Printer vs Old style

[Clay Turtle]

I will admit that I did run into some problems with enlarging. As I had made mention to working with an enlarger, I felt compelled by circumstances to act upon it. I used an 35mm B&W negative to (re) printing. The previous owner of the darkroom had printed a 16x20 with a beseller 67 dichro. & is hanging along a hallway with other tributes to his work. The 67sd isn't operational so I had to use my own Omega. *( See photo)

First problem was I had picked some 11 x14 ilford paper. Put a negative in the carrier & discovered that I could get an 11x14, I could only get approx. 10 inches in width. So I had to mount it above the top to be able to print an11x14.
Second problem was as (shown in photo) I had used crop & dodge in the reprint to prepare a set of five prints . . . but then You can't see them in person & you wouldn't probably notice the subtle variations between the first 8 sec. print & the last (8 sec w/dodge & 2sec of burn) 10 sec. exposure?

[Clay Turtle]

You're not going to get a silver gelatin print out of a inkjet printer. They're just different.

But to give you a better idea of how they are different http://www.largeformatphotography.in...ad.php?t=39455

[ljsegil]

I don't consider myself a finished expert by any stretch, but have been quite content with the results I get from the 3800 using standard Epson inksets and usually printing with an icm. profile through Photoshop, though advanced B&W has also worked very well for me. The key is having a good final image result in Photoshop to print from. If your finished Photoshop image does not snap the way you want it to, nothing you can do with the Epson will fix it. The best the printer can do is reliably reproduce the image fed to it. And producing a satisfying monochrome image in Photoshop can sometimes be a very time consuming labor of love that cannot be shortchanged. It is sometimes easier to begin with a RGB file to produce a final monochrome image as more tools and controls are available in Photoshop for RGB than for Greyscale mode. YMMV, but do convince yourself that you have your best possible file prior to printing for best possible results. The Epson Exhibition Paper should certainly not be a limiting factor.
Best of luck,
Larry

[Clay Turtle]

I purchased a Epson 3800 printer for 4x5 negs and I'm not to crazy about the results. It prints fine at 4x6 but when I try 8x10 the print just does not look like a traditional b&w print.
Any tips on printing?? I would love to compare the old silver printing to the new style but I don't have a darkroom.
. . . I don't consider myself a finished expert by any stretch, but have been quite content with the results I get from the 3800 using standard Epson inksets and usually printing with an icm. profile through Photoshop, though advanced B&W has also worked very well for me. The key is having a good final image result in Photoshop to print from.

Ya, I know what ya mean . . . the photo above is printed on some out of date, slightly burned (heat fogged) 8x10 that I used to reduce some of the price that go with the learning curve. The shot is 35mm because I was making a practice run, kayaking at the Weedon Island Preserve kayak trail (novice kayaker) & I was a little worried about taking a camera at all, let alone my Large Format.

[Clay Turtle]

Large Format would be a better choice for such as the previous shot. This one is off the same roll of b&w film (second time out). It was shot 28mm-135mm lens from the kayak while my avatar (first time out) was shot with a 70mm-300mm lens in macro mode @ 1/20sec hand held from the kayak.
Ya sometimes ya just get lucky & come out with a usable negative or in the avatar case, a chrome.
PS: This shot was made while inside that tunnel (channel) in the previous photo.

[Clay Turtle]

My Epson 4000 does better prints than I ever managed when I did have an enlarger.
But if one prints digital, one might as well shoot digital. I would suggest that, to beat both printer and enlarger, one has to contact print. That's where LF has the edge, and that's why it's coming back.

