Curious if anyone here might know this: In the old days, the press services used this quickie print machine to process paper. I owned one, years ago, but forgot the name. It might have been called EktaMatic Kodak. It was a desktop machine, about the size of an 8.5x11 Epson now, and it used two chemicals only -- an Activator and something else -- and you just poured them into the machine. The print processed in like seventy seconds or so, dry to dry.

Could a mentality like this be applied to digital printing? I know everyone loves Epson and all, but if you've ever stood side by side, with a silver print and an inkjet print, there is no comparison, the silver print wins pretty much every time. I do not know why. Maybe some elusive word like "luminosity" or something. I don't know why; I just know it does.

Could there be a machine, that would contain silver chemistry, but on the back of it, was some kind of USB or Firewire port, and you'd just hit PRINT, and then feed silver paper into this machine, and the machine would convert it from digital to whatever, and then image it onto the silver paper and process it? I guess it exists already, and it's called a Lambda, but the one I saw was the size of a bedroom, and cost hundreds of thousands. Could there be a "desktop Lambda"...?

To me, in most every aspect of this conversion from Film to Digital, the Digital is winning, except for this one area: Printing. Inkjet just does not have that "inner glow", whatever that means. I guess if it could have been done, Kodak would have done it already, and they'd be sitting pretty in Rochester, giving Epson and HP a run for their money.

I use digital images to print chemical cyanotypes. (my instructions).

They don't have the depth and tonality of a silver print but they are fun, unusual, and have a certain feel that I love.

From a practical point of view the process only requires two (relatively harmless) inexpensive chemicals, water, and sunlight and does not require a darkroom - just subdued lighting.

Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
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All you need is a digital "printer" that uses light instead of ink... with a dev/fix function as for analog.

Have you seen the results from the 900 series Epsons with three shades of black? .... and colorburst RIP?

Have you seen the results from all monochrome printers with 6 of more shades of black?

http://parisphotolab.com/services.html

Elevator in Toronto was printing to B&W fiber paper with a Lambda - don't know if they still are.

I understand what the OP is saying. There is a missing tactile feeling with an Epson that regardless of the current batch of papers, they just don't "feel" the same in your fingers as older traditional papers did. Then there is also how light reflects on the paper surface that is just not the same either with the Epsons as the ol' days.

I know and see that we can get more colors and more tones in the current batch of Epsons, but there is such a clinical exactness to them that sterilizes the physical presence of the prints.

I really can only tolerate an Epson behind some quality glass. Only then is the tactile nature removed and I forget. But there is a lot to be said about holding a real print, we're not talking about a Walgreens chemical print though.

Oh, and yes there is sort of a desktop type of Lambda enlarger. I'll have to dig up that link. I saw it a few years back. It's basically an enlarger with an exposing head connected to a computer for wet prints. But you do need a chemical processor of some sort to make the method consistent and tolerable, in my opinion.

Here's one: http://de-vere.com/products.htm

I have seen others as well, geared toward the home user.

They still are, and it's excellent. They're also a first-rate pro lab in every respect, and very pleasant to deal with.

- N.

I have a box which normally sits gathering dust, but every now and again I open it and find some old WSG prints. It depresses me. They are beautiful. Though I can produce clever prints in b/w with my HP on Hahnemeuhle, I am sure that the only way they might be thought better is in the micro-area control but, as for total look, sorry. WSG is another world. Yes, behind glass they look sort of similar, but as naked prints, never.

The ideal would be computer control of image, but instead of printer paper, traditional papers as used to be.

So yes, gwhitf is right. But you'd have to do without inks, which is where the printer manufacturers make their real money; don't hold your breath.

Rob C

From this discussion it appears, as if Noritsu, OCE Lightjet and Frontier were no acceptable alternatives. They are "printing" on photographic paper and developing it immediately. The printing service I am using prints on Fujifilm Crystal Archive Supreme; I love those, though only in color, for b&w is not really good.

However, those printers are not for the home use; they are huge, and the prices start at around $100,000, I think.

About digital negatives: http://www.ronreeder.com/page8117.html

I always found this enlarger really tempting but never dared to:

http://de-vere.com/products.htm

I am not sure if this might be what you are looking for, but I just got this from Adorama:



Mpix offers a similar service:

Maybe my mistake is just not keeping a sheet of plate glass, standing up next to my Epson, and then when it pops out of the printer, I immediately grab that sheet of glass and lay it over the print.

