Is there reconciliation between digital and analog world in alternative processes

[eddie]

Sean- I think you make a good point, which is often overlooked. The fact is, we can make large film negatives for any alternative work we care to do. All the more reason to keep APUG pure...

 

[Prof_Pixel]

Sean,

I think that hybrid methods will last for a long time. It is relatively easy for users to create a wide variety of print media in their own darkrooms and using hybrid methods, make beautiful prints. These prints will reflect the skill and interests of their creators. Creating camera ready film is far from easy.

Hybrid methods give photographers additional tools to express themselves. Ultimately, digital technology is just a new toolbox that gives photographers many new tools that photographers can use as they choose.

 

[MaximusM3]

Sean,

Good points but I firmly believe that the largest portion of pleasure is in the craft of making a great print. The hybrid workflow can allow that but it is not automatic. Everything still requires a hands on approach, chemicals, and the skills to tame MANY variables. It is not a matter of whether digital can ever replicate to perfection an analogue print, because at that point the craft is lost and the art of making that print is no longer a factor. It is basically what inkjet printing is. With Piezography inks, for example, I can output a pretty print on pretty paper but it's all at the touch of one button. Again, it is not a matter of quality because those prints can be as beautiful as anything, but they don't require much skill and it is nowhere near as much fun or fulfilling as getting dirty and creating something out of nothing. I guess it's a matter of looking at a glass half full or half empty

 

[Bill Burk]

A great deal of the allure of Platinum/Palladium for me stems from it being a first-generation contact print emulsion-to-emulsion from a negative developed to suit. I never thought of taking smaller negatives and enlarging even using analog duplication techniques, because I knew I would lose one emulsion-to-base or two generations emulsion-to-emulsion quality. I wouldn't even personally like to contact to dupe for longer scale. I always intended to use a bigger camera to make a bigger negative and fit it to the medium. (Actually my real plan was to use PT/PD to salvage badly unintentionally overdeveloped negatives).

It is this feeling that makes me feel 4x5 is a tiny format, because it would make nice miniatures but not 8x10 prints.

So it's not an analog or digital issue for me.

As for when something becomes almost 100% indistinguishable from the real thing... it's like Sirius Cybernetics not entirely unlike tea. If I am going to pay premium for a PT/PD print and take it home, you bet I'm going to take my microscope out to look at it. How else would I know that, yes it really is better than traditional silver gelatin enlargement. I've already discovered that George Fiske's albumen prints are better. If it's not PT/PD but it just looks like it, I would want that to be disclosed, and I might walk on by the exhibit as a result. Now what happens when the pigment applied by printer really is PT/PD - say Jon Cone Editions makes it one day. And why not? Would I concede? What about simulated uranium toned prints? When they excite the Geiger counter will I change my position?

Well in that last case, I think I will take an inkjet print.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

There will always be an unbridgeable difference between something that appears exactly like the real thing...

...and the real thing itself.

Things cannot simultaneously be the same and be different. The laws of Nature forbid it. And no amount of fancy attempts at reconciliation can change that simple fact. Two things are either the same - or they are not. Nature allows for no other alternatives.

A silver gelatin print from an inkjet negative will never be a silver gelatin print from a silver negative. And so also in reverse. They might look like the same thing. And how close they look the same before it's good enough to satisfy you is entirely up to you. But they will never be - they cannot be - exactly the same thing, as they were born of a different sequence of events. That differentiation may not be meaningful to you, but to others it may be crucial.

The sequence of events leading to the realization of an image is different on APUG than it is on DPUG. Not better. Not worse. But demonstrably and unavoidably different by the laws of Nature.

A thing is what it is. And it cannot be otherwise, no matter how hard we rationalize.

Ken

 

[Bill Burk]

I feel different about large prints. Here I appreciate the modern approaches being developed by the likes of Bob Carnie.

 

[Bill Burk]

Ken Nadvornick,

I like the way you put it.

 

[Leigh B]

I shoot both.

If I want maximum quality I shoot LF, either 8x10 or 4x5 with the best modern APO lenses I can find.

For digital, if I want best quality I shoot a Hasselblad 39-Megapixel back with Zeiss lenses.
Lesser digital is Nikon with modern lenses.

- Leigh

 

[Jerevan]

I guess there is a sort of reconciliation, if you drop some serious cash on a printer (there are no cheap options for printing digi negs here as far I can see, it is $1000 and upwards and still some pizza wheel marks and expensive ink sets). And then you fiddle with the knobs (virtual ones, that is). To me, I just can't see myself waking up smiling at the thought of "Gee, I want to print a digital neg today!". I like the process, with the chemistry and papers and the reality.

