james_conrad Posted November 12, 2001 Share Posted November 12, 2001 I find it funny that all those who welcome the demise of silver photography and embrace the technology of digital with a closed mind chanting comments relating the silver process to the stone age, when digital is trying to mimic its very outcome. So when you have copied it, I say welcome to the same era. Grab a tree stump, pull it up next to the fire and sharpen your spear because you really havent acheived anything that hasn't been done already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abiggs Posted November 12, 2001 Share Posted November 12, 2001 This is a really tough one for me, as I have been reading this thread go across my email over the past few days. <p> I am a large format newbie, and I am at the crossroads of either making an investment in an enlarger or in a scanner and a Piezography-enabled printer. Wow, what a tough one. I have the option of picking up a D5, 3 Nikkor lenses, model 400 cold light head, and a Jobo CPP2 for under $1400. Or, I can invest in digital equipment and save the 'wife factor' headaches of hogging the bathroom on weekday evenings. <p> I do love the qualities of a silver print. Nothing like the pure blacks you can get with a print from an enlarger, and the continuous tones. <p> I haven't seen any Piezography prints yet, but I am going to try to get in front of a few in the coming weeks. I am very proficient in Photoshop, due to my 35mm color work to date. I am skeptical as of what the final results a 'digital' print will look like, if I were to compare it to a silver print. <p> This is precisely the case. No matter which tools you use, ultimately, your vision and craftsmanship will show. Even though many more people will be taking up the mouse and doing their prints through a digital process, this good vision, or lack thereof, will show in the final image(s). <p> For me right now, it is not so much a financial or space issue. Yes, an enlarger will take up quite a bit of room, when you consider all of the chemicals required. Digital won't take as much room, but it will hit the pocketbook significantly. <p> It all winds down to one question: what do you want your final image to look like? This will make my decision easier. Who cares? If I decide I like the look of a Piezography print versus a silver print, my decision will be easy. However, I doubt it will be that easy. It is like somebody saying that a platinum print is better than silver prints. They are just different. <p> So, anybody want to make bets on what decision I will go with? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathan brewer Posted November 12, 2001 Share Posted November 12, 2001 If you decide to go digital great, but there are several things you and anyone jumping into digital needs to do before you start buying. <p> When you've settled on a system and/or an individual piece of digital gear, go to every digital forum, sourcesite, any place you can find w/info regarding the problems, issues, conflicts, info on any additional items you have to purchase to make the gear work that aren't mentioned in the original promos. <p> Find out all the problems first, find out how good the software is, get a line on the manufacturers willingness to back up the gear if problems arise after your purchase. This will take time, but is time well spent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan_smith Posted November 13, 2001 Share Posted November 13, 2001 Can Pixelography yet make an 8x10 as sharp as a fine contact print? Do the inks & pigments when put on current papers have the depth in the blacks & the brilliance in the highlights? Is there the feeling in listening to a printer head whap back & forth comparable to what we get watching a print come up in the developer?Part of our photographic endeavors is the tactile pleasure of working with the image at every step. Even with no electricity, I can process film and print it. I can hand coat papers, even making paper to hand coat if necessary. Best of all, my LF cameras don't crash, leaving me in the lurch when I have something that has to be done & my darkroom doesn't suddenly go on the fritz when I have to get a print out quickly.Pixelography is nice but so is photography. Pixelographers are targeting photography as the ideal they want to match rather than seeing it as a new alt process to master & push into different & new areas. A few are pushing the bounds with their images, using the medium for creative expression. They will make the new art its own form. Too many are simply re-hashing mediocrity and calling it "NEW & IMPROVED".Papers, chemistry & photo processes are still available and in many ways we have better products than ever before. Forte & Bergger and others supply papers that are capable of results to match anything ever done and are better than most of what has been made in the past. The real question is whether our talent can match modern materials... now & in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jorge_gasteazoro3 Posted November 13, 2001 Share Posted November 13, 2001 Andy if I were you I would still go for the traditional darkroom. Apparently you are already working with photoshop, so you would not loose any practice. The "wife factor" will be much worse when she sees how much you spent on the Epson and piezo equipment. The price you mention for all those darkroom articles is excellent and should last you for many many years, you will still be making silver prints with this gear long after your Epson and piezo combo are obsolete. