Inkjet - the Devil's work?

[GaryLH]

Every Epson printer I had was definitely the devil's work, and a good job he/she did too. They would suffer from ink clogs at the drop of a hat, cleaning cycles consumed huge quantities of ink, and more than a few of my prints faded after just 11 years, and that's w/ them being under the bed and not exposed to light. Yes, I used the best pigmented inks. I truly felt like I'd died and gone to heaven when I set up the darkroom, finally. Ink on paper is not silver in fiber photo paper. Big difference in archival quality too. I just tore up all of my inkjets one night, which was about 9 years worth of work, after seeing the difference between them and the darkroom work.

Quite true. I have given up expensive ink jets because of this.. If I want a good print, I have decided to send it out for now.

But I do periodically look at what new to c if they have done better.

I miss my time in the darkroom but the papers that were my favorite are no longer being produced (Agfa Boveria and Portiga). What I don't miss is the taste of fixer after spending hours in a darkroom (even in good commercial well ventilated ones).

Gary

 

[Hans Berkhout]

I'm working hard to get good at inkjet printing, I know it's possible. Amazing actually, I've seen very good inkjet prints, wish I was able to achieve same. It's coming.
But Devil is hiding in the equipment, you have to be aware of the fact that once you're on the digital (inkjet)track, you have become a hostage of the hardware/software manufacturers. Stuff gets imposed on you that you didn't ask for, and you can count on sooner or later having to deal with incompatibility of your tools. You'll miss the control you had over your equipment in the wet (analog) darkroom. I.o.w. there is a price to pay. To the Devil.

 

[noisycheese]

... you have to be aware of the fact that once you're on the digital (inkjet)track, you have become a hostage of the hardware/software manufacturers. Stuff gets imposed on you that you didn't ask for, and you can count on sooner or later having to deal with incompatibility of your tools...

Haven't you heard? Wringing every dollar possible out of people is all that matters... 🙄

 

[Sanders McNew]

The limited controls of silver printing when compared to digital printing are simply the limits of contrast and brightness controls, overall and local, inherent in the wet darkroom as compared to a digital image whose tonal qualities are being controlled by a computer.

I often liken it to the transition from wood to GRP in boatbuilding. Wood
can be bent only in certain ways and that constrained the hull shapes one
could build, and those shapes tend to be seen as organic, graceful. Then
GRP came along, which can be formed into nearly any curve or shape.
And some of those are elegant and graceful, but some resemble Clorox
bottles. I cannot count the number of times I have tortured the scan of
a negative, then given up, put the negative in the enlarger and -voila!-
the print comes effortlessly. In my limited experience, the limits of the
materials often do more good than harm. I don't like the anomie of
limitless digital choices.

 

[sig]

Yes it is the devil's work. People who where good in the dark room lost their edge, suddenly people who where rubbish or even worse never had been in a darkroom could get the same results in a shorter time.....

Of course for the ones with no access or knowledge to darkrooms inkjet (or probably more digital) was a gift from the dude upstairs.

 

[jean-louis salvignol]

"I don't like the anomie of limitless digital choices."

I think that comment from Sanders is very interresting.

I would like to just ask this question: Why, backed by his darkroom experience, Sanders did not define its own limits in a well framed worflow, instead of being trapped by the endless possibilities of digital?

His example of shipbuilding perfectly shows the right way: not to emulate but to use in a controlled way the potential of new technologies. The idea that the photographic adventure may be frozen at time (t) is unrealistic anyway.

 

[Ansel]

Who has considered that any significant differentiation between a print being make via silver or quality digital process is in actuality a negative reflection of the quality of the photograph / photographer?

Sorry, but I have seen too many great prints of less than great photographs.

I have been to countless exhibitions by major photographers where original silver analogue prints were not displayed because of the cost of shipping/insuring them but rather replaced by digital prints. The digital prints are nowhere near as good as the analogue IMO and IME.

 

[Michael Markey]

I have been to countless exhibitions by major photographers where original silver analogue prints were not displayed because of the cost of shipping/insuring them but rather replaced by digital prints. The digital prints are nowhere near as good as the analogue IMO and IME.

