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

[KenS]

As I approach my 80 year (of which 65+ have been 'working' under the dark-cloth), 'commercial' B/W papers are now 'somewhat too expensive' on my pension income. So... the amount which I can 'part' with, is now used for the film and the chemicals to make up the required 'archaic print' process emulsions applied to a 'watercolo(u)r paper', which... when dried, are exposed in contact with the B/W negative under my UV light source. It means that have a limited 'finished print' count after a four-hour+ printing 'session' but I find it to be more "satisfying".

Ken.

 

[Bormental]

A print is a print. A screen image is a screen image. If you want to see prints, exchange prints.

Very well said. Asking for a "special place" on a digital medium to show off your "true" paper prints makes as much sense as asking for a fireplace in a swimming pool. Is he not realizing that it's impossible to avoid digitization if he wants to share and discuss something online?

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Very well said. Asking for a "special place" on a digital medium to show off your "true" paper prints makes as much sense as asking for a fireplace in a swimming pool. Is he not realizing that it's impossible to avoid digitization if he wants to share and discuss something online?

You are far from truth: scanning paper is a lot closer to showing real photography than scanning a negative. That, in opinion of most printers in the world.

 

[grat]

The real challenge of course is how to fairly represent digitally a print that has had a lot of darkroom manipulation put into it.

At the risk of being branded a heretic, if you really want to convey what a print looks like "in the real world", the best way I can think of is with a high quality digital camera. Using a tripod and no flash, digital can do a pretty good job of capturing what the print on the wall looks like to a person standing nearby.

No, you won't get the resolution, or the texture, and if you try to zoom in, it's a failed exercise-- but the one thing digital can do very well at this point is faithfully capture what things "really" look like.

 

[Cholentpot]

You are far from truth: scanning paper is a lot closer to showing real photography than scanning a negative. That, in opinion of most printers in the world.

I've solved this

Here's a scanned paper negative that was inverted digitally.

I scanned a wet print and then turned it into a positive. Does this fulfill the criteria?

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

This argument is a very old, very dead horse that has been beaten beyond puree into sub-atomic vapor.

As to the difference between a negative scan and a print scan - because of the nature of the two different types of scans (one with transmitted light, the other reflected), a scan of a print will inherently have more contrast problems than a scan of a negative. It's the same (but not as extreme) as making a Xerox copy of a Xerox copy... each additional generation of copying will lose shadow and highlight detail. The texture of the paper will interfere and cause certain amounts of contrast-killing reflections. This doesn't happen when scanning the negative.

Another significant factor is the skill of the scanner operator. Most consumers don't know how to operate their scanners to extract the maximum quality from their scans.

As David Goldfarb (one of our moderators) said, the decision was made to allow scans of negatives with the proviso that they are labeled as such, and that any manipulations performed are only the ones that would be possible/required to make a wet darkroom print. It may not be exactly the same, but if the guidelines are adhered to, then you get a fair sense of what the photograph would look like if wet printed.

If you feel the burning need to see better representations of original photographs, as previously mentioned, join some of the print exchanges. Otherwise, everything you look at online is at best a second-generation copy of something.

 

[removed account4]

Hi Juan

I appreciate the interest in scans of photographic paper prints. You should start a "group" for what you are interested in. The groups have gallery areas and comment/discussion areas so it wouldn't be hard to have others with your interests in print scans present their prints there as well as in the main gallery.
Having fun is where its at !
John

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

I agree: if printing will be digital, and adjustments will be digital, a digital capture is what makes sense...
There are two main ideas around this...
First, is someone making digital prints from a negative that's optimal for wet printing? That doesn't seem to be the common situation...
Scanning negatives make people start to deviate from treating those negatives the way they require for optimal wet printing... I've never found any reason for producing a negative that's below optimal wet printing characteristics...
Now the second idea... It seems some people do that -making a negative that doesn't print well on silver paper- because for some reason they imagine digital printing, digital scanning, and digital adjustments can be named analog... Now: no problem with such huge imagination, it's only that if those digital images share place with real, not virtual photography, that leads to educational confusion...
Quite simple.

 

[pentaxuser]

At the risk of being branded a heretic, if you really want to convey what a print looks like "in the real world", the best way I can think of is with a high quality digital camera. Using a tripod and no flash, digital can do a pretty good job of capturing what the print on the wall looks like to a person standing nearby.

No, you won't get the resolution, or the texture, and if you try to zoom in, it's a failed exercise-- but the one thing digital can do very well at this point is faithfully capture what things "really" look like.

