Print options from digital files

[tales of a flaneur]

I had a portfolio of B&W and colour images (Hampstead Heath in fog and snow) glicee printed at A3 size

by Flash Photodigital here in London and I'm extremely pleased by the results.

 

That said, I'm interested in other print options from my digital files - specifically, B&W printing on

traditional papers. So far, the options I see are:

 

1. Inkjet / glicee - I know what these are now. Ink splattered on very nice paper ;-)

 

2. Machine prints / C-Type prints - These are a known quantity as well, with some labs doing custom

work and others just handing back a nice Frontier print of my file on Kodak/Fuji paper.

 

3. B&W "hand prints" - these are traditional prints? Are they generated from both digital files as well as my

negatives? These are typically cheaper than glicee prints at the same size - why?

[godfrey]

IMO, you can't get better quality than printing with a top notch pigment ink printer onto

today's archival fine art papers.

 

Godfrey

[robert_brake1]

John, what is your source for the Hand Prints? I'm curious as I've been looking long and

hard at the idea of contact printing from digital files onto traditional silver papers. My

look tells me it's going to cost far more to produce than inkjet. Is there another method

I'm not aware of?

 

My experience with C-type prints was bad to worse and I went off in the direction of inkjet

where I am now. I'm very comfortable with color and most b&w but there are times when I

still want silver prints. I like the idea of contact printing as it leads into some

platinum/palladium techniques I'd like to try.

[tales of a flaneur]

@ Robert: I only shoot film - colour / bw in 135 and 120 - so I'm wondering as well about

the costs for printing digital files on silver papers for the BW.

 

@ Godfrey - So you find professional inkjet output superior to traditional silver prints?

Hard for me to say ... I find my monochrome work looks lovely when output on the Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, but I'm not particularly convinced by the colour output. I dunno. It

was fine for the colour images I printed as well - grainy, nearly monochromatic pictures of

trees and such in a heavy fog - but I can't imagine going the glicee route for anything that

needs to "pop" on the page. Hmmm.

[colin turner]

You could try enlarging with a digital enlarger eg

http://de-vere.com/

which uses a 17mp negative stage .......or contact printing from large format inkjet negatives

using Pictorico White Film ...see ....

http://www.danburkholder.com/Pages/main_pages/book_info_main_page1.htm

[w_t1]

its gonna be a while before that devere digital enlarger gets down into my price range. In the meantime I'll continue to use my beseler. tom