Ok, I've given in, and quaffed the Kool-Aid.
As a result of my 'digital index' project, I got intrigued enough
with digital image manipulation that I went and bought a new
scanner, and a big printer, and now I'm making B&W fine prints
digitally. It's been less than a month, but I've been learning
pretty darn fast.
Why I did what I did
After I moved into my new home, I discovered (to my
horror!) that I had lots of negatives, and lots of prints, all in a
horrible disarray. It
was time to Get Organized.
Now, naturally, I'm a computer guy, so my plan to
get organized involved computerizing my poorly thought out, poorly
executed record keeping.
I thought I'd start with just the 4x5 negatives.
After all, there were fewer of them, for one thing. So I
thought I'd scan every negative at a low resolution (on my Epson
1640 scanner) and save the scans on a hard disk. Then I could
browse the images on screen, think about patterns and projects, do
editing, maybe even do some initial experimenting with the image in
Photoshop to see where I wanted to go when I really printed the
image.
So I did it. I sat down, and although it was
extremely boring, I scanned every 4x5 image I've made. Lots of
them, at 400ppi. That's enough resolution that I can view it
full size on screen, but not big enough to make a digital print.
I don't care, this is just an index and scanning at 400ppi is pretty
fast, and the files are not too horribly large. Besides, hard
disk space is cheap.
What I learned
The process of making the computerized index was
very instructive. I learned a lot about both my photography
and about scanning and stuff.
The first thing I learned was that, for doing
quality scans (even low resolution) of 4x5 negatives, the Epson scanner
is just not good enough. Dense negatives scan with lots of
noise. The scans aren't very sharp.
Even a poor scan will let you play with an
image, very quickly. I had Photoshop 5.5, which is pretty
old, but even with that old version, I could adjust the images
in ways I can't do in the darkroom, and I was liking what I
could do. Some images where I had trouble getting the
right tonality on silver were dead easy to get right on the
screen.
I don't expose nearly enough film. Heck, I
don't go out and photograph nearly enough.
There are definitely themes and patterns that
run through my photographs, and because in the process of
building the index, I looked at ALL of my large format negatives
in the space of a couple of weeks, I got to see those themes and
patterns very clearly. Being able to browse stuff on the
screen, very quickly, is a big help with this, too.
What I did next
All that is interesting but (in terms of this
article) beside the point. The point is that all that fiddling
with images on the computer got me curious, and before long, I'd
replaced that old clunky Epson scanner with a bright, shiny new
Microtek ArtixScan 1800f.
And when I scanned some of my negatives on it, it
was a religious experience. The new scanner makes the old
scanner look horrible. The scans are really, really good.
In fact, I compared scans done on the Microtek to scans I had done
on a top of the line Imacon, and while the $17,000 Imacon beats the
$1100 Microtek, it doesn't make the Microtek look bad, and the
Imacon is certainly not 15 times better than the Microtek. So
I was in scanner heaven.
And then it happened - I scanned a negative at full
resolution, and played with it in Photoshop, doing a little burning
here, a little dodging there, adjusting the curve - and on the
screen, the image looked good. Not just good, it looked great.
I bought an upgrade to Photoshop CS, and played some
more, and I liked what I was seeing on the screen. I
discovered I could do some appealing things digitally that would be
Very Hard to do in a gelatin silver print done in my darkroom.
And then I thought the Bad Thought - the thought
that committed gelatin silver printers are Not Supposed To Think.
I let myself wonder "What would it be like if I
could make a print like this?"
And so I started to look at printers.
The Epson Stylus Pro 9600
First, I looked at the lower end printers.
Making silver prints, I generally print things on 11x14 paper with
fairly wide borders, so a printer that could do 11x14 was what I
wanted. I browsed to the Epson web site, and looked at
printers. I have a friend who has the Epson 7600, which can
print 24" wide, but that was more than I wanted.
And there, on the Epson web site, I saw the info for
the Stylus Pro 4000 - capable of printing 17" wide. "Perfect!"
