What is a digital silver halide print?

T

Tuolumne

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I recently came across a photo processing company (El-Co Colorlabs, www.elcocolor.com) that writes that their prints are digital silver halide, by which I understand them to mean that they print from a digital file onto silver halide paper. I also assume this means that the paper is developed in some chemical fashion, not printed by having ink squirted onto it. Here's a quote from their Web site:
  • ARE THESE PRINTS INKJETS? NO! WE ARE PRINTING ON SILVER HALIDE PHOTOGRAPHIC FUJI PROFESSIONAL CRYSTAL ARCHIVE II PAPER, PROCESSED IN FUJI PROFESSIONAL RA-4 CHEMISTRY.​
  • WHAT TYPE OF PRINTER ARE YOU USING? A NORITSU QSS 3202 PRO DIGITAL PRINTER​
Is my understanding of this correct? I didn't think this was possible. Does this mean you can get the best of digital and traditional silver halide chemistry with this technique?

Thanks,
/T
 
dmr said:
Lots of minilabs now print on true photo paper using a digital laser-based printer.
Click to expand...


My inexperience shows here, too.

What is "true photo paper" meant to be? RA-4 paper (printed digitally or analogically)? Heavy-weight paper? Paper with a gloss coating on the base?
 
dmr said:
I used the term to mean photosensitive color paper, as opposed to paper colored with ink/toner/whatever.
Click to expand...

So does this mean the printer projects a high res image onto the photo paper which is then "exposed" just as it would be in an analogue dark room by shinning light through a negative?

/T
 
Yes. You're correct, though I don't know the process in detail either. And don't need to. I just know my prints on Fuji Crystal Archive paper look great. I love the matte to the glossy paper, even if it takes a week for those to come back to me instead of just two days for the glossy. And at 2.50 euros for a 20x30cm print (or 2 euros for a glossy one), I ain't complaining. 🙂
 
Yes, in most cases (certianly in my local pro lab) the enlarger has a digital LCD panel in place of a negative. Usually 17 megapixel and upwards. Light shines through this and it's exposed onto real paper, which then gets put through real chemistry.

Otherwise, there are "Lightjet" prints that expose from digital files using red, green and blue lasers onto real RA-4 paper, chemistry, blah blah blah.

It's fun! And makes some *amazing* black and white prints. Fibre based prints from digital files are actually incredible.
 
Tuolumne said:
Does this mean you can get the best of digital and traditional silver halide chemistry with this technique?

Thanks,
/T
Click to expand...

I think it depends on what you mean by "best." If you start with a digital file, this is a way to get a print that won't smear from small droplets of water or fade in a year. But it can't make up for shortcomings in the original image, regardless of the source. In other words, it's going to look like a digital print on photopaper. That's good or bad depending on the image and your opinion.
 
In the 80's this kind of thing was used to make slides for pre-Powerpoint presentations. I've wondered from time to time about the possibility of ressurecting this technology to archive digital image files on Kodachrome.
 
Tuolumne said:
dmr said:
I used the term to mean photosensitive color paper, as opposed to paper colored with ink/toner/whatever.
Click to expand...

So does this mean the printer projects a high res image onto the photo paper which is then "exposed" just as it would be in an analogue dark room by shinning light through a negative?
Click to expand...

I'm not the expert here, but here was how it was explained to me. This came from a guy who used to run a Fuji machine a while back.

The developed negative is scanned on a part of the machine that is not unlike the SD IV or the Coolscan or whatever. This converts it to a digital stream which does get some processing, most of it optional. Yes, there's an ICE type dust and scratch reducer in there.

It then goes to a printer where the paper is pulled while a laser-based 3-color light source "paints" the image on the paper, exposing it, not all at once like an enlarger would but scanned, like a TV picture is scanned on the screen. Then the paper is pulled thru the processor part of the machine, more or less the same as in an optical minilab, and cut and stacked.

Now, I'm not sure what the resolution in lines/dots per inch is, but I suspect it's 300. Why? The guy who told me this helped me to understand why I was getting crummy prints out of my old printer. (I suspected that it was just a crummy printer, but I was wrong.) He sent me one of the files they use for QAing the Fuji machine and he told me to print it exactly at 300 dpi with no scaling or color correction.

That's the way I understand it.
 
My understanding is that LEDs/lasers expose the photographic paper, linearly (for lack of a better word). The image is not "projected" onto the paper.

And if you get a "drugstore" print of a film negative, it is scanned by the machine and printed in the same way as a digital original.
 
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