[Leica] Color and digital

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

>>>While you may not
believe it, there are people who will prefer a good quality digital
print on
136 pound hot-pressed water color paper to a top quality silver print on

fiber paper<<<

I'm one. I've never liked "traditional" color photo media--I absolutely
abhor the typical "slide look" in prints, underexposed "for saturation"
and looking contrasty and lightless--I've seen hundreds of thousands of
such pictures and I'm sorry, but I think it's an inherently ugly medium.
Type C prints _can_ be nice, but just as often look "gassy" with sickly
color-crossovers. Cibas, although some people love them (Phil Davis
does), look ghastly to me. Exceptions I can think of include masked
Cibas on matte paper, for instance Richard Misrach's desert fires.

I think maybe nine of ten of the best-looking color prints I've seen in
recent years have been digital. (And every tenth print is a dye
transfer.) High-end giclee prints can be stunning, although giclee
printers have a tendency to overdo the color. High-end Fujix prints are
sharper-looking than any photographs I have ever seen, period, only
challenged by unsharp-masked large-format black-and-white prints. And I
even like well-corrected desktop-inkjet prints made on desktop printers
and fine-art papers. While not perfect, the flaws inherent in these are
often easier to take than the flaws inherent in traditional color
materials.

I personally don't think optical/chemical b&w is in need of improvement,
but digital is both the true coming of age--and the future--of color.

- --Mike