Is there a place at Photrio to see films' real behaviour exclusively?

I don't want to start any controversy, and I don't want to offend anyone at all...
I think, after using b&w film for 36 years, and after using internet and film scanners for two decades, scanning a b&w negative is not a true representation of films for those of us interested in wet printing...
In my opinion they are two different worlds... Not saying one is better than the other, but a negative scan is a digital photograph of a scene... A digital photograph is not part of what real, physical photography's been about since the 1820's...
Even if negative scans deserve their own place as digital photography, I think a negative scan, which creates new tonality that already departed from the tonality a negative design defined with a different type of tonal precision for wet printing, is far from representing a film clearly: a scan, a digital photograph of a piece of film, is not a precise tonal act: a scan is not a physical re-presentation of a negative as a positive... A scan is a new digital photograph that can be considered such, a scan, no matter if we talk about twenty different scans made of the same negative by different people, different procedures, different scanners (which are digital cameras) and different results...
What do you think?
I find it would be appropriate to have a place for wet printing exclusively... Scanning negatives is not a part of analog photography... If we photograph digitally a negative, we already went from photography to digital photography... Why post both types of work in the same place?

How would you post those wet prints here?

We don't post both types of work in the same place...one is strictly wet, the other hybrid. I believe that is why this forum was renamed Photrio. 1) pure wet 2) hybrid and 3) pure digital. Take your pick. Neg scans are are allowed because how else are we going to see the negatives online?

The postcard interchange would be your best bet. You get actual prints to view. Otherwise, you have to scan the print and you'd be right back to square one...

A wet print scan is a true representation of that wet print. A negative is an intermediate step, yet to be converted to positive, so scanning an intermediate step instead of the final step is a different thing.

Juan Valdenebro said:

A wet print scan is a true representation of that wet print.

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It will only be as good as your scanner/ repro setup & colour management. In other words, in most cases it will be no better than the average neg scans posted on here. Unless every print is digitised under standardised reproduction conditions using cross-polarisation & a colour checker for profile generation/ colour correction, you will run into all manner of problems from paper texture, reflectance, gamut etc. On the one hand, yes I would prefer if people actually posted reproductions of their prints, done under competent repro conditions, on the other, we have to be realistic about what is or isn't achievable in reality by average users who likely don't even know about polarising gels for lights, let alone how to use them.

What is a film's "real behavior"?

Exposure adjustments, developer choice and technique, and choices made during printing all change the appearance of film.

If you don't want to see posts about hybrid photography, make sure you uncheck the "hybrid" and "digital" boxes at the top of the Photrio home screen. It won't completely eliminate the posts you don't want, but will reduce them.

Lachlan Young said:

It will only be as good as your scanner/ repro setup & colour management. In other words, in most cases it will be no better than the average neg scans posted on here. Unless every print is digitised under standardised reproduction conditions using cross-polarisation & a colour checker for profile generation/ colour correction, you will run into all manner of problems from paper texture, reflectance, gamut etc. On the one hand, yes I would prefer if people actually posted reproductions of their prints, done under competent repro conditions, on the other, we have to be realistic about what is or isn't achievable in reality for most users.

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Hi Lachlan,
That's not true: an opaque scan of a wet print shows tone and grain as they are. Negative scans don't.

This is a thankless discussion if you can't understand that scans are in themselves highly variable according to scanner manufacturer and setup.

Placing a print on a scanner doesn't suddenly represent the true values of the print and negate all the variables.

No more for me; believe what you want.

Juan Valdenebro said:

I don't want to start any controversy, and I don't want to offend anyone at all...
I think, after using b&w film for 36 years, and after using internet and film scanners for two decades, scanning a b&w negative is not a true representation of films for those of us interested in wet printing...
In my opinion they are two different worlds... Not saying one is better than the other, but a negative scan is a digital photograph of a scene... A digital photograph is not part of what real, physical photography's been about since the 1820's...
Even if negative scans deserve their own place as digital photography, I think a negative scan, which creates new tonality that already departed from the tonality a negative design defined with a different type of tonal precision for wet printing, is far from representing a film clearly: a scan, a digital photograph of a piece of film, is not a precise tonal act: a scan is not a physical re-presentation of a negative as a positive... A scan is a new digital photograph that can be considered such, a scan, no matter if we talk about twenty different scans made of the same negative by different people, different procedures, different scanners (which are digital cameras) and different results...
What do you think?
I find it would be appropriate to have a place for wet printing exclusively... Scanning negatives is not a part of analog photography... If we photograph digitally a negative, we already went from photography to digital photography... Why post both types of work in the same place?

