ok, this may be a silly question, but whatever.

It is to those who have done an 8x10 contact print, or have viewed them, and now do digital capture only/also, with a cropped sensor or FF DSLR.

I am using a cropped sensor 10 mp dslr. pping and printing to 8x10ish or smaller, I seem to be approaching a 8x10 contact print "feel"', but not quite yet.

Can I? Any pointers or tips from those more digitally experienced?

for quite a long time, I worked with 8x10 and 5x7 cameras, and was making platinum - palladium prints. what I learned over the years was not to compare one medium to another completely different one.

what i would suggest is to learn what digital capture and printing is truly good at, and work hard to maximize what you can get out of that.

trying to compare what type of image you will make from a camera that makes and 8x10 inch negative, with the very slow, and deliberate way of working with such equipment demands, to a camera that is able to held in the hand is a mute point.

the simple fact that with the large format camera you are viewing the image on the ground glass with two eyes, at a viewing distance that is closer to what you would look at a finished print with, and a camera that requires you to look through a finder with one eye is a difference that cannot be understated. they are just way too different to make a comparison.

the best advice that was given to me long ago was look at as many great prints that you can. go to museums and galleries. look through their archives. look for that quality in the prints that you admire and work tirelessly to emulate it in your work.

to answer your question of emulating an 8x10 contact print with a 10mp digital camera, i don't feel like that would be something that you would really want to try to do. what you can do is make prints with life and luminosity, things of beauty in there own right. do not worry about comparing two different things.

by the way, I have been shooting with a Nikon D2X for the past three years, and feel like i have made some of the best prints of my life with the camera and inkjet printing, both in black and white and color, but they have a completely different thing going on than the large format work. I really do not miss the darkroom.

Cheers

Tom Pappas

They are different. An 8x10 negative will have different depth of field than a small sensor (even FF digital). Right there you can't compare them.

I assume you are printing on inkjet. I have yet to see an inkjet that really looks like a fiber based darkroom print, say on Azo. So that is one more area where they won't be the same.

Contact prints will resolve much more detail than an inkjet will put down. This is one more area that will be different. You will probably need a loupe to see this however.

Can you see all these things? Some are obvious, and others are very subtle. I don't think you'll be able to get the exact same look.

You should be able to get very high quality 8x10 prints from your 10mp camera, but they will be different than a contact print.

One thing that makes digital look digital is people over sharpening every image. If you look at contact prints they are sharp because of rich detail, not artificially enhanced edges. Try toning down the sharpening you do - you should never ever see a halo in my opinion. That goes for darkroom unsharp masking as well.

It's not about film grain vs. pixel count, but how well your post processing, printer and paper can emulate a certain film/paper/toner combination.

In my experience, I felt I'd achieved the print quality of film, then moved on to new papers and post processing techniques.

I used make all my contacts from my 8x10 both clr and B&W.
I now do all digital, and no longer need to contact negs.

The only drawback I can see is , I always looked at the contacts with a loupe, whereas if it is a digital print even on a Lambda it doesn't have the crispness of a neg. Worse yet is an inkjet contact sheet which I've done from sheets of smaller negs quickly scanned and output to inkjet. The colours and contrast are fine, Dmax too but you just can't use a loupe on an inkjet.

Back in the '80s I saw my first enlarged contact sheet. It was a roll of 35mm in 6 strips of 6 frames blown up to a 16x20 print using an 8x10 enlarger. It was done for convenience but I really liked the effect.

With a drum scanner I do the same thing. Scan the entire drum to 20x24 @ 300 dpi. It's large and clear. The frame sequence is a great way to tell a story, too.

I have not used my 8x10 in years. In fact I sold it years ago. However, when I read your question I dug out a couple of old 8x10 contact prints. I don't think there is any way I could come close to the "Feel" or the look or in any reasonable facsimile duplicate one of these prints with a digital capture made with a 35mm style camera on an inkjet or any other digital printer.

I have been a professional photographer for years and have been shooting digitally since 2002-2003. I have both cropped and full frame DSLRs. I print with the newest Epson K3 inksets on Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper. I have had Lambda prints made from my files. I started making digital prints on Scitex Iris printers decades ago. There is just no way I believe I am ever going to duplicate what these 8x10 contact prints look like.

But....having said that, I am really happy with my digital prints from my Epson right now. I am not trying to duplicate the feel of an 8x10 contact print. As has been said in some of the other responses above, I have other goals. My prints on Exhibition Fiber have a wonderful quality and I think I can make them even better. I am not going for the silver print look anymore. I am striving for the best I can have with my new darkroom and my new cameras.

Best,