How to Convert Digital to Film ?

[CameraQuest]

With digital backs for film cameras, I would guess some enterprising soul has figured out how to do the reverse .... digital file to negative and wet processing.

OK, you have a digital file that you want to wet print. You want a real silver or palladium print from those pesky pixels.

What are the best ways to do that ?


Stephen

 

[kzphoto]

Back in school we used to print on Pictorico transparency sheets and then contact print the images using your choice of medium. Works okay provided that you have a decent ink-jet printer.

 

[Jamie123]

With digital backs for film cameras, I would guess some enterprising soul has figured out how to do the reverse .... digital file to negative and wet processing.

OK, you have a digital file that you want to wet print. You want a real silver or palladium print from those pesky pixels.

What are the best ways to do that ?

Stephen

There are labs that will create a large format neg from your digital files. Just find one in your vicinity. I know a black and white lab near me that exposes digital files on either 4x5 or 8x10 Ilford FP4+. The prices are pretty steep here but I'm sure in the US it's more reasonable.

Edit: It says they use a "Kodak LVT 1620" which I guess is some sort of film recorder.

 

[muser53]

An alternative to having this done at a lab would be to use PS in conjunction with an inkjet printer to produce a negative you can contact print from. Here is link I just found after reading your question that is a good primer on this topic.
http://www.ppmag.com/web-exclusives/2007/07/making-digital-negatives.html

 

[bonatto]

With digital backs for film cameras, I would guess some enterprising soul has figured out how to do the reverse .... digital file to negative and wet processing.

OK, you have a digital file that you want to wet print. You want a real silver or palladium print from those pesky pixels.

What are the best ways to do that ?


Stephen

I've read somewhere that Sebastião Salgado's Genesis was done almost entirely with this process. Canon files, printed from medium format film.

 

[bonatto]

Some more info:

DD: What was it like shifting to digital photography for the first time during the Genesis project?

SS: I started out working with negatives with a medium-format Pentax camera. About halfway through, in 2008, I switched to a digital camera because I was in constant fear that security machines at airports could destroy my films. A friend assured me that digital images were now of good quality. When I went digital, I switched to a Canon camera and I found the quality was much better than the medium-format negatives. In the final prints, you can see no difference because I have worked with one film, Kodak Tri-X film, all my life, and we were able to reproduce the exact grain of that film in the digital image. We also created a way of working that was no different from how I had always worked. I recorded everything on digital cards just as I did with film and, from these images on the cards, contact sheets and prints were made for me. Those I selected were then made into negatives. So, except for minor differences, the process was exactly the same.

http://www.rom.on.ca/en/collections-research/centres-of-discovery/contemporary-culture/the-making-of-genesis-in-conversation

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Stephen,

There is a De Vere enlarger which creates (in effect) a digital "negative" that can be projected onto proper silver halide paper. Not cheap, but it works: I saw it at Focus on Imaging a few years ago, and they even printed a snap of mine to show that it worked. See http://www.de-vere.com/products.htm

Cheers,

R.

 

[bonatto]

Dear Stephen,

There is a De Vere enlarger which creates (in effect) a digital "negative" that can be projected onto proper silver halide paper. Not cheap, but it works: I saw it at Focus on Imaging a few years ago, and they even printed a snap of mine to show that it worked. See http://www.de-vere.com/products.htm

Cheers,

R.

That's really cool, didn't realize it existed. What's going rate for one of these?

 

[yoyo22]

That's really cool, didn't realize it existed. What's going rate for one of these?

current models should be > 25k USD

 

[charjohncarter]

Dear Stephen,

There is a De Vere enlarger which creates (in effect) a digital "negative" that can be projected onto proper silver halide paper. Not cheap, but it works: I saw it at Focus on Imaging a few years ago, and they even printed a snap of mine to show that it worked. See http://www.de-vere.com/products.htm

Cheers,

R.

Thanks for the information, I'll have to read it in detail tomorrow. Also, long ago hint, thanks for the diagonal drying of roll film negatives.

 

[Skiff]

With digital backs for film cameras, I would guess some enterprising soul has figured out how to do the reverse .... digital file to negative and wet processing.

OK, you have a digital file that you want to wet print. You want a real silver or palladium print from those pesky pixels.

What are the best ways to do that ?


Stephen

Hi Stephen,

German engineering will always help you 🙂:

http://www.variochromat.de/

 

[Keith]

Ron Reeder's site has oodles of info about this subject. 🙂

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

Someone is selling a GCC Colorfast recorder on eBay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GCC-Techn...?pt=UK_Sound_Vision_Other&hash=item3a83bbaa1d

(obviously, nothing to do with me)

 

[Frontman]

I saw an interesting item at a junk shop in Tokyo. It was a high resolution CRT monitor fit into a metal housing, the housing contained a lens assembly which was covered by a Polaroid PA45 film back. It was a piece of equipment used to catch stills of video on film. One could easily enough use a 4x5 holder instead of the Polaroid back, and I suppose the CRT monitor could be easily enough replaced with an LCD type.

 

[Thardy]

We used a film recorder back in the 1990s to record digital presentations on PowerPoint to 35mm slide film. The slides were then used in slide projectors. At the time, a film recorder cost about $5,000.

 

[anjoca76]

I just recently had a b&w gelatin print made from a digital file (shot originally on film, then scanned) by a company here in Boston: http://www.digitalsilverimaging.com

PS: Nice to see you're back, Roger!

 

[Godfrey]

With digital backs for film cameras, I would guess some enterprising soul has figured out how to do the reverse .... digital file to negative and wet processing.

OK, you have a digital file that you want to wet print. You want a real silver or palladium print from those pesky pixels.

What are the best ways to do that ?

I used to do this back in the 1990s using techniques published by Dan Burkholder:
http://www.danburkholder.com/Pages/main_pages/main_page_3-06/Dan_Burkholder_Home.html

Here's another book on he subject:
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Negatives-Photoshop-Alternative-Printing/dp/0240808541

Oh yeah: in the 1980s, I had one of those film recorders mentioned up thread as part of my work at JPL/NASA. It was how we took the digital images created by our imaging radar remote sensors and output then to hard copy prints that we distributed to PIs with their digital data on 9-track tape.

G