Digital black & white

[james mickelson]

You cannot tell the difference between a print made from a digital negative and one made in the traditional wet darkroom. I have some prints made from digitally enlarged negs from the Lenswork Collection and they are as good as the originals. I am a neanderthal when it comes to darkroom vs digital but I can see the day when almost all printing will be done digitally. There is so much more that can be done and done more easily in the digital platform. No, I don't think that traditional darkroom work will be put out to pasture but I do think the digital realm will bring many more people into photography. It is so much easier to capture an image digitally and transfer that image to a computer screen and then to a piece of paper support than to load the film, and then unload and stand around in a smelly darkened room washing the film with chemicals, and then trying to coax the image as you saw it or want it to be, and have it come out the same every time. Even my hero Ansel had trouble getting the same results from every print he tried to make. So many variables. The digital platform is not easy to master either. Photoshop for instance is really difficult if you aren't addept with computerese to begin with. But as you progress, you can see the tremendous advatages in the medium. I'm just after repeatable results in my printing. I'm tired of wasting paper. I'm tired of getting somewhere and not having great lightingand either not taking the shot or taking it but having to work my ass off to get a decent print. Then not being able to repeat the print easily. Hello Photoshop. Make a good print in the darkroom, take it to the digital platform, tweek it some more, take said file to a digital printer, get a new negative with all the corrections on it and presto. A digitally made negative which will contact print the same every time. I love it. What a great tool. james

[Philip Y Graham]

Maybe its wrong but I do get pleasure from hauling around 10 kg of camera equipment, sweating away under a dark cloth on a hot summer?s day, straining my eyes to see what?s in focus on the ground glass and then spending hours handling noxious chemicals.

However, I also enjoy the time I spend scanning my black and white negatives onto the computer and playing around in Photoshop.

From my own results and the results of others, I am convinced that within a few years (or even sooner) the quality of digital printing is going to equal or even surpass traditional darkroom techniques in all formats including large format.

But so what. There isn?t anything mythical about traditional darkroom printing techniques. If the same or better results can be obtained more consistently and more reliably by other techniques then it?s time to change. I very much doubt that photographers brought up on digital photography will mourn the passing away of the traditional darkroom.

After all its the quality of our pictures that counts, however they happen to be produced.

[paul owen]

Thanks to everyone who replied with their thoughts and experiences on the question I asked. The reason I am considering digital as an option is that my plans to construct a traditional darkroom have fallen through. I thought that digital may be a viable option in so far as producing prints was concerned, as I will still process my negatives myself (with the help of a changing tent!). My only other option is to convert a ground floor cloakroom into a traditional darkroom. The room is only 160cms by 86cms but I have measured up and think that I will be able to manage. I envisage using an LPL 7452 enlarger and processing the prints in a Nova FB monochrome unit. Can anyone confirm that the baseboard of the LPL is 23 1/4 inches square ( these are the dimensions of the Saunders unit and they are supposed to be one in the same ). This baseboard will fit into one of the recesses, allowing me about 18 inches gap between enlarger and Nova. Your views are most welcome on this option!!!!! Regards Paul

[Pete Andrews]

To answer the question a few posts back. Yes, you can use fixed out photographic paper for inkjet printing.The look is very soft, since the ink spreads excessively in the gelatine, but it also loses any trace of the 'dottiness' that can be a giveaway of inkjets. A colour bromoil is about the closest I can come to describing it.

[Joshua L. Slocum]

Sigh: Now, even on the large format board, I hear hackneyed ridiculous tripe like "you cannot tell the difference between a digital print and a conventional print." Correct that. YOU cannot tell the difference; I can. With all the "beautiful" inkjet and laser-emulsion prints put in front of me, from a range of sources, why is it that they ALWAYS lack the depth and detail of a well made optical print? Why do they always have that artificial, electronic looking edge sharpness that gives them away? Yes, digital prints have come a long way recently, but in my experience, they have not equaled large format prints done the traditional way. I'm not going to sit here and say it's any better or worse whether you like working with chemicals or electrons. I prefer one process; other people prefer another. I will say, however, that I'm sicking of standing out in the sunlight and having a whole crowd of people tell me it's dark as midnight. Get my analogy? Wonder if this has anything to do with the impulse to justify, at any cost, the fact that you threw out your equipment and invested 10,000 in a system that has to work real hard to hide its limitations. . .

[james mickelson]

I too can usually tell a digital "print" from a silver print. The operative words here are "print" and "usually". I have been fooled. Go to Carmel and look at some of the prints there and ask how they were printed. You will be amazed. What I am amazed at are the reproductions or should I say products of digitally made negatives and the contact prints made of them by hand on silver paper. I own some and can't tell the difference. I have put my "Decending Angel" which is from a digitally made neg printed by hand on silver paper right next to a silver print of the same image and with a strong loupe could not tell the difference. Lenswork offers these prints for substantially less than a print done by hand by the artists involved in the collection being offered. These are prints made from scanned images that are then output to negative material and printed by hand as contact prints on regular silver gelatin material. And they are beautiful. And they are reproducible. When you have an image that has to have a lot of intricate dodging and burning to get the print you want, digital is the only viable way the get the same quality from the image every time. You don't have to waste paper or time dodging and burning, selectively bleaching and spotting the prints. You don't have to spend time and effort making contrast and unsharp masks. You do it in the computer and output it to negative film with a high dollar printer. But you do have to master the digital platform so it ain't an easy gig in the least. Digital will expand the art of photography many fold. It will allow images to be made that are residing only in the creators mind now. The things created will be limited only by the mind of the artist. The same arguments we're hearing now were the same arguments being discussed heatedly during the turn of the century. Digital will come. Embrace it. Many including me will use it as a tool to enhance what I do in the darkroom now but many will create wonderful images directly on the digital platform. This is unfolding now. james

[Richard M. Coda]

James:

Which approach did you use? The 450 line screen halftones or the hi- res diffusion bitmaps?

I am struggling with this myself. Being a graphic designer by day, I feel a halftone is a halftone - period. I also have several Lenswork prints - extraordinary prints, but upon close inspection (as I do with contact prints, as well) there are those damned dots. I hate them. I would like to go with the bitmap route, but as I am [currently] on PC, I can't use the Icefields software that Dan Burkholder recommends.

Thanks.

[Mike Kravit]

If anyone has not seen them yet, you may want to take a look at Cone's new Piezography for the Epson Stylus Pro 7ooo printer. Cone is using a RIP (Raster Image Processor) that overides Epsons dither. Using a 4x loupe there were no dots to be found. Yes, no dots and excellent continuous tone images. No digital edge artifacts either.

Printing a step wedge one can find in excess of 21 well defined clear steps. In fact, utilizing Hahnnemuhle William Turner, I was able to make out almost 30 distinct tones!

Holding a Cone print and one of my platinum/palladium prints side by side was a great pleasure. The Cone Piezography print was more like platinum in is tonal range and 3 dimensionality than silver. I do not believe this process will replace silver or platinum, it is just another excellent process. I believe some are calling it the Carbon Piezotype.

Mike