Developing a negative on photo paper and not a digital scan?

[Mark in Alaska]

I Signed up for this forum for one singular reason - after way too many permutational googs for this query: "How can one tell that the photo you have is the result of taking a film negative and developing it on photo paper and not a digital scan?" I thought I would have that answer at the top (after all the ads at least) instead the word scan, or digital lead to nothingville. Frankly I'm shocked and maybe because it's not possible? I'm hep to the obvious things like stamps and dates and borders, paper manufacturer etc.  Is perhaps my dissecting microscope useful? I'm not a photographer.

Put to rest or down the rabbit hole I'll be obliged.

R/Mark

[Niels - NHSN]

If held in hand you will likely be able to detect from texture and "surface-depth" if the print is the result of a photochemical process or ink-jet - where the latter will have used a digital source file (scanned negative or from a digital camera). 

There are many hybrid combinations thus is can be difficult to comment on all. Do you happen to have a use-case?

 

[Mark in Alaska]

NHSN, thanks for the reply. Use case is I have a bunch of older B&W photos that were said to be 'original' prints from film. I think I already know from your reply that I might be up against it? 

[William Michael]

33 minutes ago, Mark in Alaska said:

"How can one tell that the photo you have is the result of taking a film negative and developing it on photo paper and not a digital scan?"

If I understand your question, the difference would be the paper and the chemicals contained therein. 

Enlarger or Wet Printing requires a chemical reaction in the paper; Printing a digital image (typically) is ink on paper or a variant.

Hybrid printing, as mentioned (above), could confuse a touch/smell/texture investigation, however a forensic analysis to investigate the chemical components of the item has always been definitive in any situation I have experienced.

Forensic Analysis in many situations can be relatively rudimentary.

***

16 minutes ago, Mark in Alaska said:

I think I already know from your reply that I might be up against it?

Not really.

If you are in Alaska, (which is a long distance from me), and if you do not require an opinion to 'hold up in a court of law'  then I suggest you ferret out an experienced Dark Room Technician (probably they're retired now) - any one who has worked for several years in a Darkroom would be able to provide a reasonable sturdy viewpoint.  

Don't know too much about Schools up your way, but down here some High Schools have active Dark Rooms, used to develop and print B&W Negs: this is for a historical significance, and context to the Matriculation Art Course, majoring in Photography: the Teachers are typically into B&W Film and Wet Printing the Negs - you might find a suitable "expert" there - add to that the resources of the Science Lab for chemical testing purposes.       

WW

[Mark in Alaska]

William, thank you. Alas I live in a little burg that that long ago had a HS with a darkroom but like it's all going these days, no more. These are nothing that have to do with anything legal or particularly important. other than to me. It is a collection I inherited that I was told were 'real' but had a couple of obvious digital prints mixed in. Simple me thought this would be 'simple.' I thought perhaps a small drop of water stirred on the surface or under a scope would reveal something. 

Thank you all for your time. I should have came here right off!

R/Mark 

[William Michael]

5 minutes ago, Mark in Alaska said:

I thought perhaps a small drop of water stirred on the surface or under a scope would reveal something. 

If that test revels what appears as Printer Ink - then that is a very good indication that the image is printed from a scan.

Good luck.

9 minutes ago, Mark in Alaska said:

Thank you all for your time. I should have came here right off!

Oh well the journey through Google was probably not that bad - something to moan about over a beer, or coffee with a friend.

BTW I loved Alaska, so much fun - my body-clock went haywire.

WW 

[glen_h]

While inkjet and dye sublimation are popular, there are many that digitally print

on light sensitive paper.  Most of those, though, print on color paper, even for black

and white prints.  That should be easy to recognize.

(Well, even easier, they say "Fuji Crystal Archive" on the back.

 

Crystal Archive can be used for either digital or enlarger printing.

 

If you look close enough, with a magnifying lens, you might see digital

artifacts.  I haven't tried that.

 

Many places that now print negatives, do it by printing from a scan.

It takes much less manual labor that way.

 

When I first got interested in photography 55 years ago, color 3x5 reprints

were $0.22 each.  Now they are less than that, without inflation correction.

[glen_h]

23 hours ago, Mark in Alaska said:

NHSN, thanks for the reply. Use case is I have a bunch of older B&W photos that were said to be 'original' prints from film. I think I already know from your reply that I might be up against it? 

It will be difficult to tell original prints from film, and analog (film) copies of prints from film.