But it is there and it is possible, if you have the cash and inclination. It is good for those who deem it good. I agree with Ken, no better or worse, just different ways. But I still think it is a good thing to keep APUG just APUG, there are a hundred sites that cater to digital and then there is DPUG if you have the urge to do something in-between.

 

[Diapositivo]

I personally find the distinction between analogue and hybrid very "artificial" as I find the distinction between APUG and DPUG very unfortunate.

If I were the owner of this site I would have no hesitation in opening a "hybrid" section on this forum (on the same hierarchic level of "Darkroom" and "General discussions") and close DPUG altogether, or leaving it open for digital photography that is.

Scanning is something that is necessary to be discussed by film users at the very least.

At the moment DPUG is a moribund creature artificially kept alive by continuous reference made on APUG. On the other hand, APUG has many more users than DPUG, many of those able in hybrid techniques and willing to help. The hybrid conversation here would be as rich and instructing as the analogue conversation. This Berlin wall is unfortunate both for hybrid users (who don't find sufficient traces of life in DPUG and find censorship in APUG) and for analogue users, because a hybrid section here on APUG would bring, I am sure, many digital users to explore analogue techniques as well thereby expanding the user base, spreading the analogue gospel etc.

To those who don't want to read the "hybrid" word on this forum I just say that they can ignore - through the bespoke site function in General Settings - Forum to exclude from view - the hybrid section (or the scanning section. I would prefer a hybrid section). They wouldn't see the hybrid posts in the "New posts", the "Today posts", etc. Moderators would move any conversation turning to hybrid to the relevant Hybrid section where it would go on normally instead of cutting it short and inviting people to go to another forum, where they typically don't even have an account (but even if they had it by default, it would still be a nonsense IMO).

Considering the forum platform already gives users the possibility to totally and automatically ignore hybrid conversations I don't see why this topic should be banned from an analogue forum site.

Hybrid process is partly analogue. Nobody would say that someone who brings his negative to be printed at Wal-Mart is not an analogue user, or doesn't belong here (!) because he doesn't print his own negatives with an enlarger or because his final product is only partly analogue.

The site would have a massive increase in users, and would benefit the analogue photographic community as a whole more than it does now.

More in general, I think the future of analogue techniques relies solely on hybrid techniques. Sales of film without scanners would be dead since many years. Digital negative printing can actually greatly promote analogue darkroom techniques. I think analogue materials can survive only with the towing of the digital materials.

Hybrid is the branch where analogue is sitting.

 

[Jerevan]

I personally find the distinction between analogue and hybrid very "artificial" as I find the distinction between APUG and DPUG very unfortunate.

If I were the owner of this site I would have no hesitation in opening a "hybrid" section on this forum (on the same hierarchic level of "Darkroom" and "General discussions") and close DPUG altogether, or leaving it open for digital photography that is.

There was a grey zone area earlier on, and well... it did not turn out well (personal opinion) due to threads not keeping to the subject and spilling over into other threads and areas, that did not have anything to do with digital and/or hybrid stuff.

I think 5000+ members on DPUG is pretty good. That forum has to find its own way. Promote it, be a member, contribute and it will continue to grow.

 

[hoffy]

I personally find the distinction between analogue and hybrid very "artificial" as I find the distinction between APUG and DPUG very unfortunate.

If I were the owner of this site I would have no hesitation in opening a "hybrid" section on this forum (on the same hierarchic level of "Darkroom" and "General discussions") and close DPUG altogether, or leaving it open for digital photography that is.

Scanning is something that is necessary to be discussed by film users at the very least.

At the moment DPUG is a moribund creature artificially kept alive by continuous reference made on APUG. On the other hand, APUG has many more users than DPUG, many of those able in hybrid techniques and willing to help. The hybrid conversation here would be as rich and instructing as the analogue conversation. This Berlin wall is unfortunate both for hybrid users (who don't find sufficient traces of life in DPUG and find censorship in APUG) and for analogue users, because a hybrid section here on APUG would bring, I am sure, many digital users to explore analogue techniques as well thereby expanding the user base, spreading the analogue gospel etc.