But were they good enough .
Somebody must have thought that they were sufficient to convey the intention .... no ?

 

[Ansel]

But were they good enough .
Somebody must have thought that they were sufficient to convey the intention .... no ?

As someone who prints in their own darkroom I found them to be disappointing.

Good enough? For me analogue film photography is such a fine, fine, wonderful medium. Capable of such beauty and expression - surely the reason why so many of us continue to use it, and why it will be around for many many years to come. So why be good enough when you can be great?

Digital can be great when viewed on a computer screen. It has its own aesthetic and virtues, but copying the aesthetic of analogue prints is not one of them.

I dont shoot digital beyond my iPhone. Perhaps I will one day. But I would like to think that when I did I would play to its strengths and not look over my shoulder all the time, using photoshop filters trying to create that analogue look that I loved with film, which seems as pointless to me as trying to make film look like a daguerreotype...

Horses for courses.

 

[Sparrow]

I have been to countless exhibitions by major photographers where original silver analogue prints were not displayed because of the cost of shipping/insuring them but rather replaced by digital prints. The digital prints are nowhere near as good as the analogue IMO and IME.

... had they used digital c-prints you wouldn't have noticed I fancy

 

[Rayt]

Yes it is the devil's work. People who where good in the dark room lost their edge, suddenly people who where rubbish or even worse never had been in a darkroom could get the same results in a shorter time.....

Of course for the ones with no access or knowledge to darkrooms inkjet (or probably more digital) was a gift from the dude upstairs.

Or downstairs.😛

 

[Michael Markey]

As someone who prints in their own darkroom I found them to be disappointing.

Good enough? For me analogue film photography is such a fine, fine, wonderful medium. Capable of such beauty and expression - surely the reason why so many of us continue to use it, and why it will be around for many many years to come. So why be good enough when you can be great?

Horses for courses.

Indeed and I was thinking more about my post when I was mucking out my horse this morning. 🙂
I wasn`t very clear ... I was thinking about some thing Roger had previously said about differing levels of commitment.

It strikes me that the prevailing attitude today is one of "good enough" or fit for purpose ,as the jargon would have it.

I guess I was trying to determine whether or not that applied in the situation which you encountered but ,given that you are committed to the best , it was unfair of me to ask that .

 

[froyd]

Good enough, for me, equates with darkroom prints as much as digital. Basic wet darkrooms are cheap and easy to set up, and it does not take much skill to get a print to show up on a piece of paper (probably RC coated, because is cheap, easy and plentiful). But have you ever seen a master printer at work? Very few people have that skill set, and take such a rigorous approach to their printing. Click here for examples.

The total rubbish I've seen at photo club exhibits, with their shared-darkrooms full of banged-up enlargers and spent chemicals, is not any less plentiful than the crap I see hanging on our local cafe walls, which seems to be printed on the least expensive inkjet papers and with so many artifacts created by excessive post processing.

Then again, I've seen inkjet prints at local art galleries that made my jaw drop, as much as museum prints which claimed to be silver-based.


Personally, after many years in the darkroom, I have three fiber prints that I very proud of. Whereas in the four years I've worked with inkjets (currently an r3000) I have achieved a dozen prints that I consider stellar. This might just mean that I was a crappy darkroom printer and a better digital one, but i find the tools available for digital post processing to be quite excellent at this point, allowing for subtle change that don't scream "digital manipulation at work!" and more organically expand the darkroom tool set.

 

[Ansel]

I guess I was trying to determine whether or not that applied in the situation which you encountered but ,given that you are committed to the best , it was unfair of me to ask that .

As they say in Australia. No worries mate. 🙂

 

[______]

This might just mean that I was a crappy darkroom printer and a better digital one, but i find the tools available for digital post processing to be quite excellent at this point, allowing for subtle change that don't scream "digital manipulation at work!" and more organically expand the darkroom tool set.

