Commercial options for having a digital file printed in "true" black and white?

In Western Canada Royce Howland in Calgary is the man. I just picked up some prints today, from a scan made off a Kodachrome slide. Beautiful BW prints. Royce uses Jon Cone inks for BW printing. While I was there I saw some original silver gelatin 16x20" prints by Paul Stack and their matched equivalents. The highest quality commercial prints i've seen since Wm Clifts exhibition in Santa Fe at the New Mexico Museum of Art, which had both sillver gelatin and a few fine digital prints from large format negatives.

koraks said:

That's what I'm explicitly referring to.

Scans have nothing to do with this, sorry.

Click to expand...

Interesting. I don‘t have any Lightjet prints here atm, but I just checked some frontier prints from digital images with an 8x loupe and can‘t see any pixel pattern.
I’ll check some large Lightjet prints when later, curious how they look under a loupe.

I can imagine how the pixels don't show on a Frontier that's that's slightly out of focus. They'll blend in that case.

GregY said:

In Western Canada Royce Howland in Calgary is the man. I just picked up some prints today, from a scan made off a Kodachrome slide. Beautiful BW prints. Royce uses Jon Cone inks for BW printing. While I was there I saw some original silver gelatin 16x20" prints by Paul Stack and their matched equivalents. The highest quality commercial prints i've seen since Wm Clifts exhibition in Santa Fe at the New Mexico Museum of Art, which had both sillver gelatin and a few fine digital prints.

Click to expand...

Checked it online looks pretty cool. I wish they did international orders or books too

koraks said:

I can imagine how the pixels don't show on a Frontier that's that's slightly out of focus. They'll blend in that case.

Click to expand...

The image and grain pattern looks very sharp under the loupe. actually sharper than on analog prints but somewhat less natural (oversharpened and somewhat noisy).

I‘d suspect that the light rays scatter a bit inside of the emulsion, melting pixels together.

I'm sure I have posted this before, but if you are interested in pixel peeping prints have a look at Jurgens work.

dokko said:

I‘d suspect that the light rays scatter a bit inside of the emulsion, melting pixels together.

Click to expand...

This is definitely an effect in color RA4 papers - and on other papers as well. The cyan dye (pink on RIP Endura) on Fuji paper in part serves to combat this issue. It's kind of difficult to avoid altogether.

calebarchie said:

I'm sure I have posted this before, but if you are interested in pixel peeping prints have a look at Jurgens work.

links – the eye

the-eye.nl

Click to expand...

Thanks for linking this; note that several of the color chromogenic digital prints show the phenomenon I mentioned. Some quite strongly, some more subtly. In some, the effect is entirely invisible or at least easily overlooked.
Note that in none of the prints I've seen/handled myself, it's a practical concern since the pixelation is never visible to the naked eye.

calebarchie said:

I'm sure I have posted this before, but if you are interested in pixel peeping prints have a look at Jurgens work.

links – the eye

the-eye.nl

Click to expand...

The Cone Piezography prints looks the best to me for black and white, at least there is a feeling like grain and no tint.

The image you supply would be scanned as a monochrome .tif file and profiled according to the media selected; the choices are quite large and you'd ideally be talking about the result you want with the printing tech. Baryta paper (e.g. Ilford's Galerie gold fibre baryta media in pearl, matt or gloss) gives a very darkroom print-like appearance (either to colour or B&W). There are many more types of media available to giclée output than Pegasus/Lambda (laser exposure) printers; giclée also has a considerably wider gamut than traditional RA4 printers, which are considered today as dinosaurs at the end of their operating life (no spare parts are available).

Ideally once your job is prepped, get tiny A5 proof prints done on various media and 'sit on these' in thought for a few days to make informed and confident judgement on preference.

When I was involved in printing Ilfochrome Classic prints (traditional darkroom practice), a lot of fine art minimalist-oeuvre works were printed to standard IC media in B&W. The result was quite stark and beautiful at the same time — bold, brassy and richly toned — almost a shock to uncover the raw print from its wrapping, as one would expect from the result of printing this way.

Nitroplait said:

I practice photography in the analog domain and do my own darkroom development and printing. I know very little about printing digital BW files and hope to get a few pointers from those crossing the domain line.

I have a digital BW file which I would like to print. I'd like it to be archival and true monochrome, as close to a B&W fiber based print as possible (not an inkjet print composed of colors that tries to resemble grey scale nor a BW print on color RC paper).

I'd like to send it out to a professional service, but struggle for a vocabulary to describe my requirements.

What service should I search for? what process or technology is common today for printing pure greyscale photographs from digital files?

Any recommended companies that will do above? (I am in the EU)

Thanks.

Click to expand...

I suggest giving White Wall a try. They do an excellent job. They expose true FB paper and develop chemically!

Pieter12 said:

The Cone Piezography prints looks the best to me for black and white, at least there is a feeling like grain and no tint.

View attachment 407318

Click to expand...

don't be coned!

RalphLambrecht said:

I suggest giving White Wall a try. They do an excellent job. They expose true FB paper and develop chemically!

Click to expand...

I probably will.
I have looked at their homepage, and they seem to offer what I am looking for, at what seems to be reasonable prices.

I have placed an order with WhiteWall (Ilford Baryta). They have a 19 days lead time, so they probably collect jobs to optimise the process.
I will report back when it arrives.

I am printing a BW tiff file by Stephen Gill from the series "The Pillar".
People who donate to this Swedish Unicef campaign get a license to print one of 3 of his photos.

Stephen Gill's work probably qualifies as conceptual photography, but I find it very accessible without or with very little explanation.
Martin Parr had a conversation with Gill not too long ago:

OK. 19 days lead time turned out to be a very pessimistic estimate.
It was shipped already after 3 days.

I am quite pleased with the result.
I disabled all the "enhancement options" but I still see a little more sharpening in the print than I see in the file. but not too distracting.

The texture, feel and depth of the baryta paper is exactly what I hoped for.

I will use them again if I have a BW file to print.

So, thanks to those pointing me in that direction!

For those interested in the economy of this print:

I wanted 30cm wide so the file dictated a 30 x 37.9 cm print.
Baryta paper, de-activation of "UltraHD" or "SuperResolution"

Price €48,26 (minus a first order 10% discount = €43,43)
Shipping (fedex) from Germany: €9.40

Maybe not cheap, but fair for what I got.

Below it the Stephen Gill image I printed.
I am sure my choice of will baffle many here. Subject out of focus. Strange bird posture. But I have a special attraction to grey hooded crows as well as un-academic conceptual photography.
I feel I "get" what Stephen Gill is doing.

If you want to see the other choices, go here: https://www.nobodybooks.com/product/the-pillar-print-your-own-image-options-

A more focused video talk about "The Pillar" project is available on the Louisiana Channel:

Nitroplait said:

I feel I "get" what Stephen Gill is doing.

Click to expand...

I met Stephen Gill at an opening in Cologne. A nice and interesting fellow. I bought his book Coming Up For Air.