Enlarged Negatives for Printing

hey all,

just finished watching this powerful doc. about photographer James Nachtwey. very powerful!!!! Highly recommended to watch, be aware though, its a 10 part series on u-toob.

on to my main question:
in this videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7u_y-__62w&feature=related
the lab guy printing is making a very large print. Seeing that Nachtwey's primary format is Tri-x 400 in 35mm, making a print this large would accentuate grain, maybe too excessively. Hard to tell though due to the low quality of the video though...

so for printing a print this large, would enlarged negatives be made before printing, or would the enlargement be made directly from the 35mm negative itself? I'm just thinking of maintaining the most fine detail in the final print as possible.

I don't print large, even though I shoot 4x5, and starting with 8x10(right now contact printing is the only thing I can do), but it peaked my curiosity enough to warrant starting a discussion on it.

thanks

-Dan

just raise the enlarger head higher. Don't try for low grain with TX.

You don't view a huge print from 2ft away. It's all relative. I presume this is war photographer? That's on YouTube now?

An enlarged neg will not have the appearance of less grain unless the duping material itself has substantial grain. here's the reason: the grain in the original neg will be magnified in the process of going to the interpositive, and that grain will dominate the grain of a fine-grained duping film. So, for example, if you use tmax100 as your duping film, then the grain from the source neg will dominate... tmax is essentially grainless when contact printed.

But, I think that if the duping material has ample grain itself (e.g.a traditional grain film), then that grain may control and sort of subdivide the grain from the original neg. So then it might give the appearance of reduced grain.

i just purchased this dvd and it arrived yesterday. haven't had an opportunity to review the movie but am certainly looking forward to do so

DanielStone said:

hey all,

so for printing a print this large, would enlarged negatives be made before printing, or would the enlargement be made directly from the 35mm negative itself?

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No. Especially with a diffusion enlarger and/or one that uses an oil immersion film carrier. The print they show isn't that large for enlargement from a 35mm Tri-X neg. The print will definitely show grain but the grain will hold together.

Making a bigger negative by adding an additional negative/positive sequence to the process would only degrade quality. However, in the video the printer is using a Durst L184 in horizontal mode, and if the video is 'real' then it is showing a quite large lens being used. Certainly not a 50mm lens on the Laratub rescessed lensboard. In my own darkroom for doing very large 35mm prints on the wall, I'm using an 80mm lens on a rescessed lensboard, but maybe my enlarger is closer to the wall, or they really are enlarging a large format internegative with a 300mm enlarging lens. Or, perhaps some of the video is not true-to-life.

donbga said:

No. Especially with a diffusion enlarger and/or one that uses an oil immersion film carrier.

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oil immersion film carrier? like a wet mount drum scan?




thanks all for your replies.

what size was that print, 24x36, 20x30?

-Dan

DanielStone said:

oil immersion film carrier? like a wet mount drum scan?

Click to expand...

Yes, similar to that. Oil immersion carriers were used widely for making huge Cibachrome murals from 35mm and MF chromes back in the day. The same for large B&W prints.

Actually a good condenser enlarger with a high end enlarging lenses, (those optimized for 20x plus enlargements) will make extremely sharp prints from 35mm but every little defect and piece of dust will be shown up severely. But a good clean neg in an oil immersion carrier will help negate the flaws.