Printing street photos

[mark liddell]

I'm new to street photography and I?m liking the freedom of 35mm

handheld and ever changing nature of street shooting.

 

I usually do landscapes with an RB67 and I pretty much only shoot

b&w now and develop it myself. I have no access to a decent darkroom

so I contact the negs with my digital p&s camera and send off for

prints to be hand done on fibre, which costs serious ??s but the

quality is top notch.

 

For my street images I definitely don?t want to go down the same

route for prints since quality isn?t so much of an issue (for me)

and I feel it would be a bit of a waste of money since not much

would be gained from it. What are my options? How bad are machine

prints from b&w negs? Do you guys all print your own?

 

I really don?t want to go down the scanned film route. B&W negs

don?t scan well in my opinion, no matter what anyone says. I tried

it many times and the results were horrible, see

http://www.photo.net/photo/2444041 (delta 400).

 

Also what size do you typically print?

[emre]

You can get decent scanned results from film. The only problem is printing! You either have to live with color casts (if you have it printed somewhere without good color management), pay prohibitive ink costs (the HP route), fiddle with ink clogs & tubes (the quadtones/hextones route), or cough for a RIP (the Epson route.)

 

I use bulk pigmented ink and I personally do not like it. The black density is very lacking, and requires more maintenance than it is worth. Consequently I print very little.

[william_john_smith]

<I>B&W negs don?t scan well in my opinion, no matter what anyone says.</I><P> Well I

say you must be doing something wrong. I have been scanning B&W for over five years

now and there is nothing to it. Of course one has to have the proper equipment and take

the time to learn how to use it.<BR>I have gone to inkjets with Quadtone inks. Oh, I have

been

street shooting for the last 30 years.

[spanky]

I think doing ones own printing and film developing is the only way to go regardless of the kind of photography. I too used to use a lab, but when I started taking photography classes at some of the local colleges, the advantages to doing it all myself became crystal clear. If you have to, use a rental darkroom. Most major cities have at least one. If there isn't any, maybe a local school will rent out time slots. If nothing else buddy up with another photographer who has a darkroom and offer to split costs. Also, don't be afraid to haul your RB67 around for street photography. I use one myself and after a little getting used to, it works quite well.

Cheers,

Marc

[Spearhead]

Great street photography isn't going to happen if you're thinking about printing and things like that. Printing is something to think about after you've mastered the things about street photography that have nothing to do with the technicals, and everything to do with how you relate to the street. Forget about printing until you've got a few dozen street images that are worth printing.

[maria_s.]

Mark, frankly your question sounds a bit coquettish -- if you really want to print, you should be able to answer 80% of your question. BTW, your landscapes are outstanding -- if you know how to print them, you shouldn't have a big problem printing the street. Why not check this site (and, for that matter, a plentitude of others) <br/>http://www.magnumphotos.com </br> for a general idea of black and white street printing, online at least. Pretty good scans, even tho at a lousy resolution, aint' they? If you don't have an access to a darkroom or have no idea how to print, don't know a squad about digital printing and still want to get a decent print, go to a lab and they will print it for you -- wet darkroom or a digital, they will do that first print for you; and at extra cost you get it customized. I can recommend few labs in NYC, if you're interested. The optimal size for 35mm format is 8x10 or 11X14 on fibre papers -- I haven't yet found a satisfactory resolution to a home B&W digital printing -- the tinting in digital printing puts me off. But I've seen nice works done digitally. Anyway, good luck and welcome to the street.

[maria_s.]

That's <a href="http://www.magnumphotos.com/c/Home_MAG.aspx?Stat=ZoomMenu_Home">Magnum</a>.

[mark liddell]

Thanks for all your responses. I?ve managed to find a fine art photographer just starting a printing business charging very reasonable rates so I?ll give him a try.

 

maria: Thanks for the magnum link and your comment on my landscapes, the photographs on your website are impressive.

[ray .]

I agree with Jeff for the most part. You can scan negs and put

them on a computer screen and see what's going on in the

photograph, and keep photographing for a period of time to see

what you're coming up with. Once you get to the stage where

something looks worth printing you could get yourself an Epson

1280 at fairly reasonable cost and make prints at home. I don't

know where you're coming up with the idea that scanned negs

don't yield good quality images. If you do things correctly that

won't be the case.