Return from Digital, big ?, need advice.

J

jasonhupe

Established
Local time
10:51 AM
Joined
Nov 8, 2004
Messages
80
Location
all over
View My Gallery
Hey RFF'ers,
Here is the short story of it. Fifteen years of all B&W film, all my work, Contax SLR's and G1 with a bunch of lens. Sold it all a few years ago to go 100% for reason of doing tons of wedding work each year and more commercial assignments. I love digital for the paid work but not loving it for my personal projects and getting back into rangefinder film photography.

Here is the rub, I have no access to a darkroom anymore for printing. So no wet printing. My big question is what is everyone doing for printing these days? I want to get the pulse of what others are doing. Seems not too many scanners available these days, Nikon seems to only offer the 9000 new, finding used ones seem tough, Plustech have a few out but they seem not great. Imacon is way too much. Im used to use an Epson flatbed for work scans and web but they were not good enough for prints. max print I would do is 16x20, most probably 11x14. I know inkjet pigment printing is big but not sure I want to go down that route due to maintenance and fine tuning.

Any info on what is working for you is greatly appreciated. Looking forward to smelling that fixer very soon. Thanks.
 
There are C-41 labs all over. For nearly twenty years I have used no other kind of film. I still have the old enlarger and safe-light and easel and tongs, but...
 
The spare bedroom makes a very adequate darkroom ! There is no need for a super-deluxe permanent one if you aren't going to be working in there the whole day. Try it and see 🙂
 
I would recommend using C-41 and then having a trusted, professional lab develop and scan the negatives. It costs me $10 a roll here and the results are spectacular. If you like something, have Costco print it out for super cheap. Their printers are as high of a quality as most any other pro lab. Nice thing about shooting C-41 and scanning is that it's a simple process to convert to B&W digitally. You can always easily get rid of color information; adding it is a whole different matter.
 
i print ra4 with a fujimoto cp51 and recently packed up my scanners. i just lost interest in photoshopping and making inkjet prints.

am i right in assuming that you'll be shooting 6x7 or larger to print 11x14 and 16x20? if you don't have a darkroom and want to post photos to the internet, i would get an inexpensive flatbed scanner. you could also use this as a proofing tool if you would rather not get contact sheets made. assuming you live in a major metropolitan area, it's less hassle to let a professional lab make high quality scans and prints (digital or traditional) when you need it. you'll have to do the math to see if it's cost effective.
 
Last edited:
jasonhupe said:
Hey RFF'ers,
Here is the short story of it. Fifteen years of all B&W film, all my work, Contax SLR's and G1 with a bunch of lens. Sold it all a few years ago to go 100% for reason of doing tons of wedding work each year and more commercial assignments. I love digital for the paid work but not loving it for my personal projects and getting back into rangefinder film photography.

Here is the rub, I have no access to a darkroom anymore for printing. So no wet printing. My big question is what is everyone doing for printing these days? I want to get the pulse of what others are doing. Seems not too many scanners available these days, Nikon seems to only offer the 9000 new, finding used ones seem tough, Plustech have a few out but they seem not great. Imacon is way too much. Im used to use an Epson flatbed for work scans and web but they were not good enough for prints. max print I would do is 16x20, most probably 11x14. I know inkjet pigment printing is big but not sure I want to go down that route due to maintenance and fine tuning.

Any info on what is working for you is greatly appreciated. Looking forward to smelling that fixer very soon. Thanks.
Click to expand...


Depends where you live - scanning at a decent quality is expensive in the UK. If you can pick up a second hand Nikon 5000 that's good for 35mm, but won't be inexpensive.

Inkjet printing can be very good, but again reckon on a significant investment. alternatively, find soneone with a decent printer who will print your files on paper you like at a sensible cost - I do this for people from time to time.

Mike
 
I've diminished digital to P&S use in my shooting and set up a menagerie of old junk that simply delights me to use. I have no room for a darkroom either, so I have a small 'darkroom in a box' containing a changing bag, reels/tanks and spare chemicals. Shooting mostly Tri-X, which is scanned on an epson V700, which handles 95% of my needs from 35mm to 4x5. Color transparencies go out for processing and come back digitized.

I'd want to have a scanner even if I was doing traditional wet printing, simply for web archiving and transfers.
 
