If you have the space, handling 16x20 fiber base prints gets to be routine, and at a bit over $2/sheet when I was making them, one pays attention. I have only made one 20x24, but I imagine it is much the same. Very large inkjets must be a bear to handle.
http://www.journalofvision.org/content/12/5/8.full
I have a Leonardo da Vinci notebook of his advice and his opinions are worthy of exploration. Is he an old fart?
Fair enough! Substitute whatever adjectives you like for smallish and bigish. I just needed to call these ranges something. The names are arbitrary—look at coffee sizes.
When I did all my printing in the darkroom, my size definitions were more like yours. 9.5x11 was my standard, and I printed down to 4x5 contacts. 16x20 was an occasional event, and a nuissance, like you said.
My work has changed, though, and so have my perceptions. It's quite possible that all the big work I see on gallery and museum walls has shifted my idea of normal over the years. And the technology has made big prints easy. I can make 17x25 inkjet prints as easily as 8x10, and if I want bigger, I give the same file to my friend, who can match the colors and tones precisely and print up to 60" wide (I haven't had him print very big for me yet, but conceptually the only barrier is money). Technology has also made it easier to control the quality of big prints. My bigest darkroom print ever is a 40x50 mural I made for fun when I worked at a lab. It was done on a $50,000 HK horizontal enlarger and vacuum easel. And the quality isn't very good by my standards today. That secondary optical system, and no reasonable options for sharpening (I'm not man enought to make an unsharp mask the old fashioned way) really limit things. I can make a better quality 50" print today from my Nikon. But like most 50" prints, the one I have is plenty good when there's a couch between you and it.
Michael E. Gordon
http://www.michael-gordon.com
Gosh, Paul, all scanners have "secondary optical systems" too. Whatever lab and enlarger you're talking about must have had moss on the lens! I've yet to see any digital color print anywhere as crisp as the prints I routinely enlarge directly from LF negs or chromes. You must be one of those "normal viewing distance" guys yourself, if you hold that kind of ridiculous preconception!
Yes, exactly. If you can make a good silver print, then all you need to do make a good ink print is learn the tools. You don't need to relearn printing.
I would agree with this 100% . the hard part for me was not the principles of PS and ink printing , but rather learning how to move my fingers in synch with my thoughts around the PS program. Once I learned
a few key elements to workflow in the digital world it became very easy to make prints that could equal the look of my silver prints.(took me five years and thousands of dollars in training)
I have no issues making enlargements in the darkroom that will equal ink prints. The set up use is made to do exactly this and if you are in a darkroom you are not completely familiar with I would find it hard to make large murals as well.
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