Click to expand...

There used to be an "ignore thread" button. I hope that functionality will come back, as it solves this issue you mentioned for me.
It used to be under "Thread Tools" and once clicked (Ignore Thread) you don't see the thread anymore. The workaround is to simply use "ignore user" for the person that started the thread. Then every few months, review your "ignore" list as the offensive threads won't show up any more if no one posts to them and you can "un-ignore" people.

There are so many good digital cameras, I can't see the rational of scanning negatives and if I were interested in that I'd not be on this forum and don't care to read about it.

A negative scan is good enough for showing the subject in the image, but it can't show exactly what the film does when wet printed.

Kino said:

This is a thankless discussion if you can't understand that scans are in themselves highly variable according to scanner manufacturer and setup.

Placing a print on a scanner doesn't suddenly represent the true values of the print and negate all the variables.

Click to expand...

Exactly. And unless the operator understands how to neutralise/ control those variables, the results off the scan are no more representative of the print than a scan of a negative may be of the negative.

Scanning digitally a negative is not a real part of 100% analog/traditional workflow: that's all I say.

Juan Valdenebro said:

Scanning digitally a negative is not a real part of 100% analog/traditional workflow: that's all I say.

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Scanning a print is?

Juan Valdenebro said:

A wet print scan is a true representation of that wet print. A negative is an intermediate step, yet to be converted to positive, so scanning an intermediate step instead of the final step is a different thing.

Click to expand...

A wet scan would actually do not good because each paper dries down differently. Prints after the paper has dried makes much more sense.

Juan Valdenebro said:

A negative scan is good enough for showing the subject in the image, but it can't show exactly what the film does when wet printed.

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These may be a language or semantic problem here. I believe that you mean a dried print of a chemically developed print and not a "wet print".

Yes, Kino... When we scan a wet print (same name when they've dried, Sirius) we show the analog final result. When we scan a negative, we don't: we just make one of many possible digital versions of a negative, instead of talking about the real final analog possibilities...
I don't want people that scan negatives out of Photrio... I just say an area for wet printing scans would be great for the world of photography and for Photrio.

Juan Valdenebro said:

Yes, Kino... When we scan a wet print (same name when they've dried, Sirius) we show the analog final result. When we scan a negative, we don't: we just make one of many possible digital versions of a negative, instead of talking about the real final analog possibilities...
I don't want people that scan negatives out of Photrio... I just say an area for wet printing scans would be great for the world of photography and for Photrio.

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Go scan a print of yours on 3 different scanners on 3 different computers and report back what you see.

In any event, as others have said, if you don't like scans from negatives, you can elect to not look at Hybrid works. It's all up to you.

No Kino, this is not about myself, nor about anyone's preferences... This is about two very different things that should not be considered the same, nor be allowed to coexist in the same place... The reasons are educational.

Juan Valdenebro said:

No Kino, this is not about myself, nor about anyone's preferences... This is about two very different things that should not be considered the same, nor be allowed to coexist in the same place... The reasons are educational.

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Good luck on regulating the Internet.

This is a version of a discussion that has happened here many times over the years.
The result of that discussion has been to permit negative and slide scans in the "analog" section (and before that in APUG) , provided that the digital adjustments are minimized - limited to the adjustments that one is required to do when printing in the darkroom (choice of crop, selection of contrast, selection of density/exposure and dust spotting).
The reason that we ended up at that result is that many of us found that it was really difficult to scan a print and end up with a fair digital representation of it. In contrast (pun intended), it was actually easier to make a print, then scan the negative and adjust the scan so as to more faithfully represent digitally the appearance of the print.
In other words, the scanned negative ends up being a closer facsimile to the print than a scanned print.
If the OP wants more transparency about the steps taken to get the image on our respective screens that is fine - it probably is a good suggestion.
The real challenge of course is how to fairly represent digitally a print that has had a lot of darkroom manipulation put into it.

Juan Valdenebro said:

This is about two very different things that should not be considered the same, nor be allowed to coexist in the same place.

Click to expand...

As others have noted, wet prints do not exist on the internet, so there is no threat of them co-existing here. If you want to see wet prints, you need to go to go to a museum, a gallery, or someone's studio or house. You wouldn't want to come to my house. I have wet prints, hybrid prints, and digital prints all stored together. I don't know why they shouldn't co-exist. They all seem to be getting along fine here.

