Laser printed digital negatives

radiant · Dec 13, 2020

I purchased 170 eur / 200 USD color laser printer and tested to be used on producing digital negatives.

I printed a tone calibration sheet and measured the transform "straight out of the box". I printed on Ilford MG RC V paper on mid-contrast settings.

Here what the paper looks like scanned. This test strip was printed on normal copy paper and I used paraffin to make it more transparent. You can clearly see the paper texture. Printer dithering is also visible but it is not disturbing, quite organic I think.

I scatterplotted the input/output and it looks like this:

I also printed 18cm x 18cm photo (taken with iPhone 6S). This was printed using laser transparency film. Sorry for the dust - that seems to be really annoying part of this..

radiant · Dec 13, 2020

For alternative processes I think this works surprisingly well. For silver gelatin prints .. Well, I won't quit shooting on film However I think there is still some magic in silver gelatin prints compared to inkjet prints. Of course inkjet outperforms the result, but I'm personally I think photos need to have some organic attitude.

What do you think?

RalphLambrecht · Dec 13, 2020

vedostuu said:
For alternative processes I think this works surprisingly well. For silver gelatin prints .. Well, I won't quit shooting on film However I think there is still some magic in silver gelatin prints compared to inkjet prints. Of course inkjet outperforms the result, but I'm personally I think photos need to have some organic attitude.

What do you think?

laser and ink-jets do not produce sufficiently high densities for this process.

radiant · Dec 13, 2020

RalphLambrecht said:
laser and ink-jets do not produce sufficiently high densities for this process.

For what process?

removed account4 · Dec 13, 2020

vedostuu said:
What do you think?

I think any way to transfer a digital image to a tangible negatives to make photographic prints is great.

eddie · Dec 13, 2020

vedostuu said:
What do you think?

I agree with John. Anything which increases creative image possibilities is a plus. It may not be the right option for everything, but it may be perfect for something.

radiant · Dec 13, 2020

Thanks @jnantz and @eddie - well said both!

More prints with same "recipe", this one was shot on Fujifilm X-T30 and Fujinon lens, so it has bit more sharpness:

wyofilm · Dec 13, 2020

Looks great! You don't have any RA-4 paper and chemistry at hand do you?

radiant · Dec 13, 2020

wyofilm said:
Looks great! You don't have any RA-4 paper and chemistry at hand do you?

Thanks. I think I'm glad I don't have RA-4 equipment currently available

BTW: as I'm using WS2812 leds in my enlarger I was thinking this kind of printing could be done with a RGB light table / exposing unit. No need for enlarger and one can control contrast and crazy ones could adjust RA-4 color balance ..

NedL · Dec 13, 2020

wyofilm said:
Looks great! You don't have any RA-4 paper and chemistry at hand do you?

oh... a color printer and RA4 ... don't know why I never thought about that before, there's a deep rabbit hole!
I'm in the same camp w/ John and Eddie...

MattKing · Dec 13, 2020

Looks quite good.
The resolution is moderately low for silver gelatin, if film negatives and an enlarger are available to the user.
But for traditional and alternative processes that are already of somewhat lower resolution, this seems to be a great option.
I much prefer laser printers for printing text!

radiant · Dec 14, 2020

MattKing said:
The resolution is moderately low for silver gelatin, if film negatives and an enlarger are available to the user.

Of course this doesn't replace well exposed negative at all. I'm not arguing that at all. I was just totally surpised how well this works. My expectations were very low..

If we look at the second print I posted .. is the laser printing method somehow degrading the feeling or value of the photo? I mean if we completely forget resolutions or other technical things and just look at the photo itself, I mean.

MattKing · Dec 14, 2020

vedostuu said:
If we look at the second print I posted .. is the laser printing method somehow degrading the feeling or value of the photo? I mean if we completely forget resolutions or other technical things and just look at the photo itself, I mean.

No way to tell - through the internet .
They look good here!

Patrick Robert James · Dec 14, 2020

In the late 90s I did some silver contact prints using an inkjet printer. Worked fine from what I recall. Even the density was ok. The resolution wasn't as good of course but as long as it tickles your fancy, who cares?

A couple of years ago I gave a laser printer a go at making negs for cyanotypes. It sort of worked but I didn't really like them so I didn't spend the time calibrating the whole shebang. I just bought a Canon pigment inkjet instead.

The best way to find out if something is possible is to do it yourself and see if it meets the parameters for what is important to you.

paolod · Mar 1, 2021

Gabriellk said:
And with touch printing, I've yet to come up with anything I want. Contrast curves are notoriously difficult to get correct on B/W paper, and this is made even more difficult by the inkjet printer's translation. Every transparency film I've tried, even for contact printing, gives certain tones, particularly highlights, a strange texture.

I've been thinking of making my own film writing setup by using a 3D printer to slowly "print" an image onto film using a pulsed LED and the printer's X and Z axis, with a camera aimed at it in bulb mode... but that would take a lot of work and I have no idea how well it would work. Alternatively, you may take an image of a 4K display, but enlargement would show the grid, and contrast would possibly remain odd since the screen's blacks aren't truly black.

I have done something similar: loaded a piece of silver photo paper in a graflex film holder and pointed the camera at my LCD monitor. It worked pretty well, with a 2k monitor and a 4x5 print I could see the individual pixels with a magnifier but they weren't too obvious.

Instead of setting each pixel to a certain gray level, I had each pixel turned on full brightness for a period of time proportional to the density at that point. That way it's perfectly linear, there is no need to worry about correcting for monitor gamma. With a long enough exposure there's effectively no limit to the density or contrast. As far as I can tell the pixels that were set to black but still passing a little bit of light from the lcd backlight didn't expose the paper at all.

Mainecoonmaniac · Mar 5, 2021

vedostuu said:
I purchased 170 eur / 200 USD color laser printer and tested to be used on producing digital negatives.

I printed a tone calibration sheet and measured the transform "straight out of the box". I printed on Ilford MG RC V paper on mid-contrast settings.

Here what the paper looks like scanned. This test strip was printed on normal copy paper and I used paraffin to make it more transparent. You can clearly see the paper texture. Printer dithering is also visible but it is not disturbing, quite organic I think.

View attachment 261496

I scatterplotted the input/output and it looks like this:

View attachment 261497

I also printed 18cm x 18cm photo (taken with iPhone 6S). This was printed using laser transparency film. Sorry for the dust - that seems to be really annoying part of this..

View attachment 261498

Looks amazingly good!

Laser printed digital negatives

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Laser printed digital negatives

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