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Thread: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

  1. #211
    http://www.spiritsofsilver.com tgtaylor's Avatar
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    Re: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

    If you think there's more than 5 cents worth of silver and gelatin in a sheet of 16x20 paper, you've been misled by industry mystique. The quantities are infinitesimal.
    Once you start purchasing silver to use in a process you will quickly come to grip with the true cost of silver per print. For example Bostick & Sullivan sells a premixed 250mL Vandyke sensitizer solution that will coat ~ 125 8x10 prints for $42.95. That works out to about .34 per print. True there are other chemicals in the solution so the actual cost per print of the silver will be somewhat less. Last week I mixed a sensetizer for Kallitypes which requires a 10% solution of silver nitrate (10gms/100mL). The silver nitrate cost me $30 for 30 grams or $1 per gram and it takes about 40 drops of the silver to coat an 8x10 sheet. Figure 20 drops/mL and the cost to coat one 8x10 print with the silver is about twenty cents. Since 16x20 is a factor of 4, then it would cost me about 90 cents to coat one 16x20 print. (Note: The kallitype also calls for an equal amount of ferric oxalate solution so the actual cost of coating each print would be close to double that of the silver alone.) True Kodak and other manufactures buys silver by the bar and make their own silver solutions rather than buy them like I do but their costs is not as infinitesimal as you might think.

    And thats just the cost to coat one sheet. My cost for a sheet of 140-lb 22x30 Fabriano Aristrico paper is around $6.86 per sheet. I can get 6 9x11 sheets from that on which to print an 8x10 negative. That bring the paper cost to $1.14 per 8x10 print for a total of around $1.55 for one 8x10 sheet of coated paper. Further costs on top of that would be for the developer and fixer.

    Thomas

  2. #212
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Re: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

    Quote Originally Posted by tgtaylor View Post
    Once you start purchasing silver to use in a process you will quickly come to grip with the true cost of silver per print.
    No, Thomas, that's the true cost of silver for a particular hand-coated alternative process. It doesn't correlate at all with the silver in industrially manufactured silver papers. The most reliable information I've found pins it at 0.9 to 1.2 grams of silver per square meter of black and white paper emulsion (film has more, as does color paper, surprisingly). If we call it 1 gram, then an 8x10 sheet of paper contails 0.05 grams. In a year when prices are high and silver's going for $50/oz, this works out to 9 cents worth of precious metal. At todays prices it's under 6 cents. Roughly half of this will remain in the print after processing, depending on the image.

    Which is another efficiency of ink: you start with blank paper and add the pigment you need. With silver you start with paper loaded with pigment and throw out what you don't.

    Going back to my experience of recovering close to a half ounce of silver after a busy year, assuming 50% silver utilization in the prints, and 90% efficience of recovery, this works out to about 300 sheets of 11x14. Which is probably about right.

  3. #213

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    Re: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

    Thomas, even in your own idiosyncratic example, it seems the cost of silver is insignificant compared to the cost of the paper. Most of your silver is excess, as opposed to the 50% utilization rate of manufactured silver papers.

    Paul,

    The additive nature of ink printing compared to silver printing is analogous to the differences in machining, a subtractive process, and 3D printing, or additive manufacturing. It's a paradigm shift.

  4. #214

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    Re: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

    Quote Originally Posted by tgtaylor View Post
    Well they certainly are cheap to make. Not labor intensive either. Just make one, store it in the computer and, when someone wants to purchase it, you just need to hit the print button and out one (or 100!) comes! How easy is that? You don't even need storage: the computer will store zillions of them using not more than a cubic foot of floor space. Cheap!!! But I wouldn't tell your clients how easy and cheap it is if I were you. No sir, I'd tell them how much better they are than the "old" silver process, how you slaved for years (was that 6 that I heard?) to learn to print with the inkjet, how expensive that ink really is...because you sure don't want to go back to the silver process when you have it so easy, do you?

    Thomas
    Once the first print is made (i.e. after all the creative work is done) it is, as you point out, very easy to make duplicates when printing digitally. And once the first print is made in a darkroom it's difficult to make duplicates (difficult in a labor sense, difficult to get the later ones identical to the first when some time has transpired between the first print and the dupes). But there's nothing creative or particularly interesting about making duplicate prints by either method. Both are a matter of dumb rote. The only differences are that one method is easy, the other involves a good bit of drudge work. And one gets the duplicate perfect, the other not necessarily.

    Solely from the standpoint of what you're discussing in this message (i.e. making multiple copies of the same print) nobody in their right mind would choose to do it in a darkroom if they had the option of getting their dupes by pressing a button. But I fail to see why that's a basis for criticism of digital printing, seems to me it's a huge advantage. And of course it has nothing to do with the quality of the print since all the creative effort with making dupes digitally and making them in a darkroom was done when the first print was made.

    Have you ever made even a small (say 10) edition portfolio consisting of even a relatively few (say 12) prints in a darkroom when some time has passed between making the first group of prints and the later ones? I'm guessing not because if you had you'd realize what an incredibly boring, tiring, time-consuming, mind-numbing undertaking it is.
    Brian Ellis
    Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
    a mile away and you'll have their shoes.