I think an Epson V700 would be fine for 11x14s and maybe even 16x20s from medium format. For 35mm, bite the bullet and find a Nikon Coolscan.

I print some from my Coolscan scans. I get them from WHCC. Most of my prints I do in the darkroom. Which is my bathroom. My enlarger is on a microwave cart which I wheel in. I can do 11x14s without too much trouble, and am setup to do 16x20, but have not done that yet.
 
Thanks for the reply everyone. I think I should have been a bit more specific in my original post. I still have and always did my own processing. Tanks, reels and chemicals all no problem with change bag. Only interested in B&W, color I would just used my 5D MK II and slew of L lens. I have two Epson flatbeds and can get decent scans from them. What I was really interested in is what people are doing to make larger gallery style prints from their film originals. In all my searching I found a place not an hour from here that does high end imacon scanning and printing. The most sensible route, which I was thinking in the beginning, would be to use the epson as test scans for proofing and sequencing and then when I need a high quality scan, outsource that.
There is no right way for any of this I guess. I do have my Omega enlarger from my darkroom days and can use that but coming up with a bathroom solution at my current place may be not possible. and living in the boonies does not help at all. There are 0 photo anything even 100 miles from here, unless you count Best Buy as a photo store. Anyway, I should have fun shooting while I figure this all out. Thanks all.
 
oh, that's totally different. i would get a smaller enlarger and something like a projection cart to move it around with. believe you me, scanning and printing b&w digitally is more of a headache (and wallet ache) than scraping together a guerilla darkroom, especially since you have to drive an hour to get to the lab.
 
You'd be surprised what you can do in a small bathroom .... er .... I suppose that came out wrong. Many folks have gotten pretty creative in converting other rooms into temporary darkrooms, like making a removable table that fits over the commode, giving you extra room for the enlarger.

In my permanent darkroom I dispensed with using standard photo trays, because they take up so much table area, and instead use those white plastic 3-drawer cube stacks, available at places like Walmart's homewares department. Developer in the top drawer, stop bath in the middle, fixer in the bottom. The drips follow the preferred path of not reverse-contaminating your developer, top to bottom. The footprint it takes up is very small. Each tray pulls out for emptying and cleaning. A second such cube stack would give you three more trays, for a rinse aid, holding bath and selenium toner in the bottom. Then a final rinse in the bathtub. I have three different sizes of these, for 4x4, 5x7 and 8x10.

~Joe
 
You know what is best for your business but for personal you need a camera and lenses that meet your personal creativity. For me, since I have no desire to exhibit, I shoot film. I have prints made 4x6 to review. Contacts are too small. At the time of processing I decide if I want an inexpensive scan to send to friends via the net. I have a batch of 4 rolls per cd. If I should want to blow up an image for personal use I return to the negatives.
 
Your plans for scanning make sense to me. Proof scans at home then big scans at the lab. Send out for printing - WHCC is good and affordable.

Personally I mail order all my chemistry, film, and supplies. Where you live doesn't really matter that much.
 
Jason,

Take a look at Freestyle.biz, they have some interesting stuff for B&W. I haven't done my own for years (I miss it).

There is a large group of folks who do B&W digital and print some really great stuff. Best way to find the papers and inks are google continuos ink systems for like an epson 1280. There are some wonderful ink jet papers and inks out there. Only issue is that you must dedicate a printer to it. You get five or six different shades of black and you really do get some very nice prints.

Hope this helps.

B2 (;->
 
I never gave up the darkroom and it sits intact, just not used as often.

Ink jet prints are somewhat ok for color. Monochrome not so hot.

I send film to a pro lab and let them D&P it 3x5 and do a scan. The scan goes into the computer for photoshop and then back for final print.

Portra scans superbly. Calibrate the monitor and convert to B&W if you want, Assign latest monitor profile under edit, the image-adj-B&W and you get a perfect neutral monochrome. Do not convert any other way.
 
I have used Chris at www.theimageinn.com for a while now. She does the enlargements once I have defined what I want from my B&W negs. She is one of a family of B&W professionals her lab does work for museums and is IMHO a master printer at great prices. She does film developing too. A trusting and professional lab owner.

You could certainly get cheaper but quality wise its great B&W that I would be satisified with if I sat up all night printing one image until I feel I got it right, and for me that would be one frame with a box of "seconds" in my wake. Can't say enough good stuff.

Lee
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom