Where to begin with digital negatives?

[Brian Ellis]

My experience has been that silver gelatin contact prints made from digital ink jet negatives are inferior compared to contact prints made directly from film. They lack the sharp details and easily reveal the dither of the ink jet printer.

You may wish to contact Bob Carnie at Elevator labs in Toronto. They have a Lambda printer that will output directly to film from digital files which you could contact print.

Inkjet negatives work well for hand coated processes such palladium prints.

Don Bryant

I have limited experience with digital negatives, probably less than you. But I attended a Mark Nelson lecture where he displayed his prints made from 35mm film that was digitally enlarged to 11x14 or so and then contact printed. I was doing 8x10 contact prints from 8x10 in-camera film at the time. So I thought I had a pretty good idea of what a good contact print looked like. I saw no decrease in quality of Mark's prints relative to a traditional contact print. His were stunning.

[D. Bryant]

I have limited experience with digital negatives, probably less than you. But I attended a Mark Nelson lecture where he displayed his prints made from 35mm film that was digitally enlarged to 11x14 or so and then contact printed. I was doing 8x10 contact prints from 8x10 in-camera film at the time. So I thought I had a pretty good idea of what a good contact print looked like. I saw no decrease in quality of Mark's prints relative to a traditional contact print. His were stunning.

First of all I know Mark and I'm very familiar with PDN, Mark's digital negative system, however I've yet to see any silver gelatin prints made from ink jet digital negatives that match print quality with those made from in camera negatives. I've seen some very good ones, made some very good ones but none that match contact prints from film.

But I do know that Mark has his mojo going for making prints from polymer gravure plates and from the online examples I've seen they look very good, extremely smooth without any hint of plate tone, ink jet printer dither or grain. I also know he has at least a couple of photographers that have done one on one workshops with him that print silver gelatin as their only print media and they swear by his results. So I have to conclude he isn't sharing all of his knowledge public-ally or in his eBook or I'm not holding my mouth right.

I'll see him in March and I'll ask him then what his secret is an I'll also cross post the message in his Yahoo PDN forum to see what he may have to comment.

Don

[John Brady]

I purchased Mark Nelson's PDN e-book last night. It looks like it will be a great resource.
Thanks to all of you for the advice!

www.timeandlight.com

[coops]

Hello John. I saw your work at the downtown show in Gainesville Fl last year, very nice. I have Nelsons PDN but found it a little confusing and really time consuming (my fault, not the process) and gave up on it. After some time I came accross Dan Burkholters site and purchased his $20 template and a box of Pictorico. Within an hour I had a DN that printed quite well. I was impressed. With really sharp negs, a great scan and print I would think you could get close to a contact print. Some say not, others say as a good as. I have an Epson 3800 and did see some dither pattern on some prints, not all though. I think it depends on the subject I think.
Personally I want to hone my skills in the darkroom using a b&w negative, but plan on using the template for some alternative printing in the new year.
By the way, Burkholder has a short video available on his site that explains how to tweak the template if needed. The only testing I did was min. time for max. black on the paper I was using and then 4 5x7 prints to tweak the curve.
Good luck.

[Jon Shiu]

Hi, the HP people have developed a free digital negative system for their Z3200 printer. There was some discussion of it on this forum a while back.

My own concern with the digital processes versus traditional silver gelatin is lack of tone quality, ie lack of rich and vibrant tones. There is a flatness of tone to some digital-process prints.

Jon

[John Brady]

Hello John. I saw your work at the downtown show in Gainesville Fl last year, very nice. I have Nelsons PDN but found it a little confusing and really time consuming (my fault, not the process) and gave up on it. After some time I came accross Dan Burkholters site and purchased his $20 template and a box of Pictorico. Within an hour I had a DN that printed quite well. I was impressed. With really sharp negs, a great scan and print I would think you could get close to a contact print. Some say not, others say as a good as. I have an Epson 3800 and did see some dither pattern on some prints, not all though. I think it depends on the subject I think.

Hi Coops, thanks for the suggestion on Dan B. I will check it out, I am trying to learn as much as I can before I dive into it. So far it looks like it will be a lot of fun. I hope to make it work for Silver Gelatin contacts as well as explore some alternative process.

By the way I'll be back at Gainesville November 6th I hope to see you there.