  5. #215

    Re: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lenny Eiger View Post
    I read this whole thread with disgust. Oren's post, two or three before this one is the only intelligent comment that can be made. Where's that beating the dead horse image?

    I spent lots of years in the darkroom. I spent lots of years doing platinum. I recently spent a decade perfecting my ink set and my skills for inkjet. Personally, I don't think much of silver prints. I don't think they can hold a candle to any alternative process print or a good inkjet print. I don't think much of digital capture, either. But way more than those opinions is the one that I am so very sick of talking about it. All the same people espouse all the same opinions. Over and over again.

    Everyone should just do what they want to.

    I would like to suggest a new forum rule, that when a moderator sees a comparison of film vs digital or darkroom printing vs inkjet, that they stop the thread.


    Lenny
    That's the best idea yet. These threads raged on years ago...some of the people are different (ghost of Jorge for example) but the stuff is the same.

  6. #216

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    Re: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaughn View Post
    If this refers to my post, it is in reference to the inability of an image on a computer screen to say anything about actual print quality...it is like trying to determine the quality of Scotch from the photos of the bottles.

    vaughn
    I haven't read the previous messages but if you're saying it's not possible to closely match an image on a computer screen with a print I'd have to disagree. With a properly calibrated monitor, a good paper profile, and a knowledge of soft proofing I get a very close match between the two. Close enough that my first print is often my last and if a second print is necessary it's almost always the last. Three or more prints to get it right is rare.

    If you're talking about just viewing someone else's image posted to the web and knowing what a print of that image would look like I'd agree with you, that's pretty much impossible.
    Brian Ellis
    Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
    a mile away and you'll have their shoes.

  7. #217
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    Re: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

    Brian, it was in reference to judging print quality of wet vs inkjet on one's computer screen. But in your first example, I know that one can learn to judge what is on the screen vs what will appear out of one's inkjet printer (or other methods of digital reproduction).

  8. #218
    http://www.spiritsofsilver.com tgtaylor's Avatar
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    Re: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Ellis View Post
    .

    Have you ever made even a small (say 10) edition portfolio consisting of even a relatively few (say 12) prints in a darkroom when some time has passed between making the first group of prints and the later ones? I'm guessing not because if you had you'd realize what an incredibly boring, tiring, time-consuming, mind-numbing undertaking it is.
    Actually last month I made 10 Vandykes (11 including the one for myself) for this years print exchange. Each were hand coated with senstizer in my darkroom, dried under a safelight, exposed to the open sunlight, and finally developed, washed, and hung to dry. Since I have but one 8x10 contact printing frame and the time to make only 3 prints/day it took several days to complete the printing. Since I routinely take careful notes all prints were practically identical which Darr could attest to as she saw all 10. The only difference was at the edges where the senstizer ended and it may have slightly leaked under the tape border that I used. Since the sun is not the same from day to day (time of day, passing clouds, atmospheric haze...etc) each print required a careful and reasoned judgement of when to end the exposure.

    Thomas

  9. #219

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    Re: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

    Quote Originally Posted by David Luttmann View Post
    That's the best idea yet. These threads raged on years ago...some of the people are different (ghost of Jorge for example) but the stuff is the same.
    If by "stuff" you mean the arguments and opinions, I might agree with you, but the facts have definitely changed because digital printing, unlike silver printing, continues to evolve, meaning any gap in quality is closing, or has closed, depending on who one asks. I learn a lot from these discussions, but then I'm interested in learning about digital printing. I can see how these threads might be boring if my mind was already made up about the subject, and I wasn't interested in the evolving technology, but that's doesn't mean the discussion has stagnated.

    I haven't seen a lot of really good B&W ink prints, but in the community darkroom in my neighborhood, there's a print by Jock Sturges (Seattle resident), and I wouldn't have guessed it was an ink print by looking. I don't think there's really much argument left to be made in favor of wet color prints. I've seen Tod Gangler's 4 color carbon prints, and the ink print proofs, and at anything like normal viewing distances I'd be hard pressed to tell them apart. That made an indelible impression on me -- I don't think anything short of a 4 color carbon print could improve on his ink prints, and I want to learn both processes.

    In the meantime I'm working hard to evolve my own carbon printing workflow, using optically enlarged negatives and multiple transfers, because I can utilize my existing skills set, but I'm also actively pursuing an education in digital editing and printing, which might or might not be integrated into my existing workflow, or even replace it. I'm keeping an open mind.

  10. #220
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Inkjet better than wet prints yet?

    One's personal goals, disposition, and faciltites have a great deal to do with it. Someone
    running franchise galleries which feed of multiples of specific images are a very different
    ballgame than the kind of thing I do. Once I land a print I might or might not make a second. I just want to more on to the next neg or chrome - can't even stand the thought
    of reprinting something unless I discover a much better way to do it (which sometimes
    happens, of course). The technology itself is not cut and dried by any means - just snoop
    around all the alternative forums and the chatter of the almost endless potential of hybrid
    techniques.

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