>It may sound goofy but going from digital to analog
>may have uses. As I recall there is a photo article
>(somewhere on the web) that talks about getting around
>the labor intensive,one at a time printing of a BW
>negative...What the article said was that one
>could digitize the artist's final print and then
>reproduce it on (the same kind?) negative film from
>which you could make multiple prints with all the
>dodging and burning adjustments built in. The artist's
>creativity and vision was permanently captured.
>The question I have is just how good is the
>digitizing and its transfer to film. If it is really
>good then this makes sense to me.
This is more common than you may think, and dates from well before digital,
perhaps before color. This is not an enlarged print, but a contact print. In
ye olde days, a good print was made, with all the dodging and burning and
whatever, and then a negative was shot from which contact prints were made.
But a copy neg just can't be as good, I hear you say, and normally you would
be right, but not in this case. The negs were REALLY good copy negs, and
were contact printed. If you've seen a contact print off an original 8x10
neg, you know just how good a contact print can be.
Now, the original is either captured in digital, or shot on film and
scanned. All necessary manipulations are made in PS, and a actual size neg
is produced on the same machine that printers use to output digital files to
film for burning plates. There's some work involved, and someone is selling
a book that explains the process.
This is, I believe, the process used for the silver prints sold by Lenswork
magazine. I've not seen one yet, but have one on order, so I'll comment when
it arrives, sometime next month.
Could this be done in color? Probably.
>You may ask why bother printing analog once you have a "digital
>negative". The answer is that some people claim they
>can see and feel the difference between digital and
>traditional printing especially in B&W.
There are several reasons. One is archivability. We all know that there are
inkjet systems that promise 100+ year life, but Mr Wilhelm has been wrong
before. We are well aware of the life of a fine fiber print.
Another is indeed appearance. It is hard to equal a good silver print with a
digital print, although Kodak now has a sepia toned paper that runs in color
chemistry. I suppose that this could be easily exposed from a grayscale file
with a digita printer, like a Lambda, for those images that look good in
this very reddish sepia (all five of them). The look of the deepest blacks
is hard to equal with an inkjet. The cone system's biggest problem, other
than nozzle clogging, is the appearance of the dense blacks.
> I saw a photographer's
>stuff at a craft show that was printed by him using
>cibachrome. Now isn't cibachrome kinda dated? So what
>is the big deal and why mention it here? The prints
>were absolutely stunning.
Yup, so dated that it doesn't exist. It is now Ilfochrome, and hasn't had
much R&D spent in years. Still, most of us, myself included, still call them
"Ciba's."
Ciba/Ilfochrome prints are either really good or really bad. It is a VERY
contrasty paper, and in most cases, requires a contrast mask for printing.
Digital printing to ciba is an interesting thought, but most will say that
Fuji Chrystal Archive is just as good in that situation, and a lot easier to
print. In any event, I can't imagine it will be around much longer, as there
aren't many labs left that use it.
Bill Pearce
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