We’ve had many user driven print exchanges over the years. For a long time I ran the Traveling Portfolio, but eventually, I think it got too expensive to mail the portfolio around the world, so it would disappear for long periods of time and sometimes took so long to make the trip around the world that it was hard to maintain continuity. Exchanges where people organized small groups and sent out prints to everyone in the group worked better. I think the Postcard Exchange is currently the most active. I haven’t stayed on top of which others are currently running. Feel free to join one or start a new one, if you like. I’ve always considered those exchanges and meet-and-greets to be the real APUG/Photrio galleries. APUG originally had no online galleries, but they were added just to give an idea of what kinds of things people work on, with the understanding that any kind of scan was only a lesser representation of a print, however it was made.

A scan of a wet print, in my opinion, is just another interpretation. I used to print wet and then post a neg scan with the wet print in hand, trying to match them as closely as possible, because I thought that print scans were harder to match to the print. After all, both the neg scan and the wet print are one generation away from the neg, while a print scan is two generations away from the neg. It may depend on the scanner and the paper one uses, but I always felt that print scanning produced too many surface artifacts, at least with the papers I liked. Maybe other papers would scan better, but then I’d have to make prints on paper I didn’t like to get a scan that was still an interpretation. Others may scan negs without a wet print in mind, seeing the digital step as a creative opportunity rather than as a 1:1 method of reproduction. It would be complicated to create galleries and subgalleries to account for every approach to what is meant to be reflective of the print and what is “hybrid,” so I just don’t take any of it that seriously. A print is a print. A screen image is a screen image. If you want to see prints, exchange prints.

[QUOTE="David A. Goldfarb, post: 2322875, member: 57"

A scan of a wet print, in my opinion, is just another interpretation. I used to print wet and then post a neg scan with the wet print in hand, trying to match them as closely as possible, because I thought that print scans were harder to match to the print. After all, both the neg scan and the wet print are one generation away from the neg, while a print scan is two generations away from the neg. [/QUOTE]

I have learnt something here. I must admit that as someone who does no scanning at all I was under the impression that because you have a darkroom print in front of you it was easier to ensure that the resulting scan of that print was likely to be a better representation of the actual print than trying to replicate the scanned neg as a print. I say this as someone who has a deal of difficulty in seeing a neg as a print accurately in my mind's eye so to speak. I need a print to look at

We have seen numerous "what's wrong with this film/neg ?" threads, usually about colour neg films admittedly where the conclusion is that the positive scan of the neg is the problem rather than the neg itself. The person with the complaint on occasions can be difficult to convince that it is the scanner Were were still to be to be in the era of darkroom RA4 prints only, would we still see as many "what's wrong with my neg" problems or might there be less because the person with the problem would have found it easier to get the OK print with Y and M filtration or at least based on a poorly colour balanced RA4 print scanned as exhibit A we could have solved the problem more quickly

I use this not as an argument to turn the clock back or change the rules but as an illustration that a scan of the print with a colour is easier to diagnose or is it? There may be logical flaws in this suggestion, in which case I can learn more about why my argument above does not hold water.

On a more general matter of what is the definition of hybrid as opposed to analogue. I have only the analogue box ticked but a lot of problems that I see covered look like hybrid matters. Don't we already have a combined analogue/hybrid forum in reality? A lot of our members here process film and then exclusively scan and if they print at all it is of the non darkroom variety.

I wish to pass no judgement on the rights or wrongs of this but I am confused about what I would see differently if I had ticked hybrid box as
well.

I happen to be a member of another site that allows only darkroom prints to be shown as prints. I had always assumed that the prints in its gallery, which have had to be scanned of course, were likely to be a better representation of the print that was likely from a scan of a reversed neg based what is actually in front of you as a positive is easier from a print than a neg.

In the old days photographers including the likes of David Bailey, Jane Bown, Don McCullen etc always produced contact sheets and decided on which to negs to print from that so that would appear to show that prints direct from negs are the best indication of which negs will make the best prints.

I wonder if the success of choosing the correct negs could have been as easily assured from scans?

pentaxuser

I appreciate all your comments... They show my own worries too...
I like grain, so it's possible, as negative scanning transforms grain so much, that's part of my concern...
Apart from that, weird exposure indexes invade the web, and there's no clear place at Photrio to talk about film without having it mixed with digital adjustments... You know, Foma 400 at 3200 in Rodinal producing a clean image...
Thanks everyone for your posting... It's been civilized, and I feel better... I imagine running Photrio must be really complicated... Of course this is a lovely place as it is... Thank you.