Do you use Digital?

[Jim Billlups]

Just curious...

Are you, and to what extent if any, are you incorporating digital technology into your large format work?

[Tony Galt]

I use film, but scan transparencies and negatives with an Epson Perfection 2450 for printing. I do develop black and white negatives myself.

[David R Munson]

All my color work, if I want prints, is scanned and output digitally on my Epson 1280. I'll use digital for anything that needs retouching or that needs to be incorporated in some manner of composite. Other than that I scan things for my site. Outside of things that fall into that second category or things that are for publishing, I still print all my B&W in a darkroom.

[QT Luong]

As a color photographer, I've been printing using exclusively the Tango drum scanner and the Lightjet for more than five years.

[John Cook]

If I were still in business, my clients would force me to do color. If I did color, it would all be digital, including capture. An in-house lab is a nightmare, and there are no decent commercial labs within 50 miles of my studio.

As my work is now limited to personal wall-hangers, I am shooting 100% B&W film and wet printing (as I have always done). Just my personal taste, but a large room full of color prints reminds me a little too much of a travel agency or McDonald's menu board.

Anyway, I’m much too old to spend long hours and big bucks chasing the latest trendy technology. Only to have it obsolete and worthless even before I have mastered the two-thousand-page instruction manual. I'll just continue doing what I know.

Short answer: put down one vote for zero digital. Not even a cheap scanner.

[Bruce Watson]

4x5 Tri-X, XTOL 1:3, Jobo CPP2 and Expert 3010 drum.

I do my own drum scans on an Optronix ColorGetter 3 Pro. Photoshop.

Output is from Epson 7600 using selenium Pieozotone inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag.

Output from the 7600 is completely linear - no toe, no shoulder. This means that I can carry more shadow detail *and* more highlight detail than I can in a darkroom print. The lack of toe and shoulder, and the wide dynamic range mean that most of my prints can be "straight prints" without any dodging or burning. Since the scanner can read a density range from very small to around 4.0, I can develop each negative the same - no more N+ or N- development required, which is one less thing to think about (and track) in the field.

In summary, I do digital output because it gives me the best prints I can get. Of course, YMMV.

[Guy Tal]

I print color images to Lightjet and archival inkjet from drum scans. I'm now experimenting with some of the newer inkjet kits for B&W as well.

Guy

[Peter Rip]

I shoot Provia and scan with a Microtek Artixscan 4000 film scanner. Print on Epson 9600 with Media Street's Royal Renaissance paper. About to switch from Ultrachrome ink to Media Street's Generations inks. I often shoot two versions of an image, exposing for highlights and shadows respectively and then blend to expand the dynamic range that is limited in a transparency.

Waiting for Moore's law to make a 4x5 digital back "affordable" and will switch to all digital workflow. "Affordable" to me means markedly less than a new Imacon scanner. Maybe 3 years???

[Christopher Condit]

I am an amateur playing only for my own satisfaction. It so happens that darkroom work, chemical or digital, does not interest me. The commute to my day job takes me through a photo biz neighborhood (SOMA in SF), where I drop off and pick up at my favorite lab. Currently the lab is cheaper and better with wet processing for large format, so I use that. For 120 the Noritzu (Frontier competitor) results satisfy me.

I work at a computer all day long, so the last thing I want to do in my hobby is to personally digitize it. I am indifferent to if/when the lab goes digital.

[Paul Metcalf]

Doesn't your question beg the follow-up question "What is large format?"