This sounds like a promising initiative. What we need is the best representation of the actual print, isn't it? So devising the best way to get us there is important I'd have thought
I had no idea how difficult it is to replicate a darkroom print from a scanner. I have only tried it once on a non dedicated and what I assume to be a relatively low level scanner on the HP 2510. The controls on said scanner were limited but when I looked the darkroom print and the scanned version thereof looked pretty close. It may have been a particularly easy print to scan or I may have been lucky of course.

It takes us to the question: what is the purpose of showing the scanned neg as a print? Is it to illustrate the potential of the neg as a print even if such a print from a less than ideal neg might be very difficult in the darkroom? If it is such a negative then for instructive purposes we need the exhibitor to know enough about the darkroom difficulties to say what it might be required to get a similar print in the darkroom but I fear that the number of us able to do this is rapidly diminishing. Clearly fewer and fewer of us are darkroom printers and there is little sign that darkroom printing is on the increase so will it matter in a few years from now? I doubt it

What may be of more concern is how do we ensure that threads that say: "There is a new film on the market and I have tested its pluses and minuses and here are pics to illustrate those pluses and minuses" can be taken as genuine representations of what the film is like and even then does it matter if we are all skilled scanners who can make a sow's ear of a negative from a film that has genuine drawbacks into a silk purse?

Again I suspect not. If we cannot in that sense distinguish the reality from the illusion then does it matter. It gets a bit like the old Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk imagines he is kissing a beautiful woman but at the last moment the spell is broken( I forget how) and the reality is that it is a hideous creature that desires to suck all the salt out of a human body by making contact with human flesh but she does this only in order to live. I am sure it was female. In those days a male creature sucking the flesh of another male, especially Captain Kirk could not be possibly countenanced

Life can get very sad

pentaxuser

 

[Lachlan Young]

First, is someone making digital prints from a negative that's optimal for wet printing?

As a matter of routine. And from negs of all sorts of eras. Never, ever compromise your negatives for scanning. If you have to do silly things to your negs to get them to scan, get a better scanner/ scanning solution. It's that simple. It never ceases to amaze me that people spend thousands on Hasselblad and Leica kit, then scan on awful consumer flatbeds. Scans can rescue negs that might otherwise require extended darkroom techniques (masking) to print well, or where the shadows might get in trouble with the shoulder of certain papers because the linearity of digital sensors are better (in that regard) than darkroom papers. Overall, a darkroom print does have better tonality, but a digital print can be good in its own right - just 'different'. A lot of the silliness about ridiculous EI's come from two angles: firstly, that they are metering in such a way that what they think is a huge EI is not that far off box speed; or they are scanning on low grade scanners that mask the quality loss of significant underexposure. If your scanning technique & kit is halfway decent, it's not hard to tell if the neg is over or underexposed. The relationship between the film rebate and shadow density doesn't lie.

 

[MattKing]

First, is someone making digital prints from a negative that's optimal for wet printing?

Sure, because there is a huge overlap in what is optimal. And because there are many more options available for printing colour if one uses a digital intermediary, and because if your original is a slide - either black and white or colour - than the challenges of translating that to a print are considerably easier to manage if one takes advantage of digital tools.
There are lots of people out there who are fervent supporters of darkroom prints who also want to share things on the internet. It can be really challenging to translate a darkroom print into a screen image with anything approaching the qualities of the print.
So we choose the best available solutions for dealing with that challenge, which often involve scanning the negative or slide and adjusting the result to be a reasonable, lower resolution, transmitted light through a screen facsimile.

 

[Bormental]

You are far from truth: scanning paper is a lot closer to showing real photography than scanning a negative. That, in opinion of most printers in the world.

You are wrong as usual. Scans are a lot closer to real photography than a piece of dead tree. That, in opinion of most scanners in the world.

 

[awty]

Those that exclusively do wet print deserve a gold star for putting up with the smell of thiosulfate and acetic acid in open trays. Two gold stars if they also use sulfide toner.

 

[radiant]

Those that exclusively do wet print deserve a gold star for putting up with the smell of thiosulfate and acetic acid in open trays. Two gold stars if they also use sulfide toner.

I saw wet plate photography in action last week and I would give gold star to those wet plate artists who are doing it without the mask. The normal darkroom chemical smells are nothing compared to smell of ether and chamomille together in badly ventilated area

I've printed some hundred prints myself and I'm still puzzled when I see a really good print live. I just cannot understand it. I saw many Weston-familys print last weekend (and yes, pepper too) and it is just confusing to see so good steady print quality.

So while scanning is good way to see the photograph, that cannot replace seeing a print in live.

 

[awty]

I saw wet plate photography in action last week and I would give gold star to those wet plate artists who are doing it without the mask. The normal darkroom chemical smells are nothing compared to smell of ether and chamomille together in badly ventilated area

I've printed some hundred prints myself and I'm still puzzled when I see a really good print live. I just cannot understand it. I saw many Weston-familys print last weekend (and yes, pepper too) and it is just confusing to see so good steady print quality.