To those who don't want to read the "hybrid" word on this forum I just say that they can ignore - through the bespoke site function in General Settings - Forum to exclude from view - the hybrid section (or the scanning section. I would prefer a hybrid section). They wouldn't see the hybrid posts in the "New posts", the "Today posts", etc. Moderators would move any conversation turning to hybrid to the relevant Hybrid section where it would go on normally instead of cutting it short and inviting people to go to another forum, where they typically don't even have an account (but even if they had it by default, it would still be a nonsense IMO).

Considering the forum platform already gives users the possibility to totally and automatically ignore hybrid conversations I don't see why this topic should be banned from an analogue forum site.

Hybrid process is partly analogue. Nobody would say that someone who brings his negative to be printed at Wal-Mart is not an analogue user, or doesn't belong here (!) because he doesn't print his own negatives with an enlarger or because his final product is only partly analogue.

The site would have a massive increase in users, and would benefit the analogue photographic community as a whole more than it does now.

More in general, I think the future of analogue techniques relies solely on hybrid techniques. Sales of film without scanners would be dead since many years. Digital negative printing can actually greatly promote analogue darkroom techniques. I think analogue materials can survive only with the towing of the digital materials.

Hybrid is the branch where analogue is sitting.

+1
Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

When we had a hybrid section called "The Gray Area" the problems were that some users then wanted to extend that to discussion of straight digital photography, and many hybrid discussions did not stay contained within the hybrid area, so it wasn't possible for users simply to ignore that section.

DPUG.org was created as a separate site to solve both of these problems, allowing discussion of digital photography by photographers with an "APUG sensibility," and not restricting hybrid discussion in some artificial way. Traffic on DPUG is slow, but part of that is that it's pretty much "all business" and little chit-chat. Ask a serious question about a topic like making digital separations for gum printing, for instance, and you'll get serious answers from people who have done it.

APUG should be a safe place for discussion of analogue photography, where users can ask an analogue question and won't have to sift through digital answers. If someone wants to know how to print color with an enlarger, make an unsharp mask with film and layers of acetate, retouch a negative with pencil, coat their own film, make an enlarged negative using film, they should be able to find that discussion easily on APUG and shouldn't be discouraged in any way buy users who will say, "it's easier in Photoshop."

 

[Diapositivo]

Moderators exist so that they can mark off-topic or delete remarks of the "it's easier in Photoshop" kind, whether in APUG or in APUG - Gray zone. I don't think I was in APUG at the time of the Gray Area. For what I gather the problem was the moderation, not as energetic as necessary to keep off-topic topics really off.

"It's easier in Photoshop" threads could be "legitimately" moved to DPUG and APUG be kept free from digital topics, as it should.

I suggest a second attempt with clear rules, strict moderation, and where appropriate blunt deleting of posts by moderators, with an effective "holy inquisition" attitude . Throwing the dirty water and keeping the baby.

 

[Leigh B]

I suggest a second attempt with clear rules, strict moderation...

So you volunteer to pay for the moderators' time?

People think moderators are people who spend 24 hours a day reading every post that flows through a forum,
with no life and nothing better to do with their time.

Moderators are people with many demands on their time, the forum not being #1 for the vast majority of them.

I'm a moderator on another board, with about the same level of activity. I spend a couple of hours a day there,
along with several other mods, just to keep the thing running smoothly.

I feel quite strongly that your suggestion is a selfish intrusion on other peoples' lives. You owe us an apology.

- Leigh

 

[Diapositivo]

So you volunteer to pay for the moderators' time?

People think moderators are people who spend 24 hours a day reading every post that flows through a forum,
with no life and nothing better to do with their time.

Moderators are people with many demands on their time, the forum not being #1 for the vast majority of them.

I'm a moderator on another board, with about the same level of activity. I spend a couple of hours a day there,
along with several other mods, just to keep the thing running smoothly.

I feel quite strongly that your suggestion is a selfish intrusion on other peoples' lives. You owe us an apology.

- Leigh

From the tone of your answer, I only own you an insult.

And I do offer my moderator time, if and until I can. I've been moderator in the past in my life and, after all, I often read APUG.

This has nothing to do with what I said in any case. Energetic moderation doesn't need more time or less time than more tolerant moderation, which ended up screwing the Gray Area section.

And the conversations which were supposed to go from APUG - Gray Area to DPUG would have to be moderated in any case. For the same reason the entire DPUG (or the hybrid part) could be moved inside APUG without much change (probably some saving of time and money in dealing with only one site).

