Printing your own negatives

[cliveh]

Do you think it important to print your own negatives? I know of some photographers leave that to specialist printers.

 

[GregY]

Do you think it important to print your own negatives? I know of some photographers leave that to specialist printers.

Yes, I do. It's the best way to develop your printing skills and get the outcome you envision. In addition, there are very few specialist printers left and in the long run it is the most economical....

 

[DWThomas]

Do you think it important to print your own negatives? I know of some photographers leave that to specialist printers.

I think printing is an essential portion of the overall process and prefer having "total control." That said, I don't print very much, just some occasional selected images for exhibition.

 

[Maris]

Printing is the payoff, the culmination of the art, the end product. The rest of the sequence: looking for subject matter, fussing with cameras, exposing and processing film are all nuisances that have to be endured in order to get something personally expressive to print.

 

[ic-racer]

It is important if you are a printer.

 

[MattKing]

FWIW, I find that printing other people's negatives has, over the years, really improved my printing skills.
Sometimes it helps to have your photographer's initial vision in mind when printing.
But other times it helps to approach a negative with no preconceptions.
I just finished printing three negatives for another photographer, who needed replacement prints for 20+ year old prints that had suffered environmental damage. I tried to approximate her original approach - and it was a challenge! Apparently I'm out of practice.

 

[Rick A]

I only shoot film because I love to make prints. It's the icing on the cake.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I enjoy printing black & white enlargements. I do not enjoy printing 36 4"x6" prints when I develop a roll of film. I send out all my color enlargements now. Not having a Kreonite machine available is a real bummer.

 

[stam6882]

I also want to find out what would be the general trend among the film community. I am resuming film journey recently and want to focus more on black and white only. I am comfortable to develop negatives at home but kind of undecided if I should scan or do dark room printing as the next step. I don't have any scanners at the moment 120 scanners are very limited as far as I know. Ideas?

 

[stam6882]

BTW, my dark room printing experience is very limited but it would be great learning experience personally. I may need to start looking at an enlarger to start with.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Do you think it important to print your own negatives? I know of some photographers leave that to specialist printers.

It's definately rewarding but it can be very frustrating because doing it well is a special skill. Many famous photographers had their own trusted printers who were able to turn their negatives into pieces of art. Very few photographers could do both.

 

[M-88]

It is a logical conclusion of the whole process. Can't say I print all, most, or even one third of my photos, but around 2% ends up getting printed. It's nice to do something with my own hands and those who receive my prints as a gift, think it's some sort of sorcery, which adds up to fun.

 

[otto.f]

It is the only reason to shoot film. The first step of losing the character of a film image is scanning and the next is inktjet printing. I read somewhere on the Leica forum that the character of a wet baryta print is lost after framing it after glass, but that is not my experience if you use non-reflecting museum-glass.

 

[koraks]

Do you think it important to print your own negatives? I know of some photographers leave that to specialist printers.

I think it's important to be involved in the printing process.

 

[MARTIE]

I really enjoy the time I spend making prints in my darkroom.

Although, I'm sure there are people who could make better prints. But then the same could also be said about taking the photographs in the first place!

So, it's all about the fun isn't it, more than the result?
Otherwise, I think we'd all just give up...

 

[stam6882]

Good suggestions and I do agree.

 

[Prest_400]

I also think it is important to print, or be involved as much as possible. In the case of many professionals, then it is also a limitation of capacity. Not only photograph, but printing takes a lot of time.
My case I find that shooting Medium format allows for a good balance, with an intention to have quality frames to print and a vision towards it.

Specially for B&W. Since I started with film until 2018 I did not do it, as I wanted to have the possibility to do the whole process and now I live in a town with a great fully equipped community darkroom.
For color I do hybrid and TBH a lot do live as files, but do send out for prints now and then.

Recently had contact with a lot of people that "look at this camera I have, that is a X large format" but telling to myself, I never have seen prints from that! Also, shooting film to just post in Instagram is a thing, but I find it unfortunate to throw more than half of the process and need to mess around scans and such.
I had a short printing session with another photo club member and he came to the realisation that yes, a print from 6x6 looked much better than the scans he did. However, life does happen and it does take a lot of time; Nowadays I can do about one session a week and RC workprints are relatively simple to do.

 

[Don_ih]

I often end up with a print that is quite different from a straight enlargement of the negative. For people who want that, it makes little sense to get someone else to do it.

kind of undecided if I should scan or do dark room printing as the next step

Setting up to print can be fairly simple. Get the bare minimum and it doesn't take up that much space. If you're enjoying developing film, you'll probably enjoy making prints more. If you tend toward being a perfectionist, though, be prepared to be frustrated. An enlargement can always be made better (because it can always be made differently and you can and will change your mind).

As for scanning, I like having scans of my negatives. I used to scan immediately after developing and review that to decide what I would enlarge. But I currently have half a year's worth of film not scanned (which is a lot)...

 

[logan2z]

As others have said, making darkroom prints is the primary reason I shoot film. If my end goal was an inkjet print or a scan to share online I'd probably opt to shoot digital.

I probably did things a bit backwards, but I spent several years shooting and printing my negatives while farming out the development of my film to a lab. I was more interested in the creative process of printing than I was the more mundane, mechanical process of developing film. But I eventually began to yearn for complete control over the process and eventually started developing my own film at home. Having control over the way my negatives are developed has certainly made it easier to produce prints from those negatives. In retrospect, I wish I would have started developing my own film earlier.