Upon coming back to photography after several decades, my initial reaction upon seeing current work at sites like 500px was that I had never seen so many obviously "fake" photographs in my life, images which I think could best be described, not a photographs, but as a new genre of work with the label "Photoshop Images", which is fine, I guess. Query: if you print a photograph, and then paint over it in oils, is it still a photograph?

 

[froyd]

Upon coming back to photography after several decades, my initial reaction upon seeing current work at sites like 500px was that I had never seen so many obviously "fake" photographs in my life, images which I think could best be described, not a photographs, but as a new genre with the label "Photoshop Images", which is fine, I guess. Query: if you print a photograph, and then paint over it in oils, is it still a photograph?

Yes, and that's where it really helps to be grounded in the analogue process or have a good knowledge of photo history and the work of its most eminent luminaries. My preference is toward the subtle. The minimal edits that could be done in the darkroom if I had the skill set to do so. I find LR5 very good in this regard.

I agree with you: if I see another color image with hyper-saturated colors, cranked-up micro-contrast, split-toning, and a heavy radial vignette I might just get sick! But hey, everything changes, and for all we know, this look could the new normal for the next generations of image-makers (photographers?)

 

[hendriphile]

I agree with you: if I see another color image with hyper-saturated colors, cranked-up micro-contrast, split-toning, and a heavy radial vignette I might just get sick! But hey, everything changes, and for all we know, this look could the new normal for the next generations of image-makers (photographers?)

Egg tempera was the preferred medium from mummy paintings right up to the time of Michelangelo, then oil painting took over. But tempera never vanished; in fact it's been used by such mainstream artists as Andrew Wyeth and Thomas Hart Benton.

I think what distinguishes our "interesting times" from past transitions is that ours is taking place so rapidly, I mean just in 15-20 years.

 

[hlockwood]

There seems to be a mind set among many that digital printing is done at the mere press of a button and the computer via software controls the output ... which is true to a point I guess.

A good digital print requires a lot of skill and judgement though.

I'll second that last sentence. Even with a rather well calibrated (CRT) monitor, I'll go through at least 2 hard proofs on inexpensive paper, such as EEM. I'll then run a ~5x7 proof on the archival paper I've chosen for the final print. Only then will I print (grayscale, K7 Cone carbon pigment inks) a large print, either ~10x15 In. or ~12x18 in.

Not much different from what I did in the darkroom.

HFL

 

[hlockwood]

Every Epson printer I had was definitely the devil's work, and a good job he/she did too. They would suffer from ink clogs at the drop of a hat, cleaning cycles consumed huge quantities of ink, and more than a few of my prints faded after just 11 years, and that's w/ them being under the bed and not exposed to light. Yes, I used the best pigmented inks. I truly felt like I'd died and gone to heaven when I set up the darkroom, finally. Ink on paper is not silver in fiber photo paper. Big difference in archival quality too. I just tore up all of my inkjets one night, which was about 9 years worth of work, after seeing the difference between them and the darkroom work.

I have trouble understanding your results. See for instance, www.aardenburg-imaging.com/news.8.html‎

for some current test results on archival inkjet prints. Carbon pigment inks and pure cotton rag paper, carbon on cotton, is probably as archival, if not more so, than a traditional silver print.

HFL

 

[Chuck Albertson]

I make both types of prints, and they're just different. I've spent the last year learning how to print pictures from a Monochrom, and find they don't need a great deal of post-processing in Lightroom to get a decent print with the Epson 4900 ("El Diablo") at the rental lab I use. Typically, the first adjustment I make is with the Tone Curve tool -- not the same as a H&D curve, but the same general idea and quicker than using all the sliders.

I've slowly been learning to use Silver Efex Pro (which also came with the camera), mostly for localized adjustments but also using some of its pre-sets for files that I'm going to print big (12x18 and above). For some reason, those prints just look a little bit better than files straight out of Lightroom. I don't use any of the pre-sets that emulate film grain, though. Film is film, digital is digital, and I just let the print follow the source of the image. I can see using those, however, if you have a mix of both in a collection and would like a uniform look.

And I've been quite satisfied with printing results just using the Epson Advanced B&W driver, instead of hassling with paper profiles. Anyone else tried that?