Andy Darlow (andy@andydarlow.com)
Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:12:48 +0000
Hi Doug:
You have many choices available to you to create prints for both an
exhibition and publication.
You can have direct BW negs output on a film recorder made by a number of
different companies.(The best are by Cymbolic Sciences (ie. Fire 1000 and
Kodak (LVT)).
The other possibility is to have images output to a less expensive machine
such as a Solitaire, which is a different technology, but acceptable for
smaller prints.
I'd recommend ganging up about 8 images on 1 8x10 and create 6x9cm
originals on the Fire or LVT. The file size should be just about right and
you can use greyscale or RGB, but check with the service provider on that.
You should pay no more than US$200 for an 8x10. Those originals should
yield gallery quality prints if done properly. At 6x9cm the file should be
about 1000ppi for best reults.
The highlights have a tendancy to blow out on even the best output devices,
so you may want to bring your highlights to something like 240, or do 2
different contrast ranges as a test to begin.
Best of luck with the project!
-Andy Darlow
At 01:04 PM 10/23/99 +0700, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Am new to this newsgroup so I suspect I may be slightly off-topic if last
>week's postings are any indication but in case this is not the case, my
>questions are as follows:
>
>I'm producing a book of Vietnam war photography and due to working
>conditions in Vietnam was only able to scan much of the 35mm material
>(all B/W), as no darkroom was available and negatives could not be
>removed from the premises. So I've been scanning original film with a
>Nikon LS-2000 at maximum 2700 dpi and in 36 bit mode. All the scans have
>been saved in both RGB and grayscale for posterity purposes. I know how
>to make good scans so the problem is not there.
>
>I'm hoping to make very high quality prints either from a continuous-tone
>printer or to a film recorder, but I have no experience with either of
>these processes up to now.
>
>Fortunately I live in Asia where both of these processes are inexpensive
>and available.
>
>So my question is: what can I expect from the output? Can I expect
>quality good enough for a high-quality publication (our last book
>"Killing Fields" was printed using the gravure method in Japan but I
>don't think this will be the case for this latest project) or even better
>yet: can I achieve exhibition-quality prints from these negs produced by
>a film recorder?
>
>Which continuous-tone printer is the best for making B/W prints?
>
>I was hoping for advice before I pour massive amounts of my time into
>fixing all these scans up in Photoshop, etc.
>
>Of course drum scanning would have been ideal but it was not a practical
>solution in our situation.
>
>Alternatively, is there somewhere else I can find this information? A
>past posting?
>
>Any help would be most appreciated.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Doug Niven
>Co-founder, Photo Archive Group
>Bangkok
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Fri Nov 05 1999 - 21:26:28