So while scanning is good way to see the photograph, that cannot replace seeing a print in live.

Love the smell of ether, its getting silver nitrate on your skin that is a pain.

Making your own prints gives a greater appreciation to those who have mastered the skills required......its fun trying to improve, but I dont think I would ever fully achieve the necessary skills..

 

[removed account4]

You are wrong as usual. Scans are a lot closer to real photography than a piece of dead tree. That, in opinion of most scanners in the world.

Real Photography? Can you please tell me what that is, I have absolutely no idea what you are "most scanners of the world" opine.
I've been using photomechanical image making for a while now, and never heard anything like this before.
Not trying to be contentious or a PITA, just trying to figure out what is real and why.
thanks!
ps. there is nothing wrong about what the OP is suggesting.

===

The normal darkroom chemical smells are nothing compared to smell of ether and chamomille together in badly ventilated area

. everyone has a little Hunter Thompson/ Gonzo Photography in their soul
John

 

[Ko.Fe.]

For some reason I believe what books with BW film photography I have are scans or other form of reproduction of wet prints.
I do post scans on my wet prints on the Internet.
If I'm lazy, I scan negative.
With wet print I'm finding less and less important which film is negative. Winogrand used film he could use. I like his prints and I can't see film difference on his prints.
In Apug times it was the thread here showing wet prints from different films. My conclusion after I seen results - it next to doesn't matter which film is in use for wet prints.

 

[pentaxuser]

You are wrong as usual. Scans are a lot closer to real photography than a piece of dead tree. That, in opinion of most scanners in the world.

Wait till you see my albums of dead trees. If you were ever to visit Ilford's dead tree line at Mobberley and I were there too then I promise to make sure you got out alive if you accidentally uttered the above in the dim light.

pentaxuser

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

For some reason I believe what books with BW film photography I have are scans or other form of reproduction of wet prints.
I do post scans on my wet prints on the Internet.
If I'm lazy, I scan negative.
With wet print I'm finding less and less important which film is negative. Winogrand used film he could use. I like his prints and I can't see film difference on his prints.
In Apug times it was the thread here showing wet prints from different films. My conclusion after I seen results - it next to doesn't matter which film is in use for wet prints.

I think it does make a perceptible difference (but not necessarily meaningful) when working with very small formats like 35mm. Once you hit medium format, it becomes hard to tell the difference unless you're printing very large prints. At 4x5 and above, it's not even perceptible. It may be useful for the photographer to select a given film (reciprocity characteristics, for example, when working with long exposures) but for the viewer, it is largely invisible and/or meaningless. They may notice a certain amount of motion blur in a scene, but they're not going to attribute that to the film you use, nor will they care. They just care about the effect of it and does it make the image stronger or weaker.

 

[Lachlan Young]

I've printed some hundred prints myself and I'm still puzzled when I see a really good print live. I just cannot understand it. I saw many Weston-familys print last weekend (and yes, pepper too) and it is just confusing to see so good steady print quality.

A lot of it is just plain old hard work & understanding your materials at a practical level - especially the relationships of exposure, processing & ease of printing - and avoid all the garbage about stand development & extreme pushing. If you stick at it for a few weeks of steady work, it becomes pretty obvious how to adjust things to suit your system & make excellent prints.

With regards to Weston etc, contact prints from 8x10 negs are pretty easy to do well, as long as the neg isn't underexposed & the processing time is sufficient.

 

[Bormental]

Real Photography? Can you please tell me what that is, I have absolutely no idea what you are "most scanners of the world" opine.

Did you not notice what I was replying to? That absurd answer was a mirror put in front of a moron.

 

[faberryman]

Scans are a lot closer to real photography than a piece of dead tree. That, in opinion of most scanners in the world.

I don't know about the opinion of most scanners in the world, but I think that everyone would agree that scans are a lot closer to real photography (whatever that is) than a piece of dead tree. Same goes for pajamas, chewing gum, and old hubcabs which, like a piece of dead tree, have nothing to do with real photography (whatever that is). So what is your point?

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

This is turning into yet another beat-the-dead-horse-into-subatomic-vapor session of the old, tired digital-vs-analog debate. If you don't want to see digital content, there are filter tools here on the forum, both in the discussion threads and in the gallery.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I love the feel of a piece of dead tree in my hand; ones and zeroes off a screen do not do much for me. You are entitled to your wrong opinion though.

 

[Kino]

This is turning into yet another beat-the-dead-horse-into-subatomic-vapor session of the old, tired digital-vs-analog debate. If you don't want to see digital content, there are filter tools here on the forum, both in the discussion threads and in the gallery.

+1