Photo Restorations and Digi Negs

Hi all, I came across a comment in another thread regarding the use of digital negatives to make silver prints and was hoping for some input regarding my particular situation.

I've restored a few hundred of my parents' and grandparents' old photos using Photoshop and was dearly hoping to be able to create digital negatives to put those photos back onto some quality paper in the darkroom.

bob carnie said:

... I do not think making contact silver prints will be that great with an inkjet digi neg.

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So, should I scrap that idea? I'm not in a position to buy an inkjet printer to make my own negs and have looked into places that will make transparencies for me (with the idea being to make simple contact prints) or even to have the files printed back onto 35mm film (which I'd prefer but it's simply too expensive!).
From Bob's comment, am I being too optimistic in my hopes of going full circle with these photos (silver print - digital file restoration - digital negative - silver print)?

Many thanks in advance for anyone's thoughts/ideas on this.

Molli

I think it will work to a decent degree, and I answered probably more on your other thread
No do not scrap the idea, there will come a day when I can take all your files and economically make silver negs for you. not today but soon.
regards

Bob

Molli said:

Hi all, I came across a comment in another thread regarding the use of digital negatives to make silver prints and was hoping for some input regarding my particular situation.

I've restored a few hundred of my parents' and grandparents' old photos using Photoshop and was dearly hoping to be able to create digital negatives to put those photos back onto some quality paper in the darkroom.



So, should I scrap that idea? I'm not in a position to buy an inkjet printer to make my own negs and have looked into places that will make transparencies for me (with the idea being to make simple contact prints) or even to have the files printed back onto 35mm film (which I'd prefer but it's simply too expensive!).
From Bob's comment, am I being too optimistic in my hopes of going full circle with these photos (silver print - digital file restoration - digital negative - silver print)?

Many thanks in advance for anyone's thoughts/ideas on this.

Molli

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for that, Bob. I didn't mean to single you out specifically in the writing of my first question.... it was just seeing your comment elsewhere that prompted me to ask

"Not today, but soon" is all good - it will give me time to go back and re-do those very first files I restored. I was "learning on the job" at the time, so to speak, and had no idea what I was doing, how the original file should be scanned and saved and, really, they're not up to par for reproduction work just yet!

I actually took a look at your Elevator Digital site a little while ago when this idea first occurred to me but I couldn't see quite what I was looking for. I'll be sure to keep an eye on further developments in the future.

Thanks again for your time - and for your posts on APUG which made me sign up with DPUG and search you out here. (You're not being stalked - merely valued )

You can make really nice, very printable LVT negs. They are beautiful and expensive. I've recently done 8x10 negs that have been printed to about 45x75 in silver gelatin. A negative needed to be restored that had been ripped in half. Drum scan of tri_x and then an 8x10 LVT looked great. A 4x5 may have been ok but the image was really really important to the photographer, one of their signature images, and he wanted to be able to try an oversize print of it.

Whats really cool about a LVT negative is that it can be put in an enlarger.
The negatives that I can make are not good for this.

Green Rhino said:

You can make really nice, very printable LVT negs. They are beautiful and expensive. I've recently done 8x10 negs that have been printed to about 45x75 in silver gelatin. A negative needed to be restored that had been ripped in half. Drum scan of tri_x and then an 8x10 LVT looked great. A 4x5 may have been ok but the image was really really important to the photographer, one of their signature images, and he wanted to be able to try an oversize print of it.

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Yes, I read about the LVT negs. The one place I found in Australia that did them charged astronomical prices, well outside of what I can afford. There's a place, umm, Gamma Tech I think it's called, in the U.S. which records to 35mm film for $2 per frame (extraordinarily cheap by comparison with everywhere else I've looked). At the moment, the price isn't really an issue because, $2 or $60, I can't afford to get this done. For the time being, I'm just looking into options and have concerns about the quality I might expect of a digital negative and whether there might be a better way of achieving my goal.

