Quote Originally Posted by Lenny Eiger View Post
I don't know - I mean I think printing in carbon is pretty obsessive. Certainly not so easy to get it just right. As an artist, I am looking for something. Maybe all the links have to function at a high level for it to work.

Lenny
I did not say that we should not obsess about our art. What I wrote was, "We need to . . . not obsess too much about one or two single links in the chain."

Carbon printing is hardly one or two links in the chain. Rather, it is the end process of a very intensive method of making hand made prints that includes many links. Changing any one of those links may or may not diminish the artistic quality of the final product. Scanning a 6X7cm B&W Mamiya 7II negative with an Epson V700 instead of with a dedicated film scanner when the final product is a print 16X20" or larger would surely diminish the artistic quality for me. Scanning a 5X7 B&W negative with an Epson 700 when the final product is a print 16X20" would not diminish the artistic quality for me. The reason is that important image detail would be lost in the first case, in the second case not. So obsessing for me would be worrying about scanning the 5X7 B&W negative with a drum scanner when in point of fact it won't make a hair on a rat's ass difference in the overall quality of the final print.

I can not say what would or would not be obsessing for you or anyone else, but for my own work I have, for the most part, learned which links require obsessing and which ones do not. But then I am often surprised by real life results.

Sandy