So stop this bullshit and try to contribute some thoughts instead of some personal attacks.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Indeed, anything that requires a ruthless moderation policy takes more time than the moderators have, which is why we've tried to make the site more and more self-moderating as its grown (e.g., by creating off-topic areas, so that political discussions don't erupt so often as they used to in the main forums), and by making the rules clearer as the limits have evolved. We used to do a lot of editing of individual posts, deleting of posts and such, and fortunately, we haven't had to do so much of that in recent years.

If we had the resources for stricter moderation, we could do it, but I'm not so sure we want the kind of forum where there is a constant, visible police presence. Part of the APUG ethos is that we don't have to have strong moderator interventions so often, and people don't feel like they might be subject to the arbitrary rule of the moderators at any moment. We've occasionally seen exoduses of users from other forums washing up on APUG for this reason, and then it becomes our task to keep the problems of the other forum from manifesting themselves here. Relatively few people have been banned from APUG (aside from spammers, who are banned constantly--a bigger moderation task than most people realize).

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

As to why a stricter moderation policy takes more time--

When people are testing the limits of the rules of a site, in many cases they aren't going to be content to have their off-topic posts deleted without question. So there are numerous PMs or e-mails that the general users don't see. They might start a new thread about the moderation policy, and that has to be moderated. Occasionally moderators have gotten phone calls at home about forum issues. Then if someone gets too aggressive, we have to think about what measures to take or whether the person should be banned, and that involves some discussion with the APUG Member Council and a consensus of the moderation team. And then if we ban someone particularly aggressive, we may spend weeks deleting their new fake accounts as they try to re-register to the forum under various aliases and through anonymizers, each one involving a certain amount of internet detective work on our parts to track their IP's and sometimes physical locations to figure out whether the accounts are legitimate or not, or whether the banned member is working in cahoots with someone else on the forum.

The more the moderators have to intervene in the forum, the more of this stuff we have to do behind the scenes.

 

[MaximusM3]

So easy to get off topic once the battle of APUG vs DPUG begins. I do not envy the job of ANY forum moderator, as internet communities are full of funny people with huge egos and sometimes way too much time on their hands.

Back to the thread's original topic...

Ken and Fabrizio have made good points. A silver gelatin print from an enlarged negative is not the same as one from an enlarged/scanned negative that is printed on an inkjet printer. The question is, aside from the artists, does anyone else care and does it matter? It really all comes down to a personal choice, as far as how we arrive to the end result, which is in this case, a fine wet print. First and foremost, without a good image, any argument is futile. The image itself holds the key, content, the ability or failure to arouse a viewer's interest over a long period of time. A beautiful print of a mediocre image is still mediocre, but we all already know that. As a buyer, if I am presented with a beautiful image that is perfectly printed by analogue means, with any process, I could care less whether it was enlarged negative, digital negative, positive, or mega-plus-ultra large format contact print. No gallery I have ever dealt with has asked those questions either. We are at a point where it doesn't really matter, from a quality standpoint or means to an end. It is simply a matter of personal choices and what makes us feel good. In the case of alternative processes, once again, digital negatives are now more of a necessity than a choice, so any practitioner should (and does, I'm sure) feel extremely lucky that there is some technology that allows these processes to continue which would have otherwise faced certain death without people like Jon Cone, Roy Harrington, Ron Reeder, Dan Burkholder, Mark Nelson, Paul Taylor, Sandy King and few others. This is the reality of it, whether one likes it or not or doesn't want to hear it here on APUG.
Now, some topics, which bridge analogue and digital (hybrid) should be discussed here, within reason (just like we are doing now, in a civilized manner), because I think there is a long term benefit. We are at a juncture where film, paper, chemicals, etc, can survive if more people see this bridge from a constructive and positive standpoint, which can lead one to make good art. Film, scanning, making digital negatives, promoting the craft of wet printing, especially through alternative processes, brings more people to nourish the art and support suppliers and practitioners at every end of the business. Youngsters that want to get their feet wet but don't want a full blown darkroom can still make beautiful platinum prints, from film, and the sun. Or again, making copper plate photogravure, which would otherwise be impossible to achieve today without a sprinkle of digital. For teachers, this is an incredible opportunity to keep film and the art of the print alive. Pushing this aside and not discuss it or promote it, doesn't even serve the hardcore purists well, as it will only speed up the demise of the little we have left today.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I joined around the 11-13 thousand member period and as a long time member and contributer to this site I would like to see this happen.

vote 1.

