Originally Posted by
Peter Lewin
It seems to me that there is some circular logic here. Contact printing is the best way to evaluate a negative, but unless you are Edward Weston with a glass sheet and a light bulb, you would make contact prints using an enlarger and timer as the light source. And if you need an enlarger, you have gone directly to the OP's "enlarger" option. An enlarger which can handle 4x5 negatives for enlargement is a large beast, and space becomes a consideration. (I've been using a 4x5 enlarger for at least 40+ years, but then I have had darkrooms - at least 3 - for close to 50 years, so I had the space; not sure the OP does).
My vote for a beginner is a scanner. As mentioned you scan the negatives in a plastic holder; my Epson 4990 takes two at a time in the supplied holder, or 4 at a time if you put them in PrintFile sheets and scan the whole sheet. The amount of work you do on the scan in PhotoShop or similar is up to you. You can simply send the scan of 2 or 4 negatives to any desktop printer to get the equivalent of a "contact print." The file doesn't "know" the size of the output, i.e. the same file can be printed in whatever size you want.
The difficulties as I see them are the learning curve to be really good at PhotoShop (as in most things, it is easy to be mediocre, but takes time and effort to be good), and if you want good quality prints, you need not only the scanner but a real photo-grade printer. And even there, the top-notch printers of digital prints have extra software and ink sets, i.e. even more technology.
My own approach, is to tray develop my negatives, scan them in PrintFile sheets and print the entire sheet on my desktop printer so that I have a "contact sheet" to file with the negatives. The images that I think are worth the effort are then enlarged and printed in the darkroom. I will avoid the arguments about the "quality" of a digital print versus a darkroom print by simply saying that I am a pretty good darkroom printer, and have never made the effort to develop equivalent skill with scanning, PhotoShop, and digital printing. I also enjoy the tactile process of darkroom printing. (As an aside, many of us work in large format not so much for the "quality," what we enjoy most is the process. If it were only quality, we could be like almost every professional photographer and use digital cameras.)
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