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View Full Version : Digi B&W Printing - Scan Negs or Contact Prints



Scott Rosenberg
29-Dec-2005, 15:31
good day,

i will soon be helping a friend of mine assemble a collection of prints culled from a much larger body of work. we are presently considering the best way to digitaly produce black and white prints from 4x5, 4x10, and 8x10 originals. ultimately the prints will be made from a digital file, so what we are considering is how to create a digital file that will yield the best print - scan the neg and print from that file or make a contact print, scan the contact print, and then print from that file.

scanning will be done using a microtek 1800F.

have any of you experimented with both of these methods? what conclusions did you draw?

thanks,
scott

David A. Goldfarb
29-Dec-2005, 15:36
I don't print B&W digitally, but whenever I've scanned B&W for web display, I've always gotten a better result by scanning the neg than by scanning a print.

Ted Harris
29-Dec-2005, 15:39
Scan the negatives. I can't imagine why you would want to generate another 'generation' into the reporductionprocess when you do not need to do so. Maybe there is a good reason though but I don't know what i t is.

Paul Butzi
29-Dec-2005, 16:16
scan the negatives.

Bruce Watson
29-Dec-2005, 16:30
Negatives.

Veríssimo Dias
29-Dec-2005, 16:39
Scan the negatives.

Hans Berkhout
29-Dec-2005, 16:43
Interesting. Why do some people scan prints and go from there, e.g. Ralph Gibson?

Michael Graves
29-Dec-2005, 17:03
"Why do some people scan prints and go from there, e.g. Ralph Gibson?"

Can't speak specifically for Ralph, but many extremely good printers work from a scanned print in order to get the results of their darkroom manipulations into the final reproduction. If lots of conventional darkroom work is part of your art; scan the print. Conversely, many photographers (if not most) find image manipulation easier in a program like Photoshop. In that case, definitely scan the negs.

Everybody here is saying scan the negs, yet I've noticed that most of the fine art photography books I own were produced from scanned prints and not negatives. Is there a reason for that?

Henry Ambrose
29-Dec-2005, 17:10
Absolutely, scan the negatives to get all they have to offer. But if you have a bunch of great prints and the reproduction size is not large you could scan the prints. This could even be a better choice if the prints are highly manipulated in the darkroom. If you scan the negative you'll have to replicate the all manipulations already done in the print.

Hans, I speculate that Gibson's "look" or desired end result depends on his wet darkroom work and might be hard to duplicate with scanning. I'm thinking of the graininess and that most of his pictures that come to mind don't depend so much on fine detail. So scanning a good sized wet print to then make duplicates might be a good way to go for him.

Brian Ellis
29-Dec-2005, 17:13
If the scan is being done just to put the image on a web site then a lot of people (including me) scan from the print since technical quality isn't critical with monitor display and scanning the print eliminates the need to do all the dodging, burning, and other editing over again. But if you're scanning for the purpose of making an excellent print, and if you have a large format negatives, then you should scan the negative, not the print.

I don't know for sure why Gibson scans the print rather than the negative. However, I know he uses a 35 mm camera so my guess is that it's because of the magnification factor involved in making an 8x10 or larger print from a 35mm negative. He probably gets better quality scanning from the print and eliminating or greatly reducing the mag factor. But if you have a large format negative, or probably even a medium format negative, you'll get a better print if the scan is from the negative rather than the print.

Scott Rosenberg
30-Dec-2005, 10:56
thanks, y'all. i figured scanning the neg was the way to go - i appreciate the affirmation.

Ted Harris
30-Dec-2005, 11:34
You may also find that some images for reproduction are being scanned from prints simply because the negatives are no longer available. I almsot always scan from negatives. I say almost because hundreds of my negatives were destroyed in 1990 (long sad saad story) but I still have most of the archival prints fromt he real 'keepers.' When I need oneof these images (e.g. the image you wil lsee in the upcoming issue of View Camera) I scan from the prints. Also valid to scan the print, as mentioned above, if you have done a huge amount of wet darkroom work to obtain the finalprint and don't want to go through it all again for a digital image.

sergiojaenlara
28-Sep-2009, 00:49
If you do a lot of manipulations in the enlarger it has no sense to scan the negative, you have to scan the print then.
Gibson said in an interview that he scan the print when it is still wet from the darkroom in order to avoid scan rings.

Paul Kierstead
28-Sep-2009, 07:43
Everybody here is saying scan the negs, yet I've noticed that most of the fine art photography books I own were produced from scanned prints and not negatives. Is there a reason for that?

Well, I'd say

1) Age

2) The original "output" (or work of art) was a print (back to age), so reproducing it would involve scanning the original. Scanning a negative would be producing a new work, not a reproduction. The final output would be a combination of the shooter and the post-scan processing. Of course this is true for scanned prints too, but there usually you just use the print in front of you as a reference to match the output. Not really possible with a neg.

The answer is quite different when considering works already done versus production of new works.

Gem Singer
28-Sep-2009, 08:07
Hey Scott,

Capture the image on film, scan the negative, print digitally. That's the ideal way, providing you start with a negative that scans easily.

However, if your negative is too dense or contrasty, or the negative has been destroyed, scanning from an optically produced print can produce a digital fie that can be edited in Photoshop and printed digitally.

I've done it both ways and managed to produce nice B&W prints from either method.

Lenny Eiger
28-Sep-2009, 08:39
Hey, this post is 4 years old. Whatever the OP decided to do I am sure he's done it already. It is a topic that doesn't need re-evaluating....

Lenny

Paul Kierstead
28-Sep-2009, 09:00
It is a topic that doesn't need re-evaluating....

Tough, some of us are going to re-evaluate it anyway. Sheesh, reminds me of all those people who ask a question and then tell us when his answer is finished, no more posts are necessary.

coops
28-Sep-2009, 09:16
The question kinda addresses an issue I am having. I have a tremendous amount of dust and scratches on my negs no matter how careful I am developing, and these really show up on a scan and take forever to remove. Few of these show up on my darkroom prints however, so I am thinking about scanning my prints rather than the negs for making 16x20 prints. Or even having my local lab using their high end flatbed to make scans of the silver prints.

bob carnie
28-Sep-2009, 09:53
I agree with most here that scanning the negative and in PS mimic the print.

A silver wet print from file can come quite close to the original print if you scan the print, there is some loss but maybe the work going into the first print was extensive and worth doing it this way.

We are doing both ways and the results are good. What is nice about the Lambda print from file is we use Galerie G4 and the toning is exactly the same as if it was a enlarger print.* Clients prefer this over our ink services when exhibiting in galleries.

Agfa Classic was also a paper we used, sadly they went out of business , and it is hard to mimic a warm print with the Harmon Galerie 4.
I understand a vender is re introducing the Agfa paper and to date I have not received my standing order for a 30inch roll , but am very excited about the prospects as then I will have a cold and warm tone paper to put on the Lambda and pull through the trays.