A vbulletin genius recently helped with our server migration and server optimizations to this new server. I've asked him for his thoughts on a viable way to interlink the two forums (APUG & DPUG). The ideal solution is that everyone has one user name, one profile, one "new posts", etc and can use both sites seamlessly. vBulletin 4.2 is out and may have better back end tools to accomplish this.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I'm all for linking the sites to make it easier for APUG users to access DPUG without having to register separately on both sites. I think that is one of the main obstacles currently.

It would also be good if we could easily move threads between the sites. Right now that can only be done manually by copying and pasting text, so we don't do it in general, since not all the participants of any given thread on APUG will be registered on DPUG, and it would be too complicated to move attachments and such. It's easier just to post a link in one thread to another, but that doesn't always get the conversation to migrate, because people don't want to register for a new site, if they're not already there.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I think I agree with Ken.

I do get hired to print on my enlargers images that would have historically been printed on silver paper.
this is not uncommon and those who get it ,, want it,,
Actually this is one of the main reasons I still have a fully functional silver lab with enlargers that can handle 35 mm to 11 x14 so that those who care can still get prints on silver via an enlarger.

For those younger printers here that are thinking of printing for others.. REMEMBER THIS... before digital capture there were 1000killionbillionmillion exposures on film that still have not been printed

THINK ABOUT IT... Lock and load a freezer of paper when it becomes necessary and for hundreds to thousands of miles around you will be sought out by people who care to have their old negatives,or the negatives their mother and fathers , grandparents, negatives printed in a style as originally done... Not enough money to become a millionare/billionare but certainly enough to live a nice life... We should thank the internet for this as the world has shrunk and the best printers will survive.

I think this is one of the most underrated aspects of the digital wave and how it has affected us passionate about photography.

In 1980 my friend John Bentley would say that there were too many lousy photographers out there, digital has not helped in this matter. Status Quo

There will always be an unbridgeable difference between something that appears exactly like the real thing...

...and the real thing itself.

Things cannot simultaneously be the same and be different. The laws of Nature forbid it. And no amount of fancy attempts at reconciliation can change that simple fact. Two things are either the same - or they are not. Nature allows for no other alternatives.

A silver gelatin print from an inkjet negative will never be a silver gelatin print from a silver negative. And so also in reverse. They might look like the same thing. And how close they look the same before it's good enough to satisfy you is entirely up to you. But they will never be - they cannot be - exactly the same thing, as they were born of a different sequence of events. That differentiation may not be meaningful to you, but to others it may be crucial.

The sequence of events leading to the realization of an image is different on APUG than it is on DPUG. Not better. Not worse. But demonstrably and unavoidably different by the laws of Nature.

A thing is what it is. And it cannot be otherwise, no matter how hard we rationalize.

Ken

 

[Bob Carnie]

Back in the heyday of film and printing, I hated negatives from Cannon and Nikon, give me a Leica, Contex, Fuji 6x9 negative any day of the week.
I am not sure what optic improvements Cannon and Nikon have done in 2001- 2012?

I shoot both.

If I want maximum quality I shoot LF, either 8x10 or 4x5 with the best modern APO lenses I can find.

For digital, if I want best quality I shoot a Hasselblad 39-Megapixel back with Zeiss lenses.
Lesser digital is Nikon with modern lenses.

- Leigh

 

[Bob Carnie]

thanks Bill... for that nice compliment you can send me a file and I will make you a Silver Digital Print.

I feel different about large prints. Here I appreciate the modern approaches being developed by the likes of Bob Carnie.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I have to disagree

Name one Site that is more dedicated to printing than APUG and I will eat my hat.... I just want to discuss alt methods of making these prints, and unfortunately/ fortunately it means using some digital gear.
Dpug has not taken off and can be days or weeks before a decent response to a post, here its next minute conversation.

Seriously there are no other sites.. I keep hearing people say this here but to date no proof of this..

I guess there is a sort of reconciliation, if you drop some serious cash on a printer (there are no cheap options for printing digi negs here as far I can see, it is $1000 and upwards and still some pizza wheel marks and expensive ink sets). And then you fiddle with the knobs (virtual ones, that is). To me, I just can't see myself waking up smiling at the thought of "Gee, I want to print a digital neg today!". I like the process, with the chemistry and papers and the reality.

But it is there and it is possible, if you have the cash and inclination. It is good for those who deem it good. I agree with Ken, no better or worse, just different ways. But I still think it is a good thing to keep APUG just APUG, there are a hundred sites that cater to digital and then there is DPUG if you have the urge to do something in-between.