For the record, I do agree with you -- there's something about, once it's under glass, you kinda forget about it, and it levels out the playing field.

Or, maybe in the new Epson 7995, there'll be one new layer of "sprayed on glass", so that once it pops out of the printer, the glass is already there.

But try looking at an original early Sally Mann, from 8x10 neg, and look how deep and 3D the blacks are. Silver is just in a class of its own.

But I guess, back in the really old days, the platinum guys laughed at the silver guys, and rolled their eyes, in the same way that the silver guys are now rolling their eyes at the Epson guys.

Well, even today the Platinum guys can still laugh and roll their eyes at the silver guys and the Epson Guys. If you've seen an original Irving Penn platinum print you'll know what I mean. He was a master platinum printer.

That is part of the problem with silver.

I never in my life got a pro print from a lab I was truly happy with. (Though I couldn't afford $1,000+, 3 iteration-type jobs.)

So, I had to print it myself. Always. And it took me 3-4 hours to get a small handful of acceptable prints - maybe from 2 negatives in that time, however many "copies" of each I printed in batch once I was close enough.

Slow and tedious, plus very painful after 20 years as I became alergic to chemicals. So some form of digital output is reasonable unless your work can justify a true master printer/partner.

FWIW, using an Epson 7600 with 5K + GLOP (custom ink set) on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta or Epson Exhibition is the best output I have ever created in my life. I am quite happy.

Michael

what about rigging a projector onto an enlarger stand? would that have enough sharpness for the job? just an idea.

Me too. I've never used a lab that could print better than myself. I print platinum so I know how difficult it is to get consistent results. Penn used to bond his paper onto an aluminium sheet and coat/develop several times. Doing it this way you get a depth that's just not possible with silver. Inkjet prinitng is superb these days but just doesn't compare, in my opinion anyway.

have any of you seen the work of Dan Burkholder, he is printing a faint color print onto print making paper in an epson printer and then printing over the same area with platinum using a digital negative of the same image. Pretty cool looking stuff.

That's it exactly. There's an undeserved 'romance' attached to darkroom prints that has a lot more to do with subjective perception of the 'craft' and effort involved than genuine output quality. It's analogous to my unwarranted fondness for a certain photograph I have taken because of the great effort its capture required; but to other folks it's just another photograph.

This issue has been dealt with by some very knowledgeable people. Brooks Jensen describes side-by-side comparison of the same photograph produced by four different methods: platinum, gelatin silver, photogravure, and inkjet. Almost without exception, the inkjet print was chosen as the hands-down best version æsthetically by very experienced photographers and printers. Richard Benson, former dean of Yale's art school and an expert printer experienced in methods from platinum to photogravure to web offset, is very blunt on the subject. Inkjet prints can't quite yet match the surface characteristics of a fine darkroom gelatin silver print. Dye transfer prints can still yield a subtle color purity not acheivable by any other method. But in every other respect, inkjet prints are æsthetically simply better than darkroom prints. In blinded tests, even the most experienced photographers tend to choose injet prints over darkroom prints. Yes, a beautiful gelatin silver darkroom print is a wonderful thing. But put an expertly made inkjet print next to it, and it starts to look a little less special.

There's another analogy here; many folks with a romantic notion of the darkroom are thinking of expertly made final exhibition prints, rather than the 99% of darkroom prints that are a lot more ordinary. But inkjet printing has a very similar quality curve. It's easy to crank out "okay" inkjet prints. But it's a lot harder to produce a truly excellent interpretive print that delivers all the potential quality contained in the original file, that exploits all of your inkjet printer's capability. Three or four years ago I thought I was a pretty good printer. But digital has a learning curve just like the darkroom. I'm making prints today that are far better, even using the same machine. And they're way, way better than anything I ever got out of the darkroom.

Another thought: Work your image up in Photoshop, and get it where you want it to be, and then someone design a "scanner type unit" where, you'd put your Silver paper face down on the glass of this imager/scanner, and the image would be shot up onto the silver paper, then you take it out and develop it in traditional silver chemistry. Again, the goal: the end result is silver paper, instead of inkjet. It wouldn't project, like an enlarger. Think about it more like how a normal Epson flatbed scanner now work, but in the other direction.

