bruce watson

There's enough conflicting information out there that I ran my own experiment. I took a series of photographs on 4x5 Tri-X making in-the-field duplicates. One set of sheets I processed immediately. The duplicates I tossed in the 'fridge for six months then processed just like the first set (XTOL 1:3 in a Jobo CPP-2 with 3010 tank, 20C, 8 minutes, 30 rpm).

 

Under a 10x loupe, there is little difference. If anything, the delayed processing group gained a little shadow detail, maybe a third of a stop. Sharpness seemed uneffected. Tonality seemed uneffected. Grain looked exactly the same. Dmax measured exactly the same.

 

Just for fun I scanned one negative and its duplicate on a drum scanner and examined with Photoshop at 100% - couldn't tell them apart. I then made prints from a section of what would have been a 10x enlargement (40x50 inch print) from each scan. Couldn't tell the prints apart.

 

So... I found storing film in the 'fridge for a while before processing to be quite safe indeed. Make of my experience what you will.

Your best bet for an answer is, I think, going to be here:

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ScanHi-End/messages

 

There are some Screen users here, and there has been some discussion of Nega Color in the past IIRC.

I backpack my 4x5 kit. I'm using an Osprey Eclipse 42.

 

http://www.ospreypacks.com/eclipse_42+5.htm

 

This pack fits me really well, and keeps nearly all the weight on my hips and not my shoulders. For photographers, the foam sides can be pulled tight across the back to a) keep the contents up against your back, and b) pad across the back in case you fall.

 

Since it's basically designed for skiing, there are enough straps that you can strap your tripod onto the back, right in the middle. You get excellent balance, the weight is as close to your own center of gravity as you can get, and the suspension system for the pack is the best I've run across in the last 30 years.

 

I've used mine on many a day long hike up and down the mountains. It's been nearly three years now, and I don't even think about other packs. This is one problem that is completely solved for me.

Consider that your monitor is a light source - it's like looking at a light bulb. Your print on the other hand merely reflects light from other sources. The two will never match exactly because of the different way they illuminate.

 

That said, you can get the two to be much closer. As the previous poster suggests, monitor calibration is the key.

In general, no. It's a bad idea.

 

Why? The exhaust fan isn't 100% efficient in removing fumes and mists from the air, especially corners. The history of darkrooms is rife with stories of film and paper failures due to chemical contaimination due to storage in close proximity to the chemicals. Much of this contamination seems to come from the mixing of chemistry also.

 

Since you can't be certain, the safest thing to do is physical separation. That is, use your darkroom as a darkroom, and use a storage area to store your stuff.

 

Of course, it's your stuff, your darkroom, your chemistry. Clearly, YMMV. But if you have problems, at least you were warned.

Only you can define "best." I'm working with 4x5 Tri-X mostly, and process it on a Jobo in a 3010 tank. I've put nearly 2000 sheets through in the last couple of years. It is amazingly consistent, and the most even development possible. Easily beats what I could do by hand, either tray processing (no scratches either ;-), or the BTZS tubes.

 

If however you are processing roll film, I suspect that you'll be quite happy with small tank processing. This is still the "standard" for roll film. It's cheap (the used market is littered with Nikor tanks), it's easy, if your technique is down it's consistent, and it gives you more options (you can easily vary your agitation).

<i>My issues are not output media - but creating compelling images. I keep trying to get back to that point. I want to engage people visually. </i>

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I'm with you there. If the image is sufficiently compelling, few will care about the name of the process.

I would flatten the image first, yes. But why bother to convert down to 8 bits? Most any RIP handles 16 bit files these days. I was under the impression that most of the printer drivers handle 16 bit files as well. If that's true, why drop to 8 bit?

For showing my work, I use an Epson 7600. People still like to handle physical prints.

Hahnemuhle's papers are of archival quality. Your treatment of them is probably not.

 

Most acid free fine art papers act more or less like sponges where environmental pollution is concerned. They will only stay acid free as long as you don't expose them to acids. For example, drop a print on a newspaper and leave it overnight - many fine art papers will be yellowing, at least around the edges, in the morning.

 

The safest way to handle fine art papers is to recognize that they are susceptible to pollution. That means that you shouldn't leave them "just laying around next to whatever" unless you want them to absorb "whatever." So, store them in boxes made for the duty (Light Impressions and others have boxes for this). Frame them with acid free products as soon as is practical. The less pollution exposure, the better off they are.

 

And remember to wash your hands. Ever wonder why curators handle prints while wearing clean cotton gloves?

I'm with Jay. I've done the comparison with similar results. A little nicer grain, a little smaller, a little sharper. I don't think you'll see the differences in image quality until you go beyond a 10x enlargement though.

 

What I think you *will* see is the speed increase. Using Zone System methods I find an EI of 400 for 4x5 Tri-X (ASA 320). D-76 usually results in an EI of around 250.

