digital negatives?

[Jorge]

Dont apologize for me, I have known Dan Burkholder for many years and knew about digital negatives before anybody here, nothing against digital but you are correct, we want this site free of digital talk, and as a matter of fact your question about digital papers is also out of line. Ask it in the gray forum or somewhere else.

[Digidurst]

Dont apologize for me, I have known Dan Burkholder for many years and knew about digital negatives before anybody here, nothing against digital but you are correct, we want this site free of digital talk, and as a matter of fact your question about digital papers is also out of line. Ask it in the gray forum or somewhere else.

Jeez! I guess my tongue-in-cheek attempt at making Michael feel a bit less like the AGUG community jumped on his case was taken a bit more dramatically than intended.

However, with the digi-fotogs constantly taking aim at film users, I would think that APUG would be a little more tolerant of people and not so quick to judge others harshly for how they decide to go about their imaging processes. I stand corrected - excuuuuse me!

[sanking]

Im itching to give this a shot, looks like some great stuff can be done with digital negs - any suggestions on what I would use to output the digi negative on? I have a canon i9900 for my color work, what kind of transparecy is good for a digi neg?

thanks in advance,
Mike

Mike,

If you are really interested in learning about digital negatives let me suggest that you take your questions and discussions on the subject to the alt-photo-process list serve. Both Mark Nelson and Dan Burkholder respond to questions frequently on that forum, along with many other persons with extensive knowlege about making digital negatives.

And don't worry about asking a question on the alt-photo-process list about making silver prints with digital negatives if that happens to be what you are interested in. Even though the focus of the alt-photo-process list is about alternative photography it is considered perfectly acceptable to discuss virtually any aspect of photography.

The alt-photo-process list goes back to the early 1990s and there is a very extensive archive you can search at http://www.usask.ca/lists/alt-photo-process/.

You will find extensive discussions about digital negatives on the alt--photo-process list beginning in the earliest archives, which date from 1994. There was a recent discussion on the list on the subject of the first use of digital negatives, and while consensus appears to be that while no one really knows exactly when it all began the fact is that the use of digital negatives by alternative photographers was already quite wide-spread as early as 1990 and 1991. I personally made quite a number of carbon prints with imagesetter negatives as early as 1992, and to the best of my recollection my colleague Sam Wang and his students were making three-color gum prints from digital negatives well before then.

Sandy King

[reinierv]

actually this is a combined worlds question...create digital negatives to create a historic print. So I see no problems with tghis question

I have been testing pictorio OHP some time ago. It gives fairly good results but is no match against well developped Tmax. In the mid-range the tones tend to flatten out, loosing detail while the contrast on both ends of the spectrum are higher (using Dan Burkholders approach/curves). You may solve this by improving curves, but it will be a hell of a job (I tried but had only minor improvements). I was more satisfied with Epson backlight paper but this has a huge base fog so you will have long exposre times. Beside the mid-tones pictorio was very sensitive for scratches and damages, my printer (R200) wheels left clear marks that were visible on the contact print. I decided to stick to Tmax and in occasions where I want to make a Pd print from e.g 35mm or 6x6 or digital use Epson backlight.

Base fog= level of transparency of the sheet
Blacks = the level of the blacks
smoothnes = comparable with grain
ruggedness = quality, is it easily damaged.

base fog |blacks |grey levels| smoothness| ruggedness

Acco ++ | + | +/- | - | +

Pictorio + | +/++ | +/- | +/++ | -

Backlight -- | +/++ | +/++ | +/- | +

Tmax ++ | ++ | ++ | ++ | +

Conclusion
Tmax is almost fully transperent in the dark areas, compared to the others
The density of the white area's (black on the neg) is closely matched by Pictorio and Backlight comapred to Tmax
The mid-tones are best captured by Tmax, although backlight gets it close
Although the backlight paper has quite some grainness due to the construction, it is not vissible on a 5x7 print, That of Acco is visible
It is hard to get an undamaged pictorio print from an unmodified printer like the R200/R300. You can remove wheels from the printer, it will void you guarentee, and may make the printer dedicated to this work as the sheets will most likely not be as flat and well transported
Acco is unusable due to the grainness and low quality

[michaelsalomon]

I posted in the wrong area...my apologies to everyone.

but anyone who gets uptight....have a drink and relax, im not here to convert everyone to digital for christs sake, just a question regarding something i'd like to try.

in any event, I do appreciate the help fro everyone who offered an opinion.

Mike

[peanut]

Hi there,

I am currently working through Mark Nelson's Precision Digital Negative system with the intention of using it for silver darkroom prints and will be posting a complete experience report soon. I just made my last calibration silver print and am just about ready to contact silver print an actual image. The system is working fine, but so far I am a little worried about "graininess" of the step palettes when printing on silver paper, but this may not be a problem once I print an image. I will make a new post probably in the next few days.

Cheers!

[Jeremy]

Hi there,

I am currently working through Mark Nelson's Precision Digital Negative system with the intention of using it for silver darkroom prints and will be posting a complete experience report soon. I just made my last calibration silver print and am just about ready to contact silver print an actual image. The system is working fine, but so far I am a little worried about "graininess" of the step palettes when printing on silver paper, but this may not be a problem once I print an image. I will make a new post probably in the next few days.

Cheers!

Peanut, that's great as I just use it for alt processes but would like to know more about it for silver. Please start a new post and share!