I thought - and then I found out the local Epson dealer was having a
demo day and I could see the 4000 in action.
So I went, and there were a lot of people there, and
I saw the 4000, and Lo!, I was impressed. But the other
photographers all asked me "So, which printer are you using now?",
and my answer was "I don't have a printer now". And without
exception, every single photographer told me, "Well, don't buy the
4000, it won't be a week before you wish you could make bigger
prints."
And naturally, I replied "Well, I don't make prints
bigger than 16x20 now." And they all said, "Yes, because it's
hard to do. But when you get a printer, it isn't really harder
to make a bigger print, it just costs more and takes longer to
print."
Now, naturally, the same argument can be made for
not getting the 7600 (24" wide) but instead getting the 9600 (which
can print 44" wide). My friend Chuck Downs lobbied hard for
the 9600, arguing that he'd seen my work and thought it would look
fabulous printed 40" x 50"
I admit it. I was weak. I ordered the 9600.
The Day the Printer Arrived
And so, not long after, Ryan from JVH showed up at
my house, with a big pallet with my new printer on it. And he
assembled the printer, and we hooked it up to my computer, and we
aligned it and loaded the ink and all that stuff. And then we
made a print - just a little one, about 8x10.
And it wasn't very good, and I was a little worried.
The print wasn't very neutral, and the highlights were magenta and
the midtones were blue and the shadows were kind of green, and I
thought to myself "Paul, you have spent a lot of money for a machine
that doesn't make very good prints". And I called my friend
Chuck, and he said "Calm down. Go load the Atkinson Profiles,
and try again."
So I did. Bill Atkinson has FREE profiles for
the Epson printers, inks, and media, and I went to his web site, and
downloaded them, and followed his excellent instructions, and I made
My Second Digital Print.
And it was good. It wasn't GREAT, and it
wasn't even Good, it was just good. The tonality was neutral,
though, perfectly neutral grey all the way from the shadows up to
the highlights. I started to relax quite a bit. Maybe I
could, in the end, coerce this expensive beast into making decent
prints. I stopped considering what would happen if I told my
wife I'd made an expensive mistake, and tentatively decided I liked
the printer.
The Next Three Weeks
The next three weeks were spent learning Photoshop.
Let's face it, Photoshop is a dreadful piece of software (and I
speak as a man who worked as a software guy, so I know what I'm
talking about). The user interface is terrible. It's
horribly complicated.
But it's the thing everyone uses, and I bought a
few books and I played around and I felt like I was banging my head
on the wall eight hours a day. I was following examples and
trying different things, and I was getting nowhere but getting very
frustrated doing it.
I spent a lot of time fooling around with images,
and made a handful of prints.
I made a couple of BIG prints, and felt good about
those. Yes, I actually have some images that look good printed
24x30!
Finally I wised up, and got more directed. I
thought I'd just try to make a set of prints digitally that I'd just
made on gelatin-silver for my recent show. Ten prints, and I'd
have the silver prints to guide me and judge the inkjet prints by.
The first image was worse than hard, it was Very
Hard. I started over from scratch several times. I just
couldn't judge things on the screen, even after I made a hood to
shield the screen. So I made test prints on the printer, and
then adjusted more stuff, and then made another test print.
It's an expensive way to work, but it's how I worked in the
darkroom, so I reasoned I could get started that way with digital
printing and might eventually learn to read stuff off the screen
that way. Several times I was so frustrated that I literally
banged my head against the wall. But slowly, I made progress.
And after two very long days, I had in my hands what I
considered a 'pretty good' print. I laid it next to the silver
print, and I thought "Well, it's pretty close". The digital
print was arguably sharper, but the silver print was, well, better
executed. But by then I was sick to death of this image, so I
moved on.
And the next image took me only about a day to get
to where I felt it was done, and when I laid it next to the silver
print, I thought that it was about as good as the silver print.
Different, but both were pretty darn good prints. The Dmax in
the silver print was better, and the surface quality of the inkjet
print was not as good, but they were very close. And as an
experiment, I made another print on a sample of Premium Luster paper
I had - no adjustments to the image, by the way, just a change in
which profile I selected - and the Dmax was better and the surface
texture was better, and I finally thought "Wow. Behind glass,
I might choose the digital print over the silver print".
