[Leica] Film Lab

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

In the beginning with my first scanner which was a Umax flatbed we (my other 
local photographer friends) all thought scanning one of our hard won 
perfectly printed prints which just fit on our new flatbeds would be the way 
to go.  Why start from scratch when we?ve already printed it already?  
Better than using the first Nikon 35mm film scanners on film. 
But even then, it turned out to be the opposite. Even though at that time we 
were way more experienced in printing in the darkroom than photo shopping 
when you scan a neg you are grabbing a whole lot more information and not a 
subset of it. It makes for a whole better finished photo making experience.
You can get better with Photoshop as you go along but working from as close 
you can get to the original information is certainly the way to fly.
Photoshop processing is of course as way different thing than darkroom 
printing with an enlarger.
Its best to approach the whole thing from scratch and just Photoshop it. Not 
involve both.
Not make a print from a print.
A print from print is adding a generation. A basic photo no no.

 
 

-- 

Mark William Rabiner
Photographer

On 6/6/17, 3:01 PM, "LUG on behalf of George Lottermoser" 
<lug-bounces+mark=rabinergroup.com at leica-users.org on behalf of 
george.imagist at icloud.com> wrote:

    
    > On Jun 4, 2017, at 3:56 PM, Geoff Hopkinson <hopsternew at gmail.com> 
wrote:
    > 
    > Hi Lluis. Are you comparing a wet print from BW negative with an inkjet
    > print made from a scan of the negative?
    > If this is the case then the scanner is the weakest part
    > On Mon, 5 Jun 2017 at 5:39 am, Tina Manley <tmanley at gmail.com> 
wrote:
    > 
    >> I had a show at the Winthrop University gallery of 3' x 2' prints of 
Syrian
    >> children's faces.  Half were from film, half were digital.  I much, 
much
    >> preferred the prints from the digital files.  The grain of the film,
    >> enlarged that much, seems to affect the sharpness.  The digital prints
    >> could probably have been twice as large and still looked much sharper 
with
    >> more details in the shadows and highlights than the prints from film.
    
    I don?t think it particularly useful to ?compare? a silver print with an 
inkjet print;
    or an engraving to an etching; or a woodcut print to serigraph or 
lithographic print.
    
    Film negatives printed to silver papers worked beautifully for over a 
century;
    and they continue to do so.
    
    The idea of taking a film negative or positive and scanning it in order 
to make
    a digital inkjet print never made any sense to me; not when a contact or 
even an
    enlargement via traditional darkroom techniques works far better.
    
    Certainly scanning in order to make lithographic, or other graphic 
prints has its place;
    though not to ?compete? aesthetically with traditional silver or 
chromogenic prints.
    
    Likewise using digital cameras and producing digital prints whether 
inkjet or otherwise
    makes perfect sense.
    
    I?ve always wished one could reasonably project digital files
    on to silver and/or chromogenic print paper.
    
    Each print process has its own unique, aesthetic.
    
    In terms of ?photographic? beauty
    it?s hard to beat platinum/palladium.
    
    fond regards,
    
    George
    
    http://www.imagist.com/blog
    http://www.imagist.com
    http://www.linkedin.com/imagist
    
    
    
    
    
    
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