Large fine art prints from scanned medium format negatives

I'm interested in making 16" x 20" or better prints from scanned

medium format negatives. Is it possible with equipment currently on

the market to produce digital prints of this size which would compare

in quality to the best quality fine art gelatin silver prints?

 

Would I be better off using a high end digital camera, or scanning

medium format negatives for this type of work? The pictures are

reportage, street, etc, not studio.

 

Thanks,

Bill

If by "high end" you mean a camera in the 11Mp or above range. The answer

is it is going to be very close. Be aware that with a high end digital camera

you are going to have significant related costs: batteries, high end lenses

(Canon L or Nikon AF-S (or some fothe better high end AF Nikon primes.),

memory cards (microdrives or flashcards), and that is before we get into what

you will need with either approach: a powerful base station computer stuffed

with RAM and hard drive space, a high quality monitor, Adobe Photoshop

7.0.x , profiling software and a colorimeter, a high end printer, inks, etc.

<a href="http://members.tripod.com/~peza/test/35mm_digital_MF_comparison.htm">I did test for myself.</a> You may like it, you may not, but you'll get an idea.

What do you shoot with at the moment?? MF? 35mm? do you shoot mostly color or b&w?? the technology is deffinetly there, but it can be very expensive. it all depends... you know... do you want to do it all yourself?

<p>

If you are shooting and scanning your own MF now then you can either print from a LF inkjet or from a lazer/led system such as a lambda/lightjet/epsilon. The laser/led systems would provide you with a print on agfa/fuji/kodak conventional paper anyway so it would all be down to your scanning.<p>

for kind of an example, a photographer i do some digi printing work for currently has an exhibit in New York. There are a couple of prints there which i scanned on an imacon flextight photo, from 35mm which we then had printed with a durst epsilon LED printer, on Fuji paper to 16X20. Nobody yet has realized that they are digital prints. </p>

I'm currently on a project with T-Max 400 (Mamiya 7), X-Tol 1+1, a Polaroid SprintScan 120 ($2000) and an Epson 1270 ($450) with Lumijet UltraGloss paper. This is not an archival process, nor is it meant to be. Curators/gallery owners increasingly seem to take the stance that they don't care how it's done, as long as they like the result.

 

I would argue that scanning negatives is more appropriate than a digital camera, given that you are not doing studio work.

The new Canon seems to be excellent (see http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/1ds/1ds-field.shtml), and the files are obviously easier to process, but the camera is clearly much more expensive than the high-quality scanner I use.

 

Depending on the lighting circumstances, you may want to consider using slides rather than negatives. I use Provia when it's an overcast day (like today here in NYC), pushed-processed if required, and 160 NC on a sunny day with shadows. That naturally also depends on your style.

 

Trust this helps.

 

Mark

<I>Is it possible with equipment currently on the market to produce digital prints of this size which would compare in quality to the best quality fine art gelatin silver prints? </i><P>Is this assuming you are going to buy a large format ink-jet printer, or send them out commercially????? Are you going to be doing you own digital mastering and having the lab just do the printing, or what? If you think you can just shoot B/W film and drop the neg off at a lab and get a decent digital print back that would match a properly made silver gelatin print - you're dreaming. Just like conventional B/W work the photographer HAS to keep control of the variables. Fine art digital B/W work is not as easy as dropping off a 6x7 tranny at a lab and having them match the slide.<P>The better Piezo and higher end ink-jet processes compete very well with silver gelatin. The dynamics are a bit different, but the look/feel/resolution is very similiar. <P>Unless you are doing your own B/W processing and scanning I'd skip that route all together and look into either higher rez digital cameras or just shooting color and desaturating. The issue of the scanning quality of B/W film vs color is controversial to say the least, but there is no arguement about commercial scanning of B/W negs being as bad as processing. <P>If you think those large, euro-trendy B/W fashion posters in department stores are shot with B/W film you're also dreaming.

I also want to add I'm talking about B/W images ink printed printed on fine-art papers and not LightJet type printers which use color photographic papers. The later is not what you are looking for.

yeah like scot said....

For b&w Inkjet is going to be the easiest route, if you want better quality, possibly Iris prints but i'd imagine you'll find a big price leap for that kind of thing (iris prints are ink printers but produce much smoother contone images and are produce great b&w prints, i've seen some wonderful examples)

 

I have however been told in the past about labs with lambda set ups for ilford b&w paper, and the results being fantastic. Never actually tried them as I'm a poor graduate and hand printing was cheaper at the time...!!! I have though had some great b&w results off fuji frontiers, thing there is that the print size is to small only 10X15

 

the canon 1Ds seems a great camera and the results i've seen have looked impressive. But if you want to print a 16x20 print your gonna have to do it at 180dpi, something that you can get away but not all the time. Also at the price the canon is listed at you could buy an imacon precision III and produce 20X30 prints easily from 35mm

It really depends how you want to spend your time and money,

 

For the price of a high end digital camera and its associated lenses etc. you

can buy plenty of drum scans and LF prints.

 

If part of the fun is doing your own scanning, then you will be spending money

AND time on your scanner. A really excellent MF scanner will cost quite a bit.

 

You could get something like an Epson 7600 (24" wide) and get drum scans

and still save money over a digicam. Then you can spend your time tweaking

files and making prints on your schedule (like making 16x20 at 2a.m.) and on

the substrate you choose (sorry, all we use is photo gloss).

I'd love to be able to scan my own 120 negatives/trans at home. But I can't get the quality to go 16x20, even with standard inks on glossy paper. I use drum scans, minimum 275 mb, preferably 500 mb-up, so that I can retouch thorough without introducing excessive noise. Then I reduce to 400 dpi for output. It's expensive, but I'm tired of trying cheaper ways that don't deliver excellence. If anyone is getting really fine scans on a home machine, I'd like to know. I have a Dimage Scan Multi, which will make an adequate 8x10. Norm La Coe