Buoyed by that success, I kept on going through the
ten prints.
And finally it happened. I spent a day on an
image, and I did some very fine burning and dodging, and some very
careful curve adjustment, and pretty much pulled out the stops, and
then at the end of the day, I made a print, and I took it from the
printer and set it on my viewing table next to the really beautiful
gelatin silver print I'd made just a month ago, and I looked at them
both, and I thought the Second Unpardonable Thought.
I thought "Holy cow. The digital print is
sharper. It has better shadow detail, better highlight
control. It has more mid-tone contrast, so that these leaves
look better. All that careful burning and dodging of teeny
tiny areas has made these trees GLOW."
And I thought "The digital print is fundamentally
BETTER than the silver print".
And suddenly it seemed the room got dim, and red,
and years of darkroom experience flashed before my eyes - especially
the frustrating moments when I knew what I wanted to see on the
paper but just couldn't see a way to do it.
Raising the Bar
Digital printing is such a fundamental advance that
it will cause a revolution. it offers control of
density, contrast, sharpness, smoothness that have been unavailable
to photographers before, not because they were not technically
possible but because they were far too costly in terms of time per
print.
The most common concern is that digital printing
will make it 'too easy to get a great print' and thus will diminish
the value of the fine print. To my mind, this is utter
hogwash. First, getting a great digital print is an
undertaking on a par with making a great silver print. The
process is different but it requires the same vision, the same
understanding, the same commitment. It's not as if we were
knee deep in fine silver printers before, and we won't be awash with
fine digital printers in the future.
Second, and this is the killer, digital printing
does not lower the bar, it RAISES it. That is, the best
achievable print just got a whole lot better. If you want your
prints to stand above those of other folks, digital printing means
that you will need to learn to take your prints not just to the old
wall, but to a totally new wall, one that's farther down the road.
Don't ask yourself how you're going to compete with hordes of people
knocking out inkjet prints in their spare bedroom. Instead,
ask yourself how you're going to compete with the folks who used to
spend two solid days in the darkroom, perfecting a single print, and
who are now going to spend a solid week at the computer, taking that
same image to a level previously unattainable.
If you were hoping that buying a big, fast computer,
a fancy printer, and Photoshop was going to magically transform you
into a John Sexton, or a Michael Kenna, or even a Jerry Uelsmann,
you're going to be very disappointed, because what separates the
photographic gods from the rest of us is not that they're better
darkroom drivers, it's that they know where to go. In the
digital world, you can go wherever you want, and you can expect it
to be a humbling experience to realize that any shortcomings are not
technical limitations of the medium but are instead a lack of vision
on your part.
The Bottom Line
I'm pretty skeptical by nature. I'm a firm
believer in Willman's First Law, which states "There are no
panaceas".
Digital printing is not a panacea. If you
discount the cost of the printer, the cost of a digital print is on
a par with a silver print, but the printer is very expensive, and
maybe even out of reach for a lot of folks. Fortunately,
smaller brethren of the 9600 are more affordable, especially the
Epson Stylus Pro 4000.
And sometimes the issue is not the actual artifact
of the print, it's the process and how the artist engages with that
process, and how the process affects what the artist does.
Some people are never going to print digitally, and
I think that's great. Some people are going to immediately
shift entirely to digital printing (I know some who have already),
and I think that's great, too. Some, like me, will probably
teeter back and forth, with one foot firmly planted in both worlds,
and I think that's fabulous.
I know that a lot of photographers are viewing the
whole digital thing as a big threat, and they probably feel (if they
read this) that I'm one of the traitors. But I think choice is
good, and I think being able to choose to print digitally will open
a lot of new doors for me.
Doors like really big prints, or even very short run
books. Writing digital negatives that I contact print in the
darkroom. I've got ideas about projects which are too vague to
be articulated.
The whole thing has me very excited, and
that has to be good.