Digital negatives - what's the verdict on their use

[sanking]

I do not keep up with the recent technological advances in printing but I'd love to see one of these prints. Jay, can you point me in a direction where I may see one? I would love to see an inkjet 3-D carbon print.

Jim,

Getting the 3-D effect (relief) with carbon transfer using digital negatives involves the same principles needed with analog negatives, i.e. subject matter, negative of the right contrast, tissue with the appropriate pigment loading, a sensitizer matched to the negative and tissue, and an appropriate final support paper.

It won't help you much in California, but in the Toronto area Bob Carnie at Digital Elevator has some of my work. I also have a few prints on consignment at the Paul Paletti Gallery in Louisville.

I am not going to claim that making high quality carbon transfer prints from digital negatives is easy, but about 90% of the skill is in the process itself, the other 10% in image scanning, image processing, and making the digital negative.


Sandy

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Sandy, thanks. One day I'll get to the East coast and meet up with you. Give me some time as I would love to see some of the work you are doing. Thanks.

[Jay DeFehr]

I do not keep up with the recent technological advances in printing but I'd love to see one of these prints. Jay, can you point me in a direction where I may see one? I would love to see an inkjet 3-D carbon print.

I think one has to master their printing method and what it takes to get them there. For me it has always been the print.I have not seen, or printed from, a digital negative in any of my workshops that has given me what I get out of my in-camera negatives. It takes skill either way you go. I believe that Sandy has mastered this for carbon and maybe a few others. We work in a subjective medium and either way is good. Is one better than the other? That argument will go on forever.

Hi Jim,

I didn't mean to infer that anyone is making 3D carbon prints, but I can see how you might get that from my post. The carbon printers who are developing new printing techniques are working somewhere in the UK or Europe, if memory serves, and they're doing multiple pass printing, similar to the way Irving Penn printed his platinum prints, with special printers, but not 3D printers, as far as I know. Where I read about it has slipped my mind, but maybe someone here will know.

What I meant in reference to 3D printers and carbon prints is that I think the technology exists to do it.

These technologies are evolving so fast it takes some dedication to keep up with all the innovation. Even so, I don't know how making a digital print could be as much fun as making a carbon transfer print.

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Jay, thanks it was confusing to me and I always love to see what other artist are doing.
Playing in the glop is the fun part of carbon! If they are doing it differently then they are missing all of the fun!

[sanking]

Jay, thanks it was confusing to me and I always love to see what other artist are doing.
Playing in the glop is the fun part of carbon! If they are doing it differently then they are missing all of the fun!

Jim,

I was also confused in that I thought you wanted to see carbon transfer prints with good relief made with digital negatives.

BTW, I believe the place doing the multiple pass printing is Salto in Belgium. George Tice and Michael Smith have had pt/pd work done there and the Dmax is apparently much higher than can be achieved with one printing. I have heard that they also do carbon printing but have never seen (or heard about) any of their work with this medium.

Sandy

[Kirk Gittings]

My friend Allen Rumme, who lives just south of here and who posts here occasionally does multiple pass pt/pl prints that are very beautiful.

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Sandy, yes I was referring to good prints from digital negatives. Jay's post was confusing in that I thought someone was making digital carbon prints with the same relief we get from our process.

[Justin Cormack]

Hi Jim,
What I meant in reference to 3D printers and carbon prints is that I think the technology exists to do it.

These technologies are evolving so fast it takes some dedication to keep up with all the innovation. Even so, I don't know how making a digital print could be as much fun as making a carbon transfer print.

3D printers do work much like carbon printing in many cases, using a laser to harden a substance in some way (eg fusing a powder), so changing that to use a UV laser to harden treated gelatin is very much within the scope of possibility. No idea if anyone is doing it yet...

[Leigh]

A 3D printer that would do medium-sized prints would be very expensive.

The largest one available from Alibre (at $15,000) is here: http://www.alibre.com/3dprinters/explorevflash.asp

Resolution is 768 x 1024 DPI (xy) and minimum layer thickness is 0.004", both of which would work for photography.

But the work envelope is only 9" x 6.75" x 8", which would not even do an 8x10 print.

- Leigh

[clay harmon]

I do alt process work using both traditional in-camera negatives and digital negatives using the QTR approach. Like many things in life, if you give two people identical ingredients and tools, the results they achieve can be very different in terms of quality. I know this may be throwing a flaming bag of poop onto some porches here, but a very careful workflow can produce alt-process prints from diginegs that actually look better than in camera negatives.

There are two primary reasons for this.

One, tonal control when editing the files for diginegs, particularly in the shadow and highlight areas, can allow the photographer to compensate for idiosyncratic and less than ideal film responses that you are pretty much stuck with if you are going straight from in-camera negs to prints.

Two, the ability to do appropriate sharpening routines on the files prior to printing the negative can allow the photographer to produce alt-process prints that appear sharper to the viewer. This includes the use of wide radius unsharp masking to enhance mid-tone contrast.

(As an aside, I know that you can do the same thing with traditional methods using an interpositive/internegative and unsharp masking approach. My experience about that particular approach can be best summed up with one word: Dust.)

As people have pointed out, contact printing silver gelatin prints from digital negatives requires an even higher level of care and calibration. The photographer has to take into account the color absorption characteristics of the various inks used in the micro droplets that make up the dense areas of the negatives in order to avoid graininess, for example. This is especially important for variable contrast silver papers. But just because it is hard doesn't mean it can't be done. And the nice thing about a digital negative workflow is that it is only difficult once - during the calibration phase. Once you get it locked in, it is much faster.

I like to make bread and I know that the difference between a great light crusty loaf and a hard dense brick is all in technique, because in either case the ingredients are the same: yeast, sugar, flour and water. It is not any different in this digital negative world. Mastery, understanding and practiced application of the process is vastly more important than the materials used.