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dean_lastoria Posted November 13, 2001 Share Posted November 13, 2001 Richard mentioned woodwork and craftmanship; Raven wanted to know about availabity: the intersection of these can be seen by walking into a Home Depot. <p> I went into the "tool coral" and asked for a coping saw. I got the same dumb, rodent staring at a dinosaur, look I get when I go into the middle end photo chain-store and ask for a roll of 120 FP4. I go to the big two stores in my area and ask for a box of 4x5 film and I might just as well ask for a cabinet scraper at Home Depot -- even if they find it, will I get an ounce of usefull advise? No. I think we will still be able to get quality products at reasonable prices, but it will be mailorder or we have to drive a long long way, and then it will be a pleasuer to talk to someone who knows something. We just won't be able to run to the mall if we run out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom_borello Posted November 14, 2001 Share Posted November 14, 2001 Thirty years in the photo industry...from photographer to photo shop/lab owner to Photo Marketing Association certified photo consultant...I've met and have been schooled by many of the greats...I've build and operated many darkrooms...I've spent the last four years as photo Industry specialist to the Photo Waste Recycling Industry...It's time to get your head out of the vapors, your fingers out of the chemicals...visit www.piezography.com and www.cone-editions.com...the future is here...Adams would be all over this, if he was alive...on a visit to his home in Carmel, I noticed he had three different prints of Half Dome...same image in three different rooms...they were all different renditions...I asked him why...he said he felt different each time and used different materials, each time...Adams was a trained musician, he said, " The negative is like the score and the print the performance!" More dynamic range, longer life, environmental savvy process...Piezography...anyone want to buy an enlarger? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
don_welch Posted November 14, 2001 Share Posted November 14, 2001 No thanks, I have an enlarger that I'm enjoying just fine. I also use my computer for printing color. I don't have to turn my back on one to enjoy the other. They are not the same thing at all. I can print three versions of any negative I have but that doesn't mean that I should "get my head out of the vapors" like that is something bad. The future has ALWAYS been here, so I don't have to make a daily habit of turning my back on the past just to feel OK. Please understand that I'm not speaking from an anti-digital point of view. I use it a LOT. Piezography is great, but as many people have pointed out in this thread, the comparisons are always between what digital is becoming or can be, and what conventional photographs have been for decades. I'm not looking to replace what I already derive pleasure from as if it were outmoded. It's not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
katharine_thayer1 Posted November 14, 2001 Share Posted November 14, 2001 Grey Wolf's rhetorical question about having a presentation document or a spreadsheet crash at a crucial moment reminds me of a time when I was a statistician for a large school district. I was running late for a board meeting, and there were documents ahead of mine in the print queue for the printer I ordinarily used, so I stopped at the board secretary's computer and printer to print out my overheads on my way in to give my presentation. Imagine my surprise when my charts and tables flashed on the screen: the printer had used some novelty font and all the numbers and text had been transformed into cute little pictures of forks and knives, palm trees, wineglasses.... <p> But what I really came here to say was that for the last several weeks I've had two photo magazines lying open on my desk, to two similar, but very different, color "photographs" of white-trunked trees in autumn color: one a photographic print by Christopher Burkett, the other a photoshopped digital print by a photographer who will remain nameless. I used quotes because one I would call a photograph and the other I would call digital art, and I have been studying them very seriously to try to understand what the difference is: why the one looks so full of life and light, so real and inviting, so naturally and reverently beautiful, and why the other looks so artificial, so inert, so flat (I mean two-dimensional, not lacking in contrast, unfortunately!) and so... digital. What I've decided is it has a lot to do with not being able to leave well enough alone. Just a little too much unsharp masking, probably... definitely too much color saturation, too much contrast-- the whites too white and the darks too black, making the tree trunks look pasted onto the picture instead of growing within it. <p> I keep hearing that the new digital printing methods make photographs realer than real; I've even heard that they will revolutionize vision! I have yet to see a digital print that makes me gasp, at least not in an admiring way. If this is what "realer than real" means, Christopher Burkett has nothing to fear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathan brewer Posted November 14, 2001 Share Posted November 14, 2001 You cannot master Photoshop until you learn one thing.....'quit while you're ahead'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom_holum Posted September 18, 2002 Share Posted September 18, 2002 There's a saying in high-volume retail sales: if everybody doesn't want it, then nobody gets it. I think silver-based darkroom photography will continue, but in not many years' time it will be a very uncommon pasttime indeed, something like silver-point drawing. Film, cameras, one-hour processing, etc., will certainly continue until digital imaging becomes cheap and easily understood & used by all, but printing/enlarging papers & similar darkrroom peripherals will soon become extremely expensive, for lack of demand. I only hope I'll still be able to afford them. As a hobbiest, photography for me is, I'm sure, mostly a satisfaction of childhood & adolescent fantasies, and digital imaging didn't become common until I was in my mid-forties. I'm afraid I must admit that it's not truly a question of artistry & end-product: the process itself just doesn't turn me on. I'll never stop getting wet! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robert_davis2 Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 Compare it to hand tool woodworking. Yes Stanley doesn't make any high quality hand tools anymore. For that matter neither do companies like Record. What did happen is small companies sprang up to fill the void. Companies like Lie-Nielsen Toolworks make things that haven't been availalbe new since the golden age. You can still get stuff of lower quality from Stanley or from lesser known companies. For chemistry making your own for B&W shouldn't be too hard. I think metol is the only thing I use that isn't widely available for other uses. Paper and film I figure somebody will fill the niche market no matter what. Exports from East Europe maybe. Does anybody here really think that the whole world is going digital before most of us are long gone? Last I heard even in North America many homes are computer free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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