Poll - Big prints

[Troll]

When is the last time that you personally made a 16x20 or larger

print from a 35mm negative or slide (doing it yourself, not having

it done by a lab)? B&W or color? Thank you.

[wmwhee]

Never. I can enlarge to 11x14 easily with my darkroom setup, so that has been the max for me. What about you? Why do you ask?

[akochanowski]

All the time, mostly last summer/fall for an exhibition.

[fotografz]

5 years ago for wet darkroom using a Kaiser enlarger and Schnider lens. Still have the

darkroom intact.

 

5 days ago for ink-jet using a large format Epson printer.

 

About to make a 70" wide display print from a 6X7 film neg., but a lab will be doing that

one.

[kenny_c]

Right now im printing 20x24 from 35mm, paper is expensive though, so I just go for a good straight print, toned and waxed.

[robweatherburn]

Bill - for exhibitions and to order for anyone buying. But have to have all that done in a lab - 12x8 - poster - and bigger. Last lot - end of last year - a few Summar images.

 

Rob

[Troll]

Sorry. I should have specified wet darkroom (not digital prints).

[lee hamiel]

My son Beau did a bunch of B&W 16x20's last year for a few photo shows he entered & all were shot on 35mm film. I've done a few B&W with 120 film & were closer to 16x16.

[al_kaplan1]

I suppose probably close to a year ago. I rarely print on anything larger than 11x14 paper these days although my Omega B-22XL will enlarge slightly more than 16X on the baseboard and I have the 16x20 trays. Belle Deaux made me some 20x30 ink jets a few months ago, not exactly "a lab" but not myself either.

[brambor]

Never myself. Lab made 3 prints for me 10 years ago and they have been an eyesore at my house ever since. They are coming down this month and will be replaced by 8.5x11's

 

I might go large if I ever have an exhibition, maybe this summer but I don't see the aesthetics of large prints...

[EricM]

Up to four years ago I used to do them regularly on b&w. On my besler cb7, I had the 45 degree mirror that went under the lens and projected onto mural, had two boxes of 4' wide fibre rolls that I never did finish. Yummy for 6x6. Colour, 11x14 was the largest I printed before going to the lab.

[clayh]

Last weekend. I printed on both 16x20 and 20x24 paper. Tray handling was a pain in the

butt. But it was quite illuminating.

 

I am going through my 35mm process from exposure to printing to see what the current

limitations are in terms of print size and quality. It was eye opening. The new Tri-X and

Neopan 400 developed in a modern developer can peform quite well at an 18x

enlargement. Sure there is some grain - but it is not huge and it is very sharp. From 2 feet

away, it is unnoticeable. For those lamenting the loss of those 'old' films, I think a case can

be made that we have gained a lot more than we have lost. I could never have pulled off

this stunt with 35mm Tri-X as it was made 30 years ago.

 

The results have made me really question whether medium format is worth carrying

around, given its slower lenses and bigger, bulkier gear. I know, I know, the improvements

would be even more profound on 120 film, but still - it is a lot more crap to haul around.

And if you can make very high quality 16x20s with a small camera, why not?

[xcapekey.com]

well...i've been doing it for the last few months more or less every other night....for my

current show I decided to do 16x20s, the largest i think i can print in my 5x6 darkroom....

 

i use an ikea shelving unit i bought and stack the trays vertically..slowly moving the print

down from dev, stop, fix, etc.,...

 

i'd like to print 20x24 esp for the xpan shots, as they don't seem to come to their own

unless you print them to 16x20, but right now i don't have any room...

[jake_tauber]

A couple of months ago on someone else's large format Epson ink jet. I hunger for an Epson 4000 series, or if I had the room a 7600. The results (not necessarily my pictures) are staggeringly good.

[vahe_sahakian]

I did some a number of years ago in my darkroom, at that time I did landscapes using Kodak Tech Pan, the enlargments done with El Nikkor 63mm were essentially same as what you can expect from 4x5 negatives.

Will start doing 16x20's again, this time I am going to try EFKE-25 film.

 

Vahe

[jtk]

I print 12X18 several times a month, recently Black Only but later today it will be Quadtone. 12X18 is my Epson 2200 printer's maximum size with cut sheets of 13X19...I can't justify a bigger printer yet because my craft is not good enough.

 

Most of what I print is scanned from 35 (chromes, color negs, B&W silver) with Nikon V and Vuescan. One of the virtues of scanning and inkjet printing is that there's no optical loss of sharpness as sizes increase, whereas enlarging lens weaknesses are increasingly leveraged as size increases.

 

I think it's impossible for an enlarger to equal the large print sharpness of a Nikon 4000ppi scanner and good inkjet printer, beginning with 35mm film.

[john_shriver]

About 1975, at least 16x20, for wall hangings of the portrait of "mother" in a High School musical theater production of Where's Charley. Made a copy negative (probably Panatomic-X) of two pictures in a book. Enlarged in B&W, and printed. Also did sepia toning, and made the bad mistake of skipping the rinse (or is it fix?) step between the first and second bath. Made a LOT of hydrogen sulfide gas, driven from the house for about half an hour!

[huw_finney]

Vahe,

 

"essentially same as what you can expect from 4x5 negatives" I don't think so somehow.

[michael_kastner]

Not yet

[hans_berkhout]

3 months ago. 2 negs, the prints hang in my office, look great.

 

Have to mix Ansco 130 but haven't been able to remove the vacuum seal lids from the 5 gallon pales I keep my chemicals in: sodium carbonate, sulfite and hypo, bought 50 lbs of each last month.

 

Usually I print about 6.5"x10" on 11x14 paper. Only B&W.

[greg lockrey]

My "small" prints are less than 24" ;)<div></div>

[clayh]

I disagree with John Kelley that a scan->file->edit->digital printing workflow being sharper.

Sure, if your enlarging lens is not too hot, that may be the case, but unless you can scan at

8000 dpi on a Tango drum scanner, where you are actually imaging the grain structure, I find

that big enlargements on silver-gelatin paper look FAR sharper than a 4000dpi scan printed

to the same size on an inkjet plotter. I have not seen any consumer level film scanner (I use a

nikon 9000) which can adequately match the resolution of even 400 speed film.

[vahe_sahakian]

""essentially same as what you can expect from 4x5 negatives" I don't think so somehow"

 

That was comments by others who saw these prints.

It is possible to come fairly close to 4x5 quality if high resolution B&W film is used and is printed using high resolution enlarging lens. The particular 63mm f/3.5 EL-Nikkor that I use is about 30 years old, the brochure that came with this lens calls it Fax-EL-Nikkor, its correction goes well beyond standard EL-Nikkors and is capable of 100 lines per mm wide open, it is intended for use with microfilm format. This particular lens is no longer available, Nikon lists a standard 63mm f/3.5 in their catalog, but not the Fax version.

 

Vahe

 

Vahe

[joel_sackett]

I made 30 fiber 16X20's last month for a show, and now I'm printing a few more of the ones that sold. As long as Ilford Warmtone is readily available, I'm in the dark. Neopan 400, DDX, Focomat 1C, works for me.

[vivek iyer]

Vahe, I had one of those Fax El-Nikkor 63/3.5 lenses. It is exactly the same as the 63/3.5 El-Nikkor (was also discontinued and replaced by the 63/2.8). The resolution of this lens (63/3.5) is definitely not better than the 50/2.8 (f/4 diffraction limit) El-Nikkor (N).

 

Even with an APO El-Nikkor and a super steady enlarger, it will be very difficult to produce anything close to what a 4x5 can offer from a normal 35mm negative- unless you use a special lens and very special conditions to capture the image.