Wow Bob, and I think 8x10 is pushing it!
I just made 5- 6 ft wide silver Gelatin prints from XPan negatives for a new Gallery opening in Toronto... As long as the original intent is held and one is sharp at the printing stage it can work.
this would be a 27 x magnification in the above case.
The Salgado show at GEH of Migrations contained over 200 prints.. 1/2 of them were 24 x36 from 35mm the other half were 22 x16 from 35mm. This was a pivotal moment for me to attend this show as I was about to find out if I deserved to call myself a printer.
I had been at it for awhile but for about 4 years before this Salgado show I had decided to concentrate fine art gallery printing( I had been commercially printing for 15 years before that ) and now I wanted to get to a higher level much like the Salgado printer was obviously at.
A few things became extremely apparent to me:
1, being that Salgado had two printers one doing the larger prints and the other doing the smaller prints... Both printers were magnificent and I personally thought the larger prints were better.
Beautiful prints at 26 x magnification and I witnessed people standing in front of these prints and weeping, yes weeping , the show was very moving.
At that moment I realized the print sniffers could go to hell, they were lost in technical mumbo jumbo, tech sheet , graphical nonsense... the key was the ability to make images on the wall that people could view and appreciate and bring emotion to the viewer.
2, I also concluded that I was technically a good printer and there was room for me to continue printing for others... Since that date I have never tried to make the perfect print as I do not believe there is such a thing , but have tried to make prints that others appreciate when hung on the wall.
I did not flinch when my client came in with the Xpan image and said 6 ft.. I knew it could be done, the devil was in the details. I think most people here are fighting with the details , and should step back from this technical obsession and start making prints that create an emotion..
toy camera,8 x10 Sinar, pinhole, camera phone, hassalblad, leica, canon, nikon, fuji, dianna, wet plate, 20 x 24 camera... these are all the simple tools, what is important is the light on the subject and conveying that light.
You could make a billboard out of a 35mm film negative because no one will be standing anywhere near it. There are a lot of factors to consider. If it's going to be something hand held or critically judged up close, then I wouldn't go above 5x7. Then again, if the grain is part of the aesthetic, you might not have an issue going larger. If it's going to be hanging on a wall, then you have to consider the size of the room it's going in. If it's going into a large room, or in a room above some furniture that prevents or discourages people from getting close, you can go a lot bigger than if it's going to hang in a narrow hallway.
Last year I entered into a regional photography contest and had a lot of prints from 35mm film negatives and slides in my submission. They all looked fine by themselves, but presented next to a sea of digital prints, they all looked noticeably grainy and soft. I won a few awards overall, but none for my 35mm film prints, even though those were some of my strongest submissions. But to the judges, the lack of sharpness and noticeable grain was a big problem they just couldn't look past, and I used fine grain films like TMAX 100, Ektar 100, and Velvia 50. To top it off, these judges were not young kids who couldn't appreciate an analog print. They were mostly retired photographers who clearly grew up with darkroom wet prints. And they weren't crazy huge, either. They were printed at 8x8, 8x10, and 8x12. But when you're looking through thousands of photos, you're looking for a fast way to weed the first few rounds out, and grain and softness will usually do it. I learned that day that that was too big of an enlargement for 35mm film if it's going to be hand held and scrutinized, such as in a juried photo contest. As a result, this year I'm only submitting prints from my digital and large format cameras (I don't shoot medium format very often).
Although my usual prints are 8X10 to 11X14 I have printed 16X20 from 35mm, I believe that with Tmax 100 which resolves 200 l/mm
In my experience, RIP software has more to do with color rendition than grain or apparent sharpness. I recently upgraded from a Kodak Matchprint RIP software running an Epson 9880 to a Firey XF running an Epson P9000 and neither do much for sharpness, apparent or otherwise. At least not to my eye. In my experience, the best software for increasing apparent sharpness is Photoshop, but there's only so much you can do there.In comparing film and darkroom prints to a purely digital work-flow the secret is often the printer driver or RIP software which is able to re-internet before finally printing greatly improving "apparent" print quality. I know from experience using a 2mp camera when doing my Photography MA (15/16 years ago) that I was amazed at the quality of A3 colour prints from my Canon printer.
I've used MF and LF for so long that I find 35mm quite retrograde in terms of rain, I still see it as a valid format but use it sparingly these days. That's a personal preference I've seen some excellent large 35mm prints.
Ian
I think most people here are fighting with the details , and should step back from this technical obsession and start making prints that create an emotion..
toy camera,8 x10 Sinar, pinhole, camera phone, hassalblad, leica, canon, nikon, fuji, dianna, wet plate, 20 x 24 camera... these are all the simple tools, what is important is the light on the subject and conveying that light.
Wow, that's about the same we used to get from microfilm back in the day. (ok,,, an actual production run we'd get 120 plus/minus a bit.) 1970's
.....
Last year I entered into a regional photography contest and had a lot of prints from 35mm film negatives and slides in my submission. They all looked fine by themselves, but presented next to a sea of digital prints, they all looked noticeably grainy and soft. I won a few awards overall, but none for my 35mm film prints, even though those were some of my strongest submissions. But to the judges, the lack of sharpness and noticeable grain was a big problem they just couldn't look past, and I used fine grain films like TMAX 100, Ektar 100, and Velvia 50. To top it off, these judges were not young kids who couldn't appreciate an analog print. They were mostly retired photographers who clearly grew up with darkroom wet prints. And they weren't crazy huge, either. They were printed at 8x8, 8x10, and 8x12. But when you're looking through thousands of photos, you're looking for a fast way to weed the first few rounds out, and grain and softness will usually do it. I learned that day that that was too big of an enlargement for 35mm film if it's going to be hand held and scrutinized, such as in a juried photo contest. As a result, this year I'm only submitting prints from my digital and large format cameras (I don't shoot medium format very often).
The Salgado show at GEH of Migrations contained over 200 prints.. 1/2 of them were 24 x36 from 35mm the other half were 22 x16 from 35mm. This was a pivotal moment for me to attend this show as I was about to find out if I deserved to call myself a printer.
I had been at it for awhile but for about 4 years before this Salgado show I had decided to concentrate fine art gallery printing( I had been commercially printing for 15 years before that ) and now I wanted to get to a higher level much like the Salgado printer was obviously at.
A few things became extremely apparent to me:
1, being that Salgado had two printers one doing the larger prints and the other doing the smaller prints... Both printers were magnificent and I personally thought the larger prints were better.
Beautiful prints at 26 x magnification and I witnessed people standing in front of these prints and weeping, yes weeping , the show was very moving.
At that moment I realized the print sniffers could go to hell, they were lost in technical mumbo jumbo, tech sheet , graphical nonsense... the key was the ability to make images on the wall that people could view and appreciate and bring emotion to the viewer.
2, I also concluded that I was technically a good printer and there was room for me to continue printing for others... Since that date I have never tried to make the perfect print as I do not believe there is such a thing , but have tried to make prints that others appreciate when hung on the wall.
I did not flinch when my client came in with the Xpan image and said 6 ft.. I knew it could be done, the devil was in the details. I think most people here are fighting with the details , and should step back from this technical obsession and start making prints that create an emotion..
toy camera,8 x10 Sinar, pinhole, camera phone, hassalblad, leica, canon, nikon, fuji, dianna, wet plate, 20 x 24 camera... these are all the simple tools, what is important is the light on the subject and conveying that light.
I would like to have a few prints made of my own photos probably no bigger than 14 inches at it largest side so there is hope, as someone had mentioned I had also read that 10x8 was the max I could expect.
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