Unless they are intentionally trying to fool you, older prints will be on older paper.

Velox was a popular old contact printing paper.

Oh, many of the older prints were contact prints from large negatives.

 

But someone using old paper and old film, or old negatives, could make good fakes.

[glen_h]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/23/galileo-manuscript-fake-university-of-michigan

 

https://flipboard.com/topic/1600s/a-galileo-manuscript-was-hailed-as-a-treasure-turns-out-it-s-fake/a-Pzp95fOnRPiSkb1YkAz23A%3Aa%3A2552383729-07d153363b%2Fstripes.com

[William Michael]

In light of Glen's comments, to be clear I was thinking the OP (exclusively) meant using an Enlarger and Wet, Photographic Paper Development, when he wrote "film negative and developing it on photo paper".

 

WW

[Tony Parsons]

It might help us to offer more relevant advice if you could tell us the reason behind the request. Have you purchased items which you were assured were 'original photo prints', but are concerned that they might have been produced on an inkjet (or other) printer, and feel you have been overcharged ? 

In the long run, you have the images - does the method of production really matter ?

 

[rodeo_joe1]

+1 to Tony's comment above, but if the provenance of the images is that important:

Examination with a reasonably powerful loupe or linen-tester should be sufficient to determine the type of print you have. A darkroom-produced B&W print should show irregular and random film grain, if it's sharp enough. If the print is small or unsharp in the printing, then there will be no discernible micro structure to the image - mid-grey tones are the best areas to see this. 

Here's a highly magnified view of part of a genuine photographic print. The grain structure can be seen, but it's not large or regular:

OTOH an inkjet print will have regular ink dye blobs that are easily seen, as will a half-tone, mechanically printed reproduction. 

Here's a magnified view of inkjet dye blobs:

They're more regular and larger. 

A slightly more definitive but also slightly destructive test is to bend an unimportant corner of the print at right-angles down towards the back of the print. The surface of old photographic paper will almost certainly crack along the bend line and show some delamination between the paper base and the hard gelatine emulsion. Modern glossy inkjet or resin-coated papers won't crack in this way. 

A yet more forensic test would be to chemically check for the presence of silver in the image, but this test would almost certainly leave a small but indelible mark on the image, or require scraping a small section of the image away. I don't recommend that procedure unless a lot depends upon the outcome.

Of course you have to remember that one of the advantages of photography is its near-infinite reproducibility. So if someone has access to old negatives, they can churn out as many prints as they like. They could also easily re-photograph a print and bang out copies of that too. Therefore even a genuine silver-gelatine print might not be 'period correct', or produced by the original photographer. 

Edited February 15, 2023 by rodeo_joe1

[glen_h]

You should be able to see both the grain of the paper, and of the original negative.

(I think so, though I never tried to look for it.)

 

A copy negative from a print might have some additional artifacts, in addition to its own

grain, and the grain of the print from the negative.  At least the image quality is usually

worse, and often the contrast is wrong.

 

And the markings on the back, if any, are also useful.

[rodeo_joe1]

2 hours ago, glen_h said:

You should be able to see both the grain of the paper.... 

Definitely not the grain of the paper. Not with a loupe. Paper has such a slow emulsion that it's practically grainless. You'd need quite a powerful microscope, and even then the emulsion texture might obscure it.

OTOH, with a 1960s 400 ISO film in 35mm size, it's difficult not to spot the grain. 

Edited February 17, 2023 by rodeo_joe1

[glen_h]

Some years ago, I was scanning old Tri-X, I think negatives from my grandfather,

not at the highest resolution, and realized that the scans resolved grain.

 

Papers keep getting faster, but I don't know how big the grain is.

First paper I knew was Velox, for contact printing with a nearby light bulb.

And now, I can barely time enlarger prints, they are so fast.

 

But okay, for a negative copied from a print, can you see both the grain

of the original negative, and also the copy negative?

[rodeo_joe1]

17 minutes ago, glen_h said:

But okay, for a negative copied from a print, can you see both the grain of the original negative, and also the copy negative?

The overall grain might look a bit coarser, but it'll still just look like grain. If you thoroughly mix two buckets of sand, can you tell which grains of sand came from which bucket? 

And a clever forger would either copy onto a large format sheet film, or use a fine-grain copying film. 

[glen_h]

I suspect if the sand came from a different place, maybe far apart, there would be differences.

Different size or color grains.

 

But yes, the large format negative would do it.