This is why LA county banned them along the highway.
Yes, but i was thinking of having the print made by a good lab.
That would put him in the hands of one of the very few remaining labs that still optically print from negs. In which case, he might as well ask them for the full-sized print to begin with.
In which case, he might as well ask them for the full-sized print to begin with.
Unfortunately Los Angeles City has not seen fit to go along and allows the urban blight to still exist.
Until they find out how much a darkroom print that size actually has to cost.
Given good color negatives (Kodak Gold, medium format 6x6, shot with Schneider glass, no scratches/dust etc), how big can one print them with pleasing results? Is 3ft by 3ft (1 meter x 1 meter) reasonable? Would the same considerations apply to black and white (mostly PANF, same glass)?
Generally, art is priced with size as a factor. That may have started with Picasso. As a matter of fact, there is one website that uses a formula based on size and previous sales to help an artist price their work.As I understand, the large print in this case is intended for sale. I imagine that in such a scenario, it should be possible to recoup the cost of producing the print and realize a healthy margin at the same time. I'd hope that the sales price would not be a 'cost plus' calculation in the first place, but it would be regarded in relation to the creative and aesthetic merits of the work - not based on the paper and hours spent on reproducing it. If it's more of a cost-based thing with a marginal profit, personally I'd walk away from the sale. YMMV and all that, of course.
That really doesn't tell much, Marco, except that Kodak Gold is relatively fine grained and that it was slightly out of focus when enlarged; otherwise the grain would be EASILY detectable, even if it had been printed from a medium format neg instead. Besides, grain and resolution are not the same thing. And being a soft contrast film, Gold has less noticeable edge effect, including grain-wise. But all that doesn't mean that evident grain is necessarily a bad thing. It all depends.
That would put him in the hands of one of the very few remaining labs that still optically print from negs...
I saw a couple Elliot Erwitt prints a few years ago and they were so bad that they practically nauseated me.
Out of curiosity, what was bad about them?
I would think that a lab capable of making extra-large darkroom prints would have a light source and lenses that could handle the challenge. Plus, the OP is only looking to make a 16x enlargement, so maybe f90.There are physical limits to one-stage optical enlargements. For example a 100x enlargement of a 6x6cm negative with a f5.6 80mm lens has an effective aperture of about f560. The large Airy disks will hinder resolution.
But if one realistically wants to retrieve more detail, it has to be there to begin with, and the only way to do that is to move up to bigger film.
People who get so obsessed with lpmm lens resolution that they feel the need to go out and spend thousands of dollars for the some new lens in order to allegedly get ideal detail would be far better served just by moving up to a larger film format.
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