 

All other things being equal, I would switch to XTOL just for the speed increase.

 

XTOL also is less harmful to the environment...

 

I've been using XTOL for a couple of years now, always at 1:3. I've never experienced the fabled XTOL failure. I've always used distilled water to mix with, stored in glass wine bottles, and used VacuVin caps to store the XTOL under vacuum. I've had stock XTOL in storage for 8 months that still worked fine.

My guess is that you are defining "pro" as commercial. That is, someone who is being paid by someone else to do photography. For example, as someone who is paid by an advertising agency to take pictures of a product. This kind of work is often done on a contract basis.

 

Another way to define "pro" is someone who makes their living from photograpy. This definition would include artists. Artists seldom have the luxury of working on contract, instead they sell a product - prints.

 

I assume from your post that you are asking about commercial work. With that, I can't help. From an artist's perspective though, I can tell you that my 4x5 equipement is the only camera equipment I own, so I'm 100% LF, and 100% film.

1) Conventional framing of works on paper (darkroom print, inkjet print, watercolor, whatever) is best done like this IMHO:

 

http://www.loc.gov/preserv/care/mat.html

 

2) An alternative is to print to canvas and display with a conventional frame (like an oil painting), a floater frame (requires a gallery wrap because you can see the edges of the canvas), or without a frame at all (also requires a gallery wrap).

 

Someone's going to ask, so I might as well tell you what a gallery wrap is. Convention stretching of canvas over stretcher bars is to pull the canvas around the front edge and staple at 90 degrees. If you hang this on the wall, you see the staples all around the canvas.

 

A gallery wrap is where you staple into the back of the stretcher bars so the staples are against the wall, and you don't see them on the edges.

 

To print on canvas (it's not paper), you have to use an inkjet printer. Can't do it in the darkroom, or with a chromira or lightjet process. If you aren't happy with that, stick to your current process.

 

If you are happy with that, there are many print-for-pay houses around that print on canvas with Epson 9x00 printers (or bigger). About the biggest you can go from an image size viewpoint is the 44" max width of the 9x00, minus 5 inches of border (2 1/2 a side to pull around the stretcher bar and staple to the back (called a gallery wrap)). I've done 1.0 m wide, but it's not easy to put it on stretchers that way. Talk to whomever is doing the printing about what they suggest.

 

Also, don't wander off to the local wood lot and "make your own" stretchers - you'll have them coming back because your homemade stretchers warp. Use actual stretcher bars.

 

I've done this before, and a print on canvas with a gallery wrap makes an excellent presentation. I think it works with photographs down to about 30x38cm (12x15), but that may be pushing it. Basically, you'll have to try it at the sizes you are interested in and see what you think.

 

Oh, yes. You'll need to coat the print with a protective lacquer of some kind. Your printer can probably do this for you as well. You'll be amazed at what fingerprints and dirt an unprotected print will collect ;-)

The thing about art is, it's up to the artist. We, as viewers, can like it or not. That's beyond the control of the artist. You didn't like it. Which is fine.

 

I'm not sure of the motivation of this thread though. Disagreeing with an artist's call on print size isn't really worth a thread here. And complaining about the comments and descriptions? I just don't see what it is about this that raises such righteous indignation.

 

So what, really, are you so mad about? You don't like the artist's work? Don't buy it. Think you can do better? Go out and make better photographs. Mad that you didn't get the show but he did? Work on getting your portfolio out in front of more people, and ask for shows.

 

Me? I'm happy for the guy. I like to see my fellow artists getting their work out in front of people, whether I like the work or not. I like seeing photography sell. The more successful photographers we have out there, the better my odds of also being successful.

The state of the art? Not exactly. From what I can tell, there are only two companies left in the world developing drum scanners - Aztek and ICG. Everyone else has left the market.

 

All the R&D is going into CCDs and other devices. They would be what I would call the state of the art.

 

That said, if what you want is the best scan you can possibly get, then drum scanners are still clearly the best. Scanner oil and film cleaner do not hurt your film; typically your film comes back cleaner and "more archival" than when you sent it.

 

OTOH, drum scanning is expensive, and it's really only worth it (IMHO) if you are doing an enlargement of 6 to 8x or more. If what you want is 4x6 prints from 35mm film, I suggest that you look around for someone doing scans on a film scanner from Nikon or Minolta or... Then again, you could buy your own - if you do enough scanning owning your own scanner can pay for itself in short order.

 

This, from a guy who owns a drum scanner and does his own drum scanning.

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/carefordisc/

 

NIST special publication 500-252. This should tell you what you need to know about the care and feeding of CDs and DVDs for archival purposes.

 

The pin holes often come about from using solvent based inks in markers, IIRC.

