Negatives from a digital enlarger

avandesande

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I have never been quite satisfied with the prints directly from the digital enlarger and I have been interested in making negatives to print from instead.
These 4x5 negatives are using ilford ortho plus film. Development was pretty sloppy with some used ansco 40 I had sitting around. This weekend I will use some fresh D76 and use actual development times etc....
Pretty high contrast but the prints would be hard pressed to tell if they were digital. I will try making some medium format sized negatives this weekend and with some HP5 as well. Lots of technical hurdles with the enlarger such as extended lensboard and ND filters are needed for this.

Enlarger thread....

DIY 31 Megapixel Enlarger

This is something that I have been thinking about since 8k monitors came out and have been waiting the last several years for prices to come down but it hasn't come to pass. Recently I became aware that small very high resolution monochrome lcd are being used for 3d resin printing. It's an...
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avandesande

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koraks said:
I think this is a very interesting direction also (especially) with an eye on alt. process prints like salt, carbon etc.
Click to expand...

Yes, I made some larger negatives on x-ray film without issue but it wasn't fine grain enough to enlarge. I am mostly interested in traditional printing. When I get everything worked out I will get some gels and do some color separations on color negative film.
 
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avandesande

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My first successful medium format negatives. I made a 'saddle' to put 4x5 film holders on under the enlarger and clamp it in place with the easel. The film holder keeps the film flat and it makes it easy to focus and maintain registration. After making a bunch of terrible negatives I created a gamma lut for the lcd that matches my monitor. Focusing is very technical and critical and it required learning a lot of technique.
These medium format negatives resolve more detail than the 4x5 I posted previously.
 

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avandesande

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Some quick prints from negative on multitone rc paper. The softness is from the voigtlander 1.2 lens.
 

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koraks

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Very pretty indeed. Did you do all the manipulations in digital space so that you only had to do 'straight' prints from the negatives?
 
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avandesande

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koraks said:
Very pretty indeed. Did you do all the manipulations in digital space so that you only had to do 'straight' prints from the negatives?
Click to expand...

There were contrast exposure/adjustments in Lightroom but no Silver Effects or anything like that. I will try push processing a 'normal' image at some point when I have my process nailed down. Below is straight from camera with Nikon zf normal contrast B+W setting. It has a B+W selector dial on top to switch back and forth from color. It seems like a gimmick but I use it all the time!
 

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avandesande

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Some enlargements of hp5 digital negatives with point source. I see some potential, however I need to get dust management under control!
 

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avandesande

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These are some new negatives/prints with Rodinal, Ilford Ortho and point light source enlargement. The contrast is hard to control but it makes it easy to get that look I am searching for, something along that of Brett Weston. These are 11x14 prints and are quite stunning. The negatives are 48x72mm, this has to do with the optimal focus setup. Some quick calculations suggest the 8k lcd hold about the limits of a 6x4.5 negative, so there is no point in going larger.
It's really something to be able to re-expose a negative as many times as you would like to go after the look you want.
 

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avandesande

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koraks said:
This is very fascinating indeed! Is that Fomapan 100? Did you linearize the output somehow?
Click to expand...

It's Ilford Ortho Plus. I can't deny it's nice to be able to work with a red safelight on.
I've given up trying to create a curve for the lcd. I just use a straight line to reduce contrast a bit, The rest is the film and developer. I am not doing any alterations in LR or Photoshop.
 

koraks

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Ah, OK; you had me wondering there. I can imagine linearizing this, but ideally you'd standardize everything and then linearize between the digital input file and the dried print. There's a lot happening in-between those points!
 

Carnie Bob

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As the OP knows, I have made silver negatives from Lambda digital enlarger and as well from my Epson Inkjet printer. I took this pretty far I must say and
did a lot of comparisons of same size output on Pictorico type film from Epson , and Ilfords ortho silver film from the lambda , basically did linearization on both and then over time compared many images via contact onto Ilford Warmtone Paper.

My conclusion were subjective to my eyes but here goes.

There was no discernible difference between the prints on matt and semi matt paper .
There was a hint of difference on glossy paper and I mean a hint which favoured the Lambda Silver Neg.

At the time I credited the blocking power of the silver film vs the inkjet film.

That was 8 years ago, since then I switched my inkjet calibration by using Richard Boutwell's method whereas a colour blocking layer is first established and then the 100 LAB linearization step is produced.
My negatives now have a yellow green cast and the reproduction is much more defined than 8 years ago , but since I do not have the Lambda and the negs any more I cannot to an apples to apples test.

But for arguments sake its very close, We just did a show and tests of a Magnum photographers work where we did digital negs vs enlarger prints, the difference was once again impossible to say which print was better.

One can tell the difference but is one better???? that is what is important to me and I think the answer is no.

We just finished doing 10 -30 x 40inch silver murals this week from digital capture and then large inkjet film and I can say the process though very slick with smaller prints like 20 x 24inch , doing big prints this way is harder and definately takes two people whereas if I was working from original negs on the same enlarger I could do it myself and the process would be easier.


We are living in interesting and creative times.
 
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avandesande

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Hi Bob, I have thought about using x-ray film for contact printing and discarded the idea because inkjet negatives are just superior for this purpose. I believe what you have observed and I have seen the results of others many of which is hanging in galleries. Using a film process would simply be redundant.

What is different is I am making small negatives for projection enlargement. In this case the acutance and grain play a larger role in the tone of the print. I do not like the smoothness of the silver gelatin prints I get through direct enlargement of the LCD, as others mentioned it looks like a good quality inkjet print. It's important to me that the print itself has a life of it's own outside of the image.
 

AndrewBurns

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I think where the main difference between inkjet and film lies when talking about contact printing is whether you're doing halftone or continuous-tone negatives. Imagesetters typically print onto some kind of film (optical or laser) in a half-tone fashion with small dot patterns at very high DPI. Halftone negatives have some advantages for alt process printing, at least based on what I've read and what a lot of skilled printers say. That's not to say that you can make prints with continuous tone negatives, but halftone negatives have advantages (particularly in multi-layer colour processes).

Imagesetters are big, expensive and typically quite old/obsolete these days, so getting large sheets of film exposed for big alt-process contact prints is something that would interest quite a few people, but only if the film is exposed using sub-30 micron sized dots and not continuous tone. In this case, making basically an enlarged digital inter-negative on film with an LCD screen wouldn't really help as it would be continuous tone.
 

Carnie Bob

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I make 30 x 40 beautiful prints via contact using inkjet process, I would never consider making a interneg to go in the enlarger for projection.... But if you follow LVT technology that is what many have been doing and still doing including Salgado.

I have never tested a LVT projected negative on paper to a Inkjet Contact negative to paper, FWIW .
not enough time in my life I guess.
 
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avandesande

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I prefer shooting digital but I hate post processing. The door print (above) goes far beyond anything I could do using photoshop or silver effects. It was a rather flat image and the contrast is 100% from the film and point source enlargement and zero post processing. Maybe it's not for everyone but it works for me.
 
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