Edit: To Geoff: What I'm talking about here is the act of viewing a silver print and inkjet print very close, maybe ten inches away. Very intimate. And when I say silver, I'm not talking RC. I'm talking something like Ilford Fiber Multigrade Gloss or the like. With inkjets, to me, you don't see deeper than the surface. But with silver, you feel like you're seeing deeper, like they're an 1/8 deep or so. Very hard to describe in words. But it's a glow. A luminance. But maybe you're right, maybe it is a romance. Or, for me, maybe it's the fact that, with digital, your hands never seem to touch anything any more. There doesn't seem to be so much of an act of creation. Everything is virtual til that ink spews onto the paper.

Yep. Burkholder is a pioneer who was making negatives with an inkjet to produce alternative process darkroom prints back in the digital dark ages. He's also done a lot of funky looking HDR photography and is now making some wild looking platinum prints on vellum with a gold leaf backing. It's not 'straight' photography, but it sure has a look to it.

I think the glow, luminance and maybe romance could possibly just exist in our minds. I for one don't mind that, because for me photography goes somewhat deeper than pixel peeping. There's also something about viewing a print just by picking it up holding it and viewing it close-up, that's the ultimate experience. When you do that inkjet prints just are not in the same league as a fine silver print. Maybe it's a mind thing.

That's my thinking on the matter. Expert darkroom printers spend years perfecting their craft. Just the right developer, fine-tuned print exposure methods, the optimal paper...the whole process is very personal and very involved. There's a real emotional investment in the final product that's an intangible part of the "art". I think this leads to an unwarranted notion that there's something magical about a darkroom print, when objective side by side comparison with an inkjet print made with equal skill won't support it.

Obviously (to anyone who's tried it), producing a really excellent inkjet print is not just a matter of hitting 'command-p'. There's just the same kind of very personal craft involved; optimizing the file to personal taste, iterative testing until just the right combination of inkset and paper is found, proofing and fine-tuning...if anything I believe there's more room for individual interpretation, not less, when compared to darkroom work.

Which is not to denigrate expert darkroom printing. Paul Caponigro's glowing image of two alabaster-like pears in a dark wooden bowl...it's pure poetry. But go with what works best for your own images. I personally don't think that LED-exposed darkroom printing paper will really yield a more expressive or beautiful print than an expertly crafted inkjet print. But YMMV.

This may be a bit OT, but not too much. I too read Brooks Jensen's interview with Richard Benson. Very interesting, lots of good points. What particularly caught my attention was how he (Benson) was somewhat flummoxed when Brooks pointed out that, with the digital file in hand, anyone can produce a print of equal, if not better, quality than you can - of your image. Where then is the hand of the photographer in the final print? Benson doesn't really have an answer to this, simply saying that the signing of the print is what elevates it from other, identical prints, and transforms it into the collectible artefact. Hmm, not a very satisfying answer. I think we've become obsessed with the technically perfect print - the blackest blacks, the whitest whites, the sharpest images etc. There are more 'technically perfect' prints floating around now than there have ever been. Personally, I'd take a finely handcrafted B&W or platinum print every time over the rather souless, but technically excellent, inkjet prints that are flying off inkjet printers all around the world at an unbelievable pace.

I really don't get it. Printing with inkjet is as interpretative as post. You burn, dodge, set curves, mask etc. Then the actual image is refined with respect to the medium that it will be impressed on. The only concession to modernity is that once you have the final print file, you can churn out a bunch of identical copies *on that model printer and paper*.

Whether inkjet can be as good as silver - how should I know? I am already incapable of reproducing the results of some guys I know who do inkjet, and I'd bet they can't reproduce my inkjet work either.

Edmund

Sounds like a Durst Theta 76 printer ... been around for a while.

Exposes Black and white paper with a laser that is processed in Black and White chemicals.

Ted Dillard did a little write up here ...http://www.teddillard.com/2009/04/digital-silver-printing.html

Story of my life -- five minutes too late for everything.

But actually, after I thought about my initial post, I thought back to all the plumbing and sheetrocks walls I've installed when moving into a new place, rather than now, which is roll in the desk, plug the Mac into the wall, and get to work. I just think we might have come too far, (too easy), in digital, for the masses to go back to processing their own paper any more. At least in the masses.