Doug,

 

CCD = Charged Coupled Device

 

PMT = Photo-Multiplier Tube

 

These are the underlying technologies for scanners. Flatbeds,Imacons (which aren't flatbeds or drum scanners), and "dedicated film scanners" like the Minolta and Nikon small and medium format film scanners use an array of CCDs and scan the film a full line at a time.

 

Drum scanners use PMTs, and scan the film a single pixel at a time. This is much slower of course, and it requires two axes of motion - you have to spin the film in front of the sensor system so that it can sample all the pixels in a line, one at a time. Then you have to index the film one line width and sample the next line. And so on.

 

They did it this way because PMTs are much larger, and much more expensive, than CCDs. You can make an array of 4000 CCD sensors with lenses for each one, for a lot less than you can make three PMTs.

 

OTOH, PMTs are very sensitive, have a huge dynamic range, and with the drum scanner optics, can be extremely sharp. I often don't bother to sharpen my scans from drum scanners, but I always have to sharpen scans from CCD scanners.

 

But you've done the comparison yourself and seen the results first hand. You know what I'm talking about from a results perspective, yes?

<i>I am primarily interested in the scanning of 6x17 trannies and the shadow detail in them.</i>

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In that case, you might well want to have them drum scanned. The last independent test I saw (here: http://www.scannerforum.com/ but you'll have to dig around for it in the "DIMA 2002 scanner roundup" presentation, about page 21 or later) indicated that the Dmax for an older Imacon was less that 3.0, where as most drum scanners could do 3.4+ While I'm sure that the Imacon's have improved since that test, I'm also sure that CCDs haven't equaled PMTs yet.

<p>

In otherwords, if your game is shadow detail in trannies, drum scanners are the way to go. Of course, YMMV, but I don't think it will vary that much ;-)

Neither series makes much sense to me. Multipliers of focal lengths don't have a lot of meaning. What does, is multipliers of angle-of-view.

 

What I like are increments of about 15 degrees. So my series ends up being 60mm, 80mm, 110mm, 150mm, 240mm, 360mm. The last one is out, of course, but that's my bellows limit. In angle-of-view (across the 5 inch dimension of the film), that's about 90, 75, 60, 45, 30, and 20 degrees, IIRC. Works great for me. YMMV of course.

I'm with you Marcio. The fewer steps you can take to the final print, the better off you are, in general. I think interpolating in Photoshop will give you a better final print.

You are asking two questions that aren't closely related, I think.

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<i>What happens increasing agitation? Does this affect the characteristic curve exactly as increasing developing time or temperature, or does it work differently?</i>

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Many people have written books about what happens as agitation changes. Both Henry and Haist come to mind. IIRC, Henry didn't find a relationship between agitation and adjacency effects. Others, clearly, dispute that. For your purposes, I think you can assume that increasing agitation gives similar results as increasing developing time.

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<i>I'm searching a way to increase a little bit the midtone contrast, without affecting (too much) highlights.</i>

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I think what you are looking for here is a compensating effect. You can learn more about this from sources such as <i>The Film Developing Cookbook</i> by Anschel and Troop. You get compensation effects from accutance developers, often accompanyied by reduced agitation. Two part developers such as Diafine are compensating by their very nature. IIRC, water bath development is a compensating technique also.

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Lex is the local expert on these things. Perhaps he'll weigh in on this discussion...

It's going to depend on what type film you are scanning, and what enlargement level you intend to scan to. Negative films should do fine. Trannys are going to be what the Imacon chokes on. It's really not an Imacon vs. Drum scanner question - it's a CCD vs. PMT question. Getting PMT performance from a CCD is the "holy grail" for the CCD makers. And, we aren't there, yet.

 

The other thing is, you can't fluid mount on an Imacon. Therefore, your scans are going to require more spotting time in your image editor.

 

As to sharpness, the Imacon can probably, for most films, do well up to the 6-8x enlargement range. PMT scanners will be performing better above that.

 

So, for big enlargements of trannys, PMT scanners will give you better performance. For smaller enlargements of negatives, the CCD scanners go quite well.

Bill Lear (of 8-track and Learjet fame) used to say something along the lines of he could do anything given enough time and enough money.

 

Sure you can do it. I don't know why you would want to, but if you do, it can certainly be done. You won't be the first; I think there are commercial products out there already. I seem to remember seeing something like this on the Calumet website...

Roger, Gregory,

 

My bad. I thought we were talking about FP4+. If chromogenics, then the opposite applies. Ouch.

Raster Image Processor. The name comes from the days when you needed a program to take a vector image (think type faces) and turn it into dots (a raster image) for an output device. The RIP typically also drives the output device.

 

You need one if you can't do what you need to do with your current driver. So... if you haven't bumped up against the limitations of your driver yet, you probably don't need a RIP.