> David Fokos wrote that he does 16x20 Pt prints without having a darkroom.
> David, how on earth do you do that ? How are you exposing your digital
> negatives and how do you not get spillage from your clearing trays? What's
> your secret?
I have a nuArc 26-1K plateburner which I use for making exposures. I
would think that any exposure system could work outside of a darkroom.
As for processing, I suppose having a darkroom would make things a bit
more convenient. However, since the platinum emulsion is not especially
light sensitive I can process the prints in my bathroom lit by a night light.
I do the processing in the bathtub using a 20x24 print drum. Not exactly
the picture of elegance, but it works. :)
> I have started studying my Photoshop 3.0 thanks to these recent
> discussions on imaging and will be meeting with a service bureau next week
> to begin a new learning curve. Two brief questions: #1 If you take a lupe
> or microscope to the final 16x20 Platinum Print made via a contact
> exposure with a 16x20 digital negative from a 4x5 con't tone original,
> can you see the halftone dot patters which apparently are evident in the
> 16x20 dig neg.
Yes. If you look with a loupe or scope you will see the dot pattern.
> #2 If I were to place two Pt prints side by side : one made
> from a perfectly exposed 16x20 orig con't tone neg exposed in a 16x20
> camera and the other made from a 4x5 con't tone neg and then scanned ,
> processed and scaled to a 16x20 dig neg which in turn is contact printed
> for the final 16x20 Platinum print: would a savy platinum printer who is
> blind to their respective orgins see them as equivalent? Might he prefer
> the dig processed print ?
I don't think anyone would *prefer* the print made from the digital
negative, unless you were perhaps able to better adjust the contrast in
Photoshop, or do something else which would make them different. If you
exclude any sort of tonal differences -- i.e. the two negs are, for all
intents and purposes, the same except that one is digital and the other
is not -- then I would say that the two prints *could* (see below for
waffling) be virtually indistinguishable to the naked eye.
It might be possible to make the print from the digital neg look sharper,
and I suppose that might be appealing. There are probably exceptions
based on image content, etc. where a real, honest-to-goodness 16x20
negative will be clearly superior, but I think that the digital
enlargement can be as good in virtually all cases (certainly if one
starts with an 8x10 negative, and most probably if one starts with a 4x5
neg).
That said, I can imagine that shooting a 16x20 neg, you might have to
stop down the lens quite far to get good depth of field. Stopping down
that far could degrade the image due to diffraction. If by using a 4x5,
you were able to make a sharper negative by limiting diffraction, that
would also work in your favor.
I know I kind of waffled a bit on that last question but, not having a
perfectly exposed 16x20 negative to work with, I can't answer
definitively. I have done tests where a print from a digital neg looks
sharper than a contact print from the original. Also, I have made 2.4 x
enlargements which look as sharp as the original at 1:1. Also, using
Photoshop and zooming all the way in on my image file, the enlargement
equivalent is huge, much more than going to a 16x20, and the detail is
extraordinary. I have a 5x7 neg which I will be enlarging to 16x20 soon,
so we'll see. If you get there first, please let us know how it turns
out. Or, if someone else on the list has made this sort of enlargement
(4.4x), perhaps they would be happy to share their experience.
Let me put it another way. My confidence is so high that I've just put
together a whole 4x5 outfit, so that I wouldn't have to lug my 8x10
around anymore. I plan to enlarge those negs to 16x20.
Good luck Stephen. If you run into any difficulty, feel free to e-mail
me directly.
David Fokos