I am interested in b/w art photography and color landscape photography and would like to set up a "digital darkroom." How will results with quality film scanner (HP20S)and good printer (recommendations?) compare with traditional (wet) methods? I would like to print up to 11x14.

Thank you in advance

-- (ckayakman@yahoo.con), January 05, 2000

Answers

This depends entirely on your personal criteria. Areas to consider include:

• Resolution/Overall Sharpness
• Color depth/accuracy
• Archival quality
• Manipulation capability
• Reproducability

Depending on what elements of the above list are tops on your personal list - you may be very happy, or displeased with the results of your "digital darkroom".
I am one that sold off all of my color darkroom equipment in 1999 to go fully digital. I had a fully capable color darkroom capable of printing 16 X 20 cibachrome prints. I can't do that now - and could never hope to achieve the print quality of my darkroom prints. I use an HP s20 scanner, and the HP Photosmart printer (which I still think is better then their new Photosmart printers). The results are excellent, but not cibachromes. The biggest print is 8 1/2 X 11. You can buy an Epson 1200 that can do an 11 X 14 - again the results can be stunning - but not darkroom quality.
However...
The ability to remove dust, change contrast/color and otherwise manipulate the image to your hearts content is astounding! This is what sold me. Early adoption of new technology always comes at a price - today the price of adopting digital imaging over tradition is resolution and archival quality. It will not be long before these challenges are met in the digital world - in fact there is almost a daily assault on traditional photography through digital innovation!
Unfortunately I have seen too little progress on the archival front. Unless you are willing to spend a great deal of money (multi- thousand) on a decent dye-sub printer your photos will last less than 10 years. Lest your decendents think their ancestors all had pale pink skin this situation needs to be addressed by the likes of HP and Epson in a reasonably priced medium.
Lest I be accused of being too much of a traditionalist - I recognize that the importance of the printed picture is descending while the sharing of photos on-line and in digital display mediums is ascending rapidly. OK - but I still want my frigin' prints!


Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), January 06, 2000.

If you want to equal the results you could achieve in a darkroom the conusmer scanners are not going to cut it. However, done right the digital darkroom will easily exceed anything you could do in a traditional darkroom. I too sold my darkroom equipment last year and went digital. This makes a lot of sense for color landscape work, but I went ahead and took the plunge into black and white as well.

I had a Umax PowerLook III scanner for a few months, but sold it after renting time on a drum scanner. Drums scanners are much better than toys like the HP20S and flatbed scanners. Printing is a different matter. The Epson Photo Stylus 1200 is capable of stunning 11x14 prints if you feed it a high quality original. The drawback is you'll need two; one for color and one for black and white.

Point your browser to http://www.inkjetmall.com and look around. There is a lot of information there, including how to set up your computer properly for matchng colors. Be forewarned, this is an expensive switch, but not all that bad compared with setting up a color darkroom. The cost of consumables, especially black-and-white, is high but should come down with time.

The two keys are setting up your computer for color matching, and getting drum scans of your best originals.

-- Darron Spohn (dspohn@photobitstream.com), January 06, 2000.

I agree with the above readers that digital prints cannot match darkroom quality. Again, it is all in what you find personally acceptable. However, as a photographer who LOVES film and working in the darkroom, I am increasingly dismayed by all those who cite the "assaults" on traditional photography. Is there anything wrong with learning a craft from the ground up, or with liking a hands on feel- the sense of gratification that you get knowing that you didn't just click a button to get your image? Now, I have nothing against digital imaging per se, but I do have to question why so many photographers are practically foaming at the mouth for digital to make film obsolete. I just don't get it. . why does one thing have to replace another? I like my art, my craft, and my materials. .and I don't relish the thought of them becoming unavailable because everyone is on the "newer is better" bandwagon. . just a thought.

-- Josh Slocum (jayslc@yahoo.com), January 08, 2000.

My answer is more a remark on