Making Digital Negatives in quantity

[wogster]

Okay I work nights, and today is a day off, and I am trying to stay up as late as possible, this gets me wondering.

I know that you can produce digital negatives, on large format film, but this seems like a pretty expensive process, not something you would want to do with any, but the best images, however I wonder if there might be a cheap way to do a larger number of images, say a couple of hundred, or a couple of thousand on B&W film. For a couple of reasons, one is permanence, the other is to allow for conventional wet prints, from an enlarger.

This raises two questions:

1) Is there such a thing, at an affordable price?
2) How big a print could you make from the output?

 

[donbga]

Okay I work nights, and today is a day off, and I am trying to stay up as late as possible, this gets me wondering.

I know that you can produce digital negatives, on large format film, but this seems like a pretty expensive process, not something you would want to do with any, but the best images, however I wonder if there might be a cheap way to do a larger number of images, say a couple of hundred, or a couple of thousand on B&W film. For a couple of reasons, one is permanence, the other is to allow for conventional wet prints, from an enlarger.

This raises two questions:

1) Is there such a thing, at an affordable price?
2) How big a print could you make from the output?

Bob Carnie, co-owner and operator of Elevator Professional Labs may have a solution and answer for your question. Will it be affordable? That's something you will have to decide.

Depending on how the digital image is created and how the digital negative is generated will determine the maximine size (and cost). Theoretically they could be quite large and expensive.

Don Bryant

 

[wogster]

Bob Carnie, co-owner and operator of Elevator Professional Labs may have a solution and answer for your question. Will it be affordable? That's something you will have to decide.

Depending on how the digital image is created and how the digital negative is generated will determine the maximine size (and cost). Theoretically they could be quite large and expensive.

Don Bryant

I would think the best solution would be something small, say 35mm or 120 size, that could then be enlarged like a traditional 35mm or 120 negative. Like I say, the idea is to have a permanent copy of the digital image.

 

[donbga]

I would think the best solution would be something small, say 35mm or 120 size, that could then be enlarged like a traditional 35mm or 120 negative. Like I say, the idea is to have a permanent copy of the digital image.

Here are your options for output to film from a digital or digitized image:

1) Film Recorder - only good for enlargements to about 4-6x the size of the negatives, but will not match the quality of an original in camera negative. Excellent for contact printing though.

2) Image Setter - not really good for enlargements at all since they are composed of half tone dots. Excellent for contact printing.

3) Lamda printer to film - Quality for enlargement unknown by me. Probably excellent for contact printing.

Extremely close scrutiny of prints made from any of the above methods will reveal some sort of dot pattern.