Green Rhino, you mentioned a restoration of a damaged negative and how well it reproduced to an LVT neg. Do you think there would be a significant drop in quality given that I'm working from scans of prints, rather than the original negative? I know that, optimally, the negative would have been a far better starting place but, unfortunately, they no longer exist. Would it be worth recording a digital file of a print to film or do you think they'd just turn out looking like a photograph of a photograph (if you see what I mean?) Sorry for the convolution, it's 10:20am and I should have gone to bed hours ago.

Thank you both for your time and thoughts. I'm hugely appreciative.

I would suggest pigment inkjet prints. There are many surfaces available, and 100% cotton papers, too. This will cost far less than making silver prints using digital negatives, and the results will probably be superior.

Hi Philip, I can definitely appreciate what you're saying, it's just that I'd dearly love to be able to reproduce - as nearly as possible - the original photos. It was these photos from the early part of the last century which got me into the darkroom in the first place and I'd really like to take them back there.
I know I'm making life difficult for myself here (I'm afraid that's my nature!), it's simply an idea I'd like to explore. I made a contact print from a paper negative which got me started along these lines. By paper negative, in this case I mean a digitally restored photo, inverted in PS with the contrast tweaked a tad and printed out onto measley A4 copy paper. Nothing fancy, merely an experiment. Of course, the paper's texture/fibre showed up badly, but it was a starting point which naturally led me to start speculating about getting these files onto some form of transparency. Finding out about film recorders has piqued my interest even more but, as you say, it will be far more expensive than going the all digital/inkjet print route.
I'd really like to explore the possibilities with digital negatives to the full extent, even if it's merely theoretical at this point.
Thank you for your thoughts, Philip, I appreciate them.

Follow some of Ron Reeders posts here and elsewhere , his digital neg system is probably a very good route for you to go down.
Of Course Mark Nelson has a method as well that would be every bit as good.
Since you are working from photographs not film you will be very happy with the results on Silver, or any material for that matter.
I suspect you want silver to keep the images in the same family so to speak.

LVT negatives would be overkill, as well as my Lambda Film as you are basically doing copy work which has a greater tolerence.
We will be offering a bulk service where you need to set up a canvas and output many images. We do this now on silver paper and clients are bulking many small images on one canvas and paying for a single large sheet.
Probably mid next year and we will be ready to go to accepting files for making silver negs.

When you are aware of your endpoint numbers , or better yet knowing a range of tones from minimum white detail to minimum black detail will record on a certain paper then you are good to go.
Much like profiling.

Thank you for the advice (and encouragement), Bob. I read quite a bit of Dan Burkholder's site a couple of years ago and touched on Mark Nelson's. I believe Michael Koch-Schulte's website was one I spent the most time at recently, trying to take everything in. What he had to say made a lot of sense to me and seemed a workable method for what I'm wanting to do. Unfortunately I tend to get an idea in my head and try to ingest every scrap of information all at once. Your suggestion to keep an eye out for Ron Reeder's presence online is a good one and will, perhaps, get me into a more systematic approach to all of this.
While ideally I'd like to make my own negatives, in the experimental stage I'd just like to see how contacting digital negatives to photographic paper might look which means shopping the job out. Splurging on a decent printer is simply not going to happen any time soon. In the meantime, learning how to prepare files should probably be my main focus.
Apologies, I'm 'organising' myself out loud here!
Thank you for your suggestions, Bob. I look forward to the day when I can send you some digital files to go onto real silver film

If you go way back into the almost pre-history of digital negatives (this being the internet age, that would be approximately 1997 or thereabouts) the technology at the time was to have the digital negatives output onto lithographic film. The very first Dan Burkholder book on digital negatives described this particular process. This is how I started with digital negatives for my platinum printing. It was a very good process. The LensWork original special edition prints were all made this way. The major problem with using image setters for making digital negatives was the resolution of the image setters. Normal use for image setters was about 130 lpi and the needs for photographic quality were about 300 lpi. It was a struggle to get the machinery to work at the level required for fine art prints. Fortunately, the evolution of desktop printers progressed quickly and was able to replace image setter negatives.

Hi Joe,
Thank you for your comments. I did read a little about image setter negatives but evidently not nearly enough to hold up my end of a conversation on the subject so many thanks for the information. I squirrel away all of these little tidbits for future reference and every little bit helps.