Ya, but then I not to great on contact printing, I think that a certain amount of enlargement is need to get the best effect from a negative or chrome. Although I not sure how that would relate to Ultra Large Format? Funny thing is I am going back to enlarging my own 35mm black & whites or should I say I am starting to shoot more 35mm with black & white negative film. Anyway, I found [as a results of this thread] out that I can do more with an enlarger than with a scanner?
I had bought a roll of Delta 100 & loaded it in the camera but didn't reset the ISO!
I had done some shots of a local establishment one early morning then didn't shoot again for a while. Friends came to visit from up North so we took them out to the beach. I was shooting some of them & got worried about the back lighting effect so I started to compensate when I realized that my shutter speed was way off base. A check of ISO setting showed I was set at 400 ASA. Not thinking about the beginning of the roll, I switched to the proper ASA rating & continued shooting.
The roll contained both morning shots in town & on the beach @ 400 and the beach @100 with later shots inside a cafe. When I went to process, I thought ' stupid, ya should have shot the whole roll @ 400 ASA then pushed it the extra 2 stops. So I decided to push it one stop, mid point [ASA200] between the exposures on the roll. I scanned the negatives but had to play with the setting & even then in Photo Shop they were maxed out & just wasn't getting it.
Later I ran some through the enlarger. I don't have a set of filters so I printed them normal & I was amazed that they printed as good as they did . . . not great but good. Ya, getting the old enlarger set up & running some 35mm though it sure has been a lesson well learned. I still leave the LF printing to photo labs {especially color] as they are better set to handle that kind of work but for the 35mm B&W, I will stick with the enlarger. (I can always scan the prints for digital files for the web & such things.)

[Gary L. Quay]

Going back to the original question... I had a few similar problems. First: I own a flatbed scanner. It's a good one: an Epson 4790. I had read that the human eye sees about 300dpi, give or take a few. So, I scanned my stuff at 400dpi at the size I wanted to print. My 8x10 prints looked a little fuzzy, even when starting with medium format negatives. My guess is that negative frames that hold the film create a milimeter or so of distance between the neg and the glass, and that causes a slight loss of sharpness. When I printed at 4x6, they were razor sharp because the minimum size I scanned for was 8x10.

I have made some good prints on my computer, but what others have said is true: you won't get a traditional silver geletin print from a digital printer. Printing digitally or in the darlroom both take practice and patience. For me, the darkroom won out, even for color enlargements, because I dislike the mistakes less, i.e. my frustration level for the learning curve is lower. I've used computers since the 1970s, but the technology changes too fast. Photoshop keeps removing functions that I really like to use. Also, I upgraded my Mac operating system this year, and in order to get all of my programs working I had to buy a new computer. But, I digress. To get the print you want from a printer, you have to have everything profiled, from the monitor to the scanner, to the printer, and each batch of the the paper you are printing on. I find it maddening.

[Clay Turtle]

Going back to the original question...
A) I had a few similar problems. First: I own a flatbed scanner. It's a good one: an Epson 4790. I had read that the human eye sees about 300dpi, give or take a few. So, I scanned my stuff at 400dpi at the size I wanted to print. My 8x10 prints looked a little fuzzy, even when starting with medium format negatives. My guess is that negative frames that hold the film create a millimeter or so of distance between the neg and the glass, and that causes a slight loss of sharpness. When I printed at 4x6, they were razor sharp because the minimum size I scanned for was 8x10.
I have made some good prints on my computer, but what others have said is true: you won't get a traditional silver geletin print from a digital printer. Printing digitally or in the darkroom both take practice and patience. For me, the darkroom won out, even for color enlargements, because I dislike the mistakes less, i.e. my frustration level for the learning curve is lower. I've used computers since the 1970s, but the technology changes too fast. PhotoShop keeps removing functions that I really like to use. Also, I upgraded my Mac operating system this year, and in order to get all of my programs working I had to buy a new computer. But, I digress.
B) To get the print you want from a printer, you have to have everything profiled, from the monitor to the scanner, to the printer, and each batch of the the paper you are printing on. I find it maddening.

Ahh . . .
A)I pointed this out in the digital section . . there is a big difference between enlarging (enlarger print) & making a larger print (digital print). You probably need to scan at a higher dpi to get a larger print?
B)

I still leave the LF printing to photo labs [especially color] as they are better set to handle that kind of work

My point most people have little to no concept of what went on behind the scene in those old time photo labs! So they have no idea what it takes to get reproducible results out of their digital printer!