I must admit here, as I have in several of my books, that I had the same
misconception you have just expressed above, until I saw a number of
fabulous prints made by Ortiz Echague, all of them made from enlarged paper
negatives. As long as your final print is on some sort of artistic,
textured paper, the paper negative will have a higher resolution than your
final paper support, and nobody will be able to tell whether you were using
a film neg or paper neg., period!
Another advantage to paper negs and positives, is that they take retouching
a lot better.
The only problem, and it can be a serious one if you are using say, a
sunlamp as a light source, is that exposures are longer. If you can't
afford a decent graphic arts "platemaker" ($300 to $700, used) you may have
to use sunlight. The good news is that sunlight is cheap;-)
Luis Nadeau