... more in the spirit of newspaper prints than fine art prints. But I've seen other prints from the same series that were done beautifully, and I've seen book reproductions of the same that were drop dead gorgeous.

I agree that you'd have to exhume Walker and ask his opinion to know which prints best show what he wanted to show. But not being able to do that, I find myself responding more strongly to the ones that look like they were made with care ... whether with silver or with ink.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Only read page one of these comments so will post and go back and read p2 and p3.

So far all have missed the point. What Brooks states very succinctly is that offset printing can achieve more sharpness and a greater range between the darkest area and the whitest area than the finest traditional silver gelatin paper. He has the measurements. His point is the "wow" factor. Throughout the history of the best possible printing, it was the original print that snatched your breath away. Brooks is simply maintaining that with the current technology, the one in the book has the potential to be more breathtaking than the original. That opens up a myriad of possibilities and questions for collectors / producers / what is the original / where is the value / ad-infinitum. Questions I raised right here 5 or 6 years ago.

BTW Brooks carefully states that as good as his mag is, it isn't anywhere close to the threshold he is describing. He has to keep costs under control also.

Again, what has changed is the wow factor or whatever you want to call it. You might mail the $1500 print back to the photographer after you get the museum book with the same picture, because the one in the book for $70 is better.

I disagree Jim. In fact the limiting factors in any reproduction are the size of the screen dot and the paper on which is printed. Measure the reflection Dmin and Dmax of any reproduction and you will see that at the most you get 6 stops. The "wow" factor could be due to the apperent depth which the new printing materials allow, but this is not necessarily a good thing or better. Like I said before, some of us have not printed anything with a Dmax greater than 1.5 in years.

In the end, people still prefer wood to plastic, even if the plastic can be made to look even better than wood. Besides, this is nothing new. I saw some AA prints that I thought were better in the book than the real thing, and this was some 20 years ago. I still rather have the original though. I would rather have the original because as you say the "wow" factor is an intial reaction, studying the real thing you can see the great control some of these people had. Of course, for those who believ "craft" is a bad word, and mediocre results are "good enough" this is heresy.

[Wayne Lambert]

Marko, Donald Miller---Whoa! Pretty harsh words you've applied to those of us who don't do digital. Lunacy? Nazi? Actually, for the record, I'm really not afraid that digital will destroy my work or take away my livelihood or harm my cats. And I'm ok wtih those who do want to do digital.

[Wayne Lambert]

But we do have a little trouble spelling.

[Jim Galli]

I disagree Jim. In fact the limiting factors in any reproduction are the size of the screen dot and the paper on which is printed. Measure the reflection Dmin and Dmax of any reproduction and you will see that at the most you get 6 stops. The "wow" factor could be due to the apperent depth which the new printing materials allow, but this is not necessarily a good thing or better. Like I said before, some of us have not printed anything with a Dmax greater than 1.5 in years.

In the end, people still prefer wood to plastic, even if the plastic can be made to look even better than wood. Besides, this is nothing new. I saw some AA prints that I thought were better in the book than the real thing, and this was some 20 years ago. I still rather have the original though. I would rather have the original because as you say the "wow" factor is an intial reaction, studying the real thing you can see the great control some of these people had. Of course, for those who believ "craft" is a bad word, and mediocre results are "good enough" this is heresy.

Jorge, exactly. Brooks claims offset printing at it's best and most expensive / difficult can achieve a 2.25 d-max. He claims whites can be whiter than the best silver gelatin papers. He also states that dot matrix is now far beyond the sharpness of any of our tools. That's all he's really saying.