 

[stam6882]

All very good reasons to start my dark room printing journey. Thanks all. I do want to use a simple scanning process just for evaluation of the negatives. I would not want to invest in a heavy weight film scanner. Perhaps a low cost flat bed will do or just use my digital camera with a macro lens.

 

[Prest_400]

I probably did things a bit backwards, but I spent several years shooting and printing my negatives while farming out the development of my film to a lab.

For color this makes sense, for B&W you do lose a bit of control but nowadays I am sticking to XTOL and dev charts with few adjustments so about 50% of what I do could be lab done. In some cases however, I have seen labs are implementing high speed (aka productivity) developing so it's back to perhaps compromising negative quality. For example in this video, they adapted a Noritsu and run the same time for all film.

All very good reasons to start my dark room printing journey. Thanks all. I do want to use a simple scanning process just for evaluation of the negatives. I would not want to invest in a heavy weight film scanner. Perhaps a low cost flat bed will do or just use my digital camera with a macro lens.

For B&W nowadays I just use an Epson flatbed, to a digital contact print. Put in the negatives even within the plastic file and scan it. Cropping individual frames and some adjustment in editing software is quite good enough for web honestly.
In the simplest solutions, you can just take a phone picture of the negatives and invert.

I once met a young photo club member that said developing was fun, but dismissed printing. Interesting. I try to encourage people to print as there is a barrier of some sorts for it. I know myself that it took me a bit to get into it.

 

[albireo]

What an interesting question!

Do you think it important to print your own negatives?

No I don't, in general.

I know of some photographers leave that to specialist printers.

I'm one of those. I don't care about printing and spending time in a darkroom, and I'd rather spend that time looking for interesting compositions or documenting stuff that I care about and that I feel is disappearing. Or people who are getting older and might leave me one day, or people who are growing up and changing fast. There is so little time.

I do like developing my own negatives and I like scanning them. I shoot film not with the goal of producing a darkroom print, but because I like a) the cameras b) I like the workflow and the degrees of control during exposure and development and c) I like the look of a well [exposed+developed+scanned] negative. This is a look *I* am personally unable to replicate with a digital camera and an end-to-end digital workflow.

I enjoy a good print, and often visit exhibitions in the city I live. Beautiful prints are wonderful. Well printed photography books are wonderful. I sometimes like to see my own images printed, but when I want to do that I will hand either my high-res scan or my negative to a talented professional, a printer, who will do an excellent work with that while I'm back taking pictures. I have great admiration for printers, but I'm not too interested in darkrooms myself. Maybe one day I'll catch the bug, maybe not.

So I like the photography, not the printing aspect of the craft, and I see the two as unrelated in many ways. YMMV.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Does an architect build his own building? He monitors the process but leaves the physical construction part to construction experts.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I don't in general.



I'm one of those. I don't care about printing and spending time in a darkroom, and I'd rather spend that time looking for interesting compositions or documenting stuff that I care about and that I feel is disappearing. Or people who are getting older and might leave me one day, or people who are growing up and changing fast. There is so little time.

I do like developing my own negatives and I like scanning them. I shoot film not because my end goal is an analogue print, but because I like a) the cameras b) the workflow+control during exposure+development and c) the look of a well [exposed+developed+scanned] negative. This is a look *I* am personally unable to replicate with a digital camera and an end-to-end digital workflow.

I enjoy a good print, and often visit exhibitions in the city I live. Beautiful prints are wonderful. Well printed photography books are wonderful. I sometimes like to see my own images printed, but when I want to do that I will hand either my high-res scan or my negative to a talented professional, a printer, who will do an excellent work with that while I'm back taking pictures. I have great admiration for printers, but I'm not too interested in darkrooms myself. Maybe one day I'll catch the bug, maybe not.

So I like the photography, not the printing aspect of the craft, and I see the two as unrelated in many ways. YMMV.

I'm like you plus I never had a darkroom nor is there any room now to have one. I'd rather be out in the outdoors getting fresh air and finding interesting things to photograph. I already spend a lot of time with film including scanning, I really don;t want to spend more time breathing chemicals in a dark room. That's why this site is Photrio not APUG any longer.

 

[stam6882]

For color this makes sense, for B&W you do lose a bit of control but nowadays I am sticking to XTOL and dev charts with few adjustments so about 50% of what I do could be lab done. In some cases however, I have seen labs are implementing high speed (aka productivity) developing so it's back to perhaps compromising negative quality. For example in this video, they adapted a Noritsu and run the same time for all film.


For B&W nowadays I just use an Epson flatbed, to a digital contact print. Put in the negatives even within the plastic file and scan it. Cropping individual frames and some adjustment in editing software is quite good enough for web honestly.
In the simplest solutions, you can just take a phone picture of the negatives and invert.

I once met a young photo club member that said developing was fun, but dismissed printing. Interesting. I try to encourage people to print as there is a barrier of some sorts for it. I know myself that it took me a bit to get into it.

This is what I am aiming at as well. A flat bed is a good compromise and I also feel that spending too much time converting the analog medium into digital just for web is the wrong reason for taking film photography. I would rather use my digital cameras.