[Leica] printing digitally onto color paper

[dnygr at cshore.com (Douglas Nygren)]

That's what White House Color, and many others, do.  They laser print
the digital file on to color negative paper and develop it in RA-4
chemicals, so you get a Type C print from a digital file.   I'm not
sure if anyone prints digitally onto fiber base B&W paper.


Robert,
Thank you for your reply.
I used to think that this is where digital printing would go. It would 
seem to be a blend of both worlds--not a bad thing.

I still feel the best wet darkroom prints have a glow and that glow 
resembles what painters achieve.
Unlike digital ink jet printers, painters use layers of oil paints. The 
light strikes the canvas and bounces around the layers.
Ink jet printing just doesn't do that.
Don't get me wrong.
Ink jet printing is pretty darn good, and a master printer's work far 
exceeds what I can do at this time.
And ink jet printing certainly meets the "good enough" standard.
But darkroom color still looks better to me as do silver gelatin prints.

My point, simply stated, is that I think the weak link in the digital 
world is with the printers. All the improvements in lenses, firmware, 
sensors, etc. would be even greater were the printers better. And once 
an ideal printer is here, the next step will be a revolution in papers. 
The wet darkroom could use the same paper revolution. The negatives 
hold much more info than the papers can reproduce.

In any case, I'll try the papers you all have been kind enough to 
mention. And I'll try to do the one thing that makes negative and 
digital images better, namely, I'll work at taking better photos. You 
know, a bad photo taken with an M8 and an M6 really makes this whole 
discussion moot. In many ways, I think the battle is in taking good 
photos.

Best to all and Cheers to Jayanand--Doug