Becoming a better printer

[greybeard]

One thing I've learned, printing will only get you so far. Good printing is important and can make a photograph really sing. But if the negative isn't right, there's little that printing can do to make up the difference.

This cannot possibly be true in the absolute, simply because there is no absolute standard for the "right" negative. Standardization is indeed a valuable element of the learning process, but what one standardizes on is somewhat subjective.

A "good" negative is one that can be easily printed to the photographer's satisfaction; for one person (me, for example) this may be a #2-1/2 filter on Ilford paper, while for someone else it might be #2 graded paper of some other brand. I might find his preferred negative to be too contrasty, but it could just as easily go the other way because of my light source, chemistry, and personal preferences.

If the shadows are completely empty, or the highlights totally blocked, then no printing magic is going to bring out detail that isn't there. But within a broad range, a good negative is any one that you can make a good print from without more effort than you are willing to expend.

 

[Larry Bullis]

This topic comes up now and then, and I tend to write too much, so here's a link to something I posted a couple of years back.

for whatever it's worth: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[clayne]

Good post bowzart.

I think people need to remember that good printing is just as much a part of seeing as good photography is. You need to relate or convey something - not just obsessing over a full tonal print that has little to say. The latter is a robotic escapade into soulless photography.