John Shiu, thanks for your thoughts on digital negatives too.

www.timeandlight.com

[D. Bryant]

Hi, the HP people have developed a free digital negative system for their Z3200 printer.

Free for the price of a Z3200 printer!

My own concern with the digital processes versus traditional silver gelatin is lack of tone quality, ie lack of rich and vibrant tones. There is a flatness of tone to some digital-process prints.

That's a deficiency of the digital negative not the methodology.

Don Bryant

[sanking]

Hi, the HP people have developed a free digital negative system for their Z3200 printer. There was some discussion of it on this forum a while back.

My own concern with the digital processes versus traditional silver gelatin is lack of tone quality, ie lack of rich and vibrant tones. There is a flatness of tone to some digital-process prints.

Jon

I make carbon transfer prints from digital negatives, using both Mark Nelson's PDN system and QTR profiles. Carbon transfer prints can be as detailed and as sharp, or sharper, than silver gelatin prints and since my carbon prints are virtually grain free and without any dither pattern I tend to believe that with good methodology it should be possible to make excellent silver gelatin prints from digital negatives. In fact I have made a few myself with AZO paper, though I am not currently working with that media.

If prints you have seen from digital negatives appear flat that would be due to the specific way the individual made the negatives, and/or the way the print was made, not the methodology itself. It would be wrong to assume that excellent prints can not be made from digital negatives just because the prints made by one individual lacked rich and vibrant tones or appeared flat.

Sandy

[Jon Shiu]

re: lack of tonality in digital prints
I believe there is a richness and liveliness to tones in the traditional silver gelatin print that is not able to be reproduced in the digital process (and not in some alternative processes that I have seen, except albumen.) I believe it is the microscopic variations, caused by film grain, within a given tone that gives a tone this depth and vitality. This is not a matter of sharpness or detail, as you can have a rich tone in a out of focus area. This is a somewhat subtle thing, and absolutely gorgeous prints can be made with the digital processes, but it is a concern to my own work. For many people and photographs this type of tonality may be not be important.

Here is something I read by Ctein in his 10/21/10 article on The Online Photographer web site that describes a similar observation with the problems of tonal quality:
"The big problem I have consistently seen with digital printing, regardless of the source of the image, is that it suppresses subtle gradations and tonality—"texture," if you will. Surfaces that should show subtle patterns and variations in tone and color come out a lot flatter and more two-dimensional with digital printing. Kind of like the colors in a cartoon cel—they are accurate and the edges are just fine, but everything within the lines is painted the same color (or tone, in the case of black-and-white printing). I have not yet assembled a coherent theory of what's going on, but the observations seem unequivocal."
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad...-part-iii.html

I myself believe that the film grain adds in some type of texture that enhances tone and that this is lost in the digital translation.

Jon

[sanking]

r

Here is something I read by Ctein in his 10/21/10 article on The Online Photographer web site that describes a similar observation with the problems of tonal quality:
"The big problem I have consistently seen with digital printing, regardless of the source of the image, is that it suppresses subtle gradations and tonality—"texture," if you will. Surfaces that should show subtle patterns and variations in tone and color come out a lot flatter and more two-dimensional with digital printing. Kind of like the colors in a cartoon cel—they are accurate and the edges are just fine, but everything within the lines is painted the same color (or tone, in the case of black-and-white printing). I have not yet assembled a coherent theory of what's going on, but the observations seem unequivocal."
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad...-part-iii.html


Jon

I find observations like those made by Ctein much too general. They may be true of the work of some photographers but are not relevant to others, and for reasons that don't relate to a lack of tonality. Certainly the work of a photographer like Sebastian Salgado depends to some extent on grain to enhance texture and sharpness, but grain is not very important in my opinion in the majority of large format work. In fact, in my experience most LF photographers work to minimize grain at every step of the way because it interferes with tonality rather than enhances it.

In my opinion the concept of digital itself is being used here with too broad a stroke in the context of this thread since many photographers work with film scans to make digital negatives. And when you scan film the grain is essentially retained, especially with a high resolution scan. So while there may be a difference between a pt/pd print made with an in camera negative and one made with a digital negative of a film scan the difference will most likely not be due to grain itself.

In any event most of us who have worked both with silver gelatin printing and with the various forms of digital printing, including the hybrid method of digital negative with alternative processes, would agree that no process is exactly like another, and differences that one person hangs his/her hat on may well not matter to another.

Sandy King