Digital Negative Sample

[Annie M.]

OK seeing is believing.... before I go all Mendelian and start hybridizing part of my little bean
patch.... could some kind person who is using digital negatives enlarged from small 4x5
negatives for contact printing in pt/pd please send me a sample of one of these negatives. A
little snippet of a discard digital negative would suffice... I just need to see a sample to determine if this is truly a viable direction for me to explore and it will also assist me in deciding on the appropriate scanner/printer combination for my future workflow.

Thanks....

[chris jordan]

Annie, I don't have one to send as a sample, but I can tell you a couple of things. Most importantly (presuming your original is sharp and properly exposed) is the old "garbage-in-garbage-out" concept; the digital negative will only be as good as the quality of your scan. If you use one of the best drum scanners and the best quality digital negative output, you will get incredible digital negs that will contain every grain and the full tonal range that was in your original (plus all the cool stuff you do to it in Photoshop). From that digital negative you will be able to get significantly better quality contact prints that you could have gotten via the optical enlargement process-- they will be sharper and also contain all of the digital dodges and burns that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. If you use a desktop flatbed scanner, however, your digital negs will not be as good as if you had used a drum scanner. Depending on the size your digital negs will be, and how much their sharpness matters in your printmaking, this may or may not be important.

My own philosophy is that cost is no object; print quality is all I care about in the printing decision workflow, so I invest insane amounts of money having all of my originals scanned on the best scanner available. I could own a fleet of BMW's for the investment I've made in drum scans over the years (I also could have probably bought the dang scanner by now), but unfortunately that's the only way to get really awesome scans for high-quality enlargement.

~cj

www.chrisjordan.com

[Annie M.]

I have had a gracious benefactor step forward off forum... thanks!

Chris... I understand your perspective, and when I have 'worthy' negatives I will certainly try the drum.... actually I think there is an outfit here on the south island that is offering drum scanning.... some day I would love to have huge color prints of my seacaves from transparencies... the colors there are like nothing else I have seen.

Thanks again.....

[Brian Ellis]

I can't send a sample but I attended a lecture by Mark Nelson (hope I've got the last name right, he's written a CD book on enlarging negatives digitally which can be purchased at his web site for about $60). He showed some of his 8x10 and 11x14 pt/pd prints made from enlarged 35mm negatives using his methods. Based on what I saw I'd say you don't need to see a sample, enlarging negatives digitally is certainly a very viable option. Hopefully someone will correct the last name if I've got it wrong and also provide a cite to his web site.

[Jeremy Moore]

Mark Nelson's site is www.precisiondigitalnegatives.com

Using Mark's process the negative is competely tailored to your personal working habits and equipment. I'm not sure what good seeing a negative would do....

[Annie M.]

Perhaps seeing a digitally produced negative may enable me to quickly visually access if it
incorporates the qualities that are significant to me in my criteria for platinum printing.... perhaps
when it goes under the loupe it’s basic architecture will not be to my liking ... also I like my
shadows very chewy.. perhaps the digital neg does not have the capacity to favor this or other aspects that I find critical.

I do know that after having looked at thousands of silver negatives I can now get an immediate feel for a negative perhaps I can glean a small ‘inkling’ from a digital neg... but as you say perhaps I am mistaken.

Anyway, a print and it’s negative are on their way to me and I assume that there will be much
for me to learn from them that can assist me in deciding if this is an approach I wish to pursue.

Thanks for the link........

[Jeremy Moore]

Annie,
I didn't mean to come off crass because the digital negatives I make have a lime green tint on them that makes it unlike any other negative I have seen. In addition, the correction curve makes the visibile range of hues seen on the negatives quite different from the end product.

Hope you can see more than I can in them.

[Annie M.]

Jeremy,
I am certain that you were kindly trying to help me avoid what you see as an exercise in futility
and I sincerely appreciate your assistance. I just need to see one.... even seeing nothing may tell me something..... Cheers.

[sanking]

Annie,

I have been using Mark Nelson's PDN system for making digital negatives for well over a year, as I was one of the Beta testers for the project. With the printer I use, the Epson 2200, the negatives are emerald green and look like nothing you would have ever seen before. In other words, seeing one is highly unlikely to tell you anything at all about the way the negative will print because you would not hav any frame of reference to which you could compare the negative. But in fact, they print very, very well in Pt./Pd., about as well as in-camera negatives.

[Annie M.]

... ‘the negatives are emerald green and look like nothing you would have ever seen’ ...Sandy
such compelling poetry.... now I really want to see one.
OK I get it... I am just trying to acquire as much information about process & quality as I can
before I make any investment... the fact that someone with your experience accesses the
process as achieving results very close to in camera negatives is good news to me indeed.

[sanking]

Annie,

Send me your personal mailing information by private email to sanking@clemson.edu and I will send you a small digital negative designed for printing in palladium. I have a few seconds on hand that had to be reprrinted for one reason or another, say dust sports, small scratches, etc. In such cases it is usually easier to just reprint the negative than to worry about spotting the print.

[Annie M.]

Thanks Sandy... Annie

hmmmm.... I wonder if Daddy Warbucks ever frequents this forum....