[Leica] Film Lab

[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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