Enlarge from negs made for contact prints?

[B-3]

Greetings

I'm working my way through Dan Burkholder's methodology of making digital negatives for contact printing, and I have a question: has anybody tried to use these to make enlargements? Are the results good? Bad? Ugly?

I assume you're better off by making the negative in the final size you want, but I was just curious.

Thanks,
Bruce

[sanking]

Greetings

I'm working my way through Dan Burkholder's methodology of making digital negatives for contact printing, and I have a question: has anybody tried to use these to make enlargements? Are the results good? Bad? Ugly?

I assume you're better off by making the negative in the final size you want, but I was just curious.

Thanks,
Bruce

I assume you are talking about digital negatives made with inkjet printers. If so, it is possible to enlarge the negatives but if any degree of magnification is involved image quality will rapidly break down.

This is due to the fact that regadless of how much information is in your origianl scan of the negative, the limit of resolution of output on transparency film from current generation inkjet printer is something on the order of 14-16 lppm (line pair per millimeter), regardless of the size of the negative. Now, 14-16 lppm is right at the threshold of human vision for a print viewed at the optimum distance of about ten inches, which explains why prints from digital contact negatives can have as much apparent sharpness as contact prints made from in-camera negatives. However, if you enlarge this negative the potential maximum amount of information in the negative is 14-16 divided by the magnification, and the resulting print will not look as sharp as it should.

I can not speak to digital negatives made on film from devices such as image setter and lambda printers.

Sandy

[B-3]

Thank you, Sandy.

That's exactly what I wanted to know. And yes, I should have clarified - I was talking about digital negatives made with inkjet printers.

Again, thank you.

Bruce