b/w scanning quality question

[cyrus]

Actually, that was the question

"are you generally pleased with the resulting inkjet prints?
Has it given you a "I'll-never-go-back-to-wet-printing-again" mindset? "

Answer: no.

[Lenny Eiger]

Actually, that was the question

"are you generally pleased with the resulting inkjet prints?
Has it given you a "I'll-never-go-back-to-wet-printing-again" mindset? "

Answer: no.

My answer:

Yes, I would never go back to a darkroom print.

I might do some more platinum, sometime... or try my hand at other alt processes. But never a darkroom.

Lenny

[Brian K]

At this point I'm producing both silver and pigment prints. I find that some of my images work best on one medium or the other. So some images I actually prefer the pigment over the silver. My workflow has involved scanning my negs and outputting 8x10 LVTs for quite some time and I have worked with PS for over 20 years.

The silver printing gives me certain optical effects advantages that digital doesn't. I can burn a far smoother gradation or do optical diffusion in a wet darkroom. And as I am already starting with an 8x10 LVT negative in which scratches or pinholes have already been edited, and as I am enlarging from an 8x10 neg, I don't have much in the way of print spotting.

But some images, some of my more high key ones, seem to work better for me as pigment, although they often lack the luminance of the silver prints. Workflow wise there's no comparison. As I have some eye issues and long stretches in the darkroom are giving me more and more problems, the ability of digital printing to produce a very high quality print with far less effort and tedium is a serious advantage. Then again I am getting that quality level to a large part due to the associated equipment. An IqSmart3 scan and an Epson 9900 print is at the higher end qualitatively. I also use StudioPrint which enables me to make custom profiles and dead neutral gray B&W prints using color inks.

One thing that I have found to be a huge advantage of pigment prints is that I can print far larger and maintain a higher quality level. I don't mean this in the sense that I can just physically print larger, it's that images that would not allow themselves to be enlarged past a certain point because of a deterioration of quality seem to be able to print far larger with pigment and not lose quality. I discovered this when one of my galleries requested a 70" print from a 6x7cm negative. The image " Mt Whitney and Clouds" was an early image of mine, and was not captured when I had gotten my film and development process to the quality level it is now, that is it was an image that had a bit more grain. Fortunately it was shot with a Mamiya 7II so the optical quality was superb.

The scan of the image required interpolation, using perfect resize and then some additional sharpening in order to go up to 70". When printed I was dumbfounded. Grain aside, the print quality was excellent, the sharpness and detail was extraordinary considering the original film size, a 25 times enlargement. And the tonal gradation was smooth. Viewed from 3 feet you'd think it was shot 4x5 or larger. There is no way that image could print that large in silver. I guess between the interpolation and the way the printer lays down ink the gradation becomes smooth, whereas over enlarged silver images aways seem to get a rather abrupt tonal gradation. I don't think this level of print enlargement would be satisfactory with any of the consumer scanners like the Epsons, this requires a drum scanner or a high end flat bed.

I am giving serious thought to giving up silver printing once I burn through the thousand or so sheets of paper I currently have or when I move from my current house, to not setting up a print darkroom.

[Ben Calwell]

As an update to my original post, I got to try out my brother's Epson V700. We scanned one of my b/w 4x5s, and as we're both not very technically oriented, we kind of muddled through and wound up with a semi-nice 11x14 print. It became apparent right away that I could make simple levels adjustments to the image using Elements and come up a photo with much more shadow detail than I thought possible. Compared to my silver contact print of the same image, the ink jet has at least one more zone of shadow detail, thanks to bringing up the shadows in the levels adjustment. I'm sure there are more sophisticated things I could have done to the photo in Elements, but what we came away with wasn't bad for a couple of seat-of-their-pants guys. To come away with the same enlargement in the darkroom, would have required masterful dodging of the shadows. Still, the 4x5 contact silver print has a certain something about it that's really nice.....

[Jim Jones]

A traditional photograph has subtle advantages I haven't achieved in prints from an Epson 3800, but the ease of digital editing and the ability to run off many identical prints with no further editing makes the 3800 worth while. I don't intend to return to silver printing except perhaps on rare occasions. Printing for some sophisticated markets might best be done in a darkroom.