Nope, but you can buy a Kodak Scanza Digital Film Scanner as renewed by Amazon.
I scanned my slides 20 years ago.
Originally Posted by ic-racer
Nope, but you can buy a Kodak Scanza Digital Film Scanner as renewed by Amazon.
I scanned my slides 20 years ago.
Tin Can
The picture is a spoof that Kodak re-introduced a LVT machine, not a scanner. (Kodak stopped LVT machine production in 2002 per Wiki.)
Regardless Amazon is selling refurb.
With up to date connections.
"CABLES & EXTRAS INCLUDED – Mac & PC Compatible Converter Comes w/USB Power Cable, HDMI Cable, AC Adapter, Video Cable"
Tin Can
Or perhaps it's simpler: you need to shorten TXP's toe & get it to shoulder earlier to look a bit more like TX, but you don't want to get too much grain by essentially pushing the film. Thus giving TXP a bit of a shove in a developer that is intended to deliver very fine grain & can cause slightly earlier shouldering (as ATM49 does) would seem a sensible approach. It'll make printing a slightly trickier process, but those are not major (merely mildly irritating) problems.
Again, this is less complicated than you'd like it to be - if the process controls & skills are there. The difficult bit will have been doing something that hadn't really been done before & establishing a sensible protocol for production of large numbers of prints. I think that if the brand new Ilford digital warmtone FB had been available then, it's a legitimate question to ask whether the LVT process would have even been considered.
It wasn't good enough to overcome the aesthetic sentimentalism & awful HDR which cheapens the whole work & drastically reduces its impact.
I don't understand well why Bachelier used A49... what is clear to me is that TXP sensitometric curve had to be modified to suit their taste. For the same mids TXP delivers deeper shadows than TX, I guess this was the problem with backlights that Bachelier was speaking about. I guess that TX has a larger share of big grains in the grain formulation. Salgado was used to TX in 35mm, so grain was not the problem, to me what he wanted is having the same backlights than with TX.
Well, IMHO they applied a large deal of graphic arts calibration technique, sure they had a proficient staff doing that,
...but the LVT choice IMHO it's related to the way a lambda prints grain, or in particular to the way a lambda prints TXP fake MF like grain in a big print. Perhaps at 400 ppi grain was not well shaped... so a choice was to print bigger grains in a bigger negative that had to be enlarged less, so they had more pixels for the same grain, and it was better shaped. Just my guess...
YMMV
If you look at classic era Salgado work, it's all about a particular kind of glowing highlight (aided by ferricyanide) - and TX's shoulder does this. Inducing this shoulder without gaining disproportionate highlight density (which many developers are only too happy to provide) will have been key to developer choice. It will however change the way that the film needs to be exposed & printed & that's where some of the headaches will have come from.
Having BTDT with the Lambda at over 1m across & matching to same sized darkroom prints (all from 135), the grain/ noise etc is resolved pretty much as per the file supplied. Having thought about it, I think the answer for why the LVT route was chosen is rather more banal: the warmtone papers are much easier to tweak with ferricyanide, tone etc as per the aesthetic for which Salgado is known. The colder tones of what is effectively a panchromatic Galerie probably weren't desired.
Bachelier said that the lambda prints on FB paper very good, but in sharpness terms the LVT path had better results in special for 50x60cm prints, that I guess were made for collectors.
It is obvious that as the print is larger the Lambda may place more pixels on paper, while the LVT pixels are determined by the negative size, it's about taking the calculator to see the pixels ending on paper for each print size. The lambda may print 200 and 400ppi, but it's not clear what true improvement we have from 200 to 400, my guess is that 400 may have side effects (as with any digital printer) from motion that won't improve all what numbers say.
If they were comparing 4x5 LVT negatives to Lambda 200ppi, at 50x60cm size the LVT has a clear advantage, IMHO original image quality of DSLR could be also a limiting factor so the single concept that remains is grain depiction. Probably the digital images were oversampled to place there sharp grain...
The LVT Image Quality could be improved by printing 2 images in a 8x10 negative instead 4, and still using a 5x7" enlarger of moderate size, and even a 8x10 negative could be done, alowing 25000 pixels in the long side (with the LVT model they used). A good darkroom printer with a regular enlarging lens would not degradate the LVT negative quality at all in the enlarging step.
So to me it had to be about grain depiction, in special for collector's prints. But this is only an opinion based on what I've been reading.
You are correct... the choice for LVT is to use paper of choice , the printers he uses prefer working with enlargers.As well Ilford Warmtone does not work in the machine.
So far Lambda paper in the last 10 years or more have been the cold tone gallerie gloss... now they introduced a matt paper for the lambda but I think it is also a neutral paper.. When I first started printing murals on a Lambda < Agfa Classic was my paper of choice and this was about 5 years before Ilford even got in the game... fwiw I think we were the first world wide offering silver mural fibre prints using the Durst Lambda ( I need to correct this Wikipedia announcement) and around the same time we were making Cibachromes off the machine.... I remember when I decided to see if this was possible , I used a durst 30km away from my darkroom, and boxed the paper to my darkroom to make the prints.. In both Fibre Base and Cibachrome the plotting of the curves was a one or two step procedure and the resulting prints were IMO magnifcant. I have the first print I did hanging in my work area.
At the time many labs were using RC paper BW in Lambdas and I remember asking one lab manager if they would think fibre paper would work as it was the same Agfa emulsion and he laughed at me saying the fibres would get caught in the machine. This manager did not have a stellar career.
Today I know of another European manufacturer who is going to offer , silver for Lambda in Warmtone and in Neutral.. as well as silver film negative and positive which I am excited to try.
Adox does make a paper that would work... but unfortunately I cannot get 100ft rolls as they only offer 30 ft rolls which are pretty much useless for my needs.
I have never run my Lambda at 200ppi for Silver Paper or Silver Film but rather at 400ppi. It does not work for me at 200ppi and I suspect if I learned how to control the laser power more I could solve this
but I prefer the tighter resolution at 400 .
This in the beginning stages caused issues for many photographers who were using less than adequate camera systems with poor PS skills. then making the print too large for the original file size.. You can imagine
the fights I had when I got blamed for artifacting and posterization.. These days with the new systems with incredible file size and better trained PS workers the problem rarely shows itself.
For me the choice of LVT or Lambda Negative is clear.
If I do not have a great enlarger system but a good Alternative Darkroom and are use to contacting process then Lambda negatives are perfect.( inkjet negatives as well btw)
If I prefer a cold tone print with selenium tone then a direct Lambda print is my choice ( this will be more the case if more papers are introduced.)
If I want to do lith prints , Pt Pd , Silvers and many sources then a digital neg is my choice.
If I am invested in enlargers and have the skills and want to control the papers I use then LVT is my choice.
I have not done any tests to compare a LVT against my Lambda neg's and still today have no desire as I see the benefits of both systems and would not hesitate to go one route over the other.
I do see the benefits for Schools to use digital contact negatives as they can then build a simple contact room to work in rather than maintain a clumsy enlarger set up that never gets used.
Why a silver paper may not work in a Lambda? is it there a "mechanical" problem... or it is a sensitometric problem...
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