Hi, the whole analog photo world is bursting with
alt processes mixed media and surface choice
of paper that will not die soon. Plus new materials
like impossible polaroid 8x10.
rich
On Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 7:07 AM, Robert Randall <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Tim Daneliuk via freelists.org
11:15 PM (9 hours ago)
to pure-silver
"One of my longer term goals is to figure out a cost effective way to scan
a negative at very high resolution - manipulate it digitally - and then
produce
a corrected negative, purely for the purpose of making fine silver prints.
I know this can be done, but the "cost effective" part is elusive."
In 1989, I bought my first imaging station, a SGI Power Series 440 with
Barco Creator software on it. We used a Kodak Premier for scans and
outputs. The typical resolution was 9600 X 7600, which was sufficient to
output an 8X10 transparency at the res 40 setting.
I wasn't pleased with the results of the Premier, so I began investigating
the input and output devices available at the time. I don't remember the
names of all the devices I experimented with, but I did come to the
conclusion that the Isomet 405XX drum scanner was the finest unit ever
built. It was purely an RGB scanner that you could elect to turn on, or
leave off, an on the fly CMYK conversion. I also concluded that I wasn't
going to find a better output device than a Kodak LVT, so I bought them
both.
In the beginning, I was the only studio in Chicago that offered full
service digital capability, so basically I had the market cornered. My
company made more money between 1989 and 1995 than I ever thought possible.
then the Mac 840 AV came along, and suddenly every photographer in town was
my competition.
As business fell off, I came to loathe the work I was doing, so I began to
experiment with a BW digital workflow. I wasn't interested in doing this
for clients, I wanted to see if I could produce retouched BW digital negs
that I could then use on my Fotar 10X10 pin registered enlarger. The
resulting prints, for which I employed contrast masks in the making, were
the best work I've ever done.
During my discovery process, I learned more about BW photography than I
thought possible. Richard Knoppow was instrumental in helping me get past
the one nagging hurdle that confounded me in the process, which was how to
achieve a duplicate neg with a 1:1 gamma relation to the original neg.
While I still believe 1:1 is impossible, I was able to get within .01
density of target along a 26 step calibration wedge. It took three years to
figure out how to do that.
At the same time I figured out how to produce viable negs, the sales rep
for Bergger Products found out that I had said some nice things about his
8X10 sheet film, so he contacted me to see what I was doing with his
product. Two weeks later I signed an agreement making Bergger my exclusive
agent for the process.
They never mentioned who their client base was, they just promised a
certain amount of funds and a certain amount of work. My first job came
from Irving Penn, and the praise from that project resulted in an explosion
of work from all over the place. Among my clients was Herb Ritts, Patrick
Demarchelier, Victor Skrebneski, Jock Sturges, John Sexton, Joel Peter
Witkin, and a host of others.
With all these different clients, came different problems, chief among
them, my canned 1.35 density range wouldn't work for all of them. John
Sexton's negs generally had a density range of 0.70, while Skrebneski's
negs had a range of nearly 2.5, and George Tice's negatives were so blocked
up they were barely readable. In order to provide the clients with
negatives they could relate to, I had to develop an assortment of density
ranges that didn't vary more than 0.01 from target. Which is when I figured
out how developer overhead affects a negative.
I found that if I used a developer that had the capacity to process a
great number of square inches of film, the density results would be
sporadic. If I tailored the developer to a limited number of square inches,
the results were not only consistent, but highly specific in terms of
accuracy. If I needed a film density range of 1.35, my developer was only
capable of giving me 1.40, even if I left the film in the soup for double
the prescribed time. this is the part that richard helped with, although he
probably only knows what the questions were and not what they were for. No
one back then wanted to hear about a digital workflow.
Unfortunately, I don't know of one remaining Isomet or LVT in working
order. I absolutely cringe when I hear people praise the scans they get
from flat beds, or even the Hasselblad/Imacon Flextight. I wish we could
turn the clock back so I could buy 5 or 6 each of the LVT's and Isomets. I
can't imagine how beautiful a silver print I could make from an LVT
negative that was produced from a Phase IQ3 file.
Bob Randall
On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 11:15 PM, Tim Daneliuk <tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 09/17/2016 09:55 PM, Gmail Robert Randall wrote:
One thing I miss about analog is the random surprises that sometimeskept me on the edge of my seat. There simply aren't any surprises with
digital photography, at least on a commercial set.
I was around, working in recording studios, when synthesizers first got to
be a big deal. In the beginning, musicians bemoaned that "these machines"
would replace acoustic instruments. What happened, of course, is that
electronic music became a thing in its own right and Steinway is still
making magnificent pianos.
By analogy, I see this as being the case for digital photography as well.
It will never fully replace analog as an art form - they look too
different.
They're simply two related - but different - art forms.
I think this is especially true when you consider output media. If you're
shooting tabletop product or ad work, it makes little sense to shoot 8x10
film to then be later printed in a magazine or - worse still - displayed
in RGB on a generic IPS computer screen. But I have yet to see an inkjet
that remotely approaches a silver print's sheer beauty. (That could be
because I've not remotely seen the very best ink output available.) For
all the improvements the ink sprayers have made, there is still some
metamerism
and similar artifacts that I find aesthetically offputing.
One of my longer term goals is to figure out a cost effective way to scan
a negative at very high resolution - manipulate it digitally - and then
produce
a corrected negative, purely for the purpose of making fine silver prints.
I know this can be done, but the "cost effective" part is elusive.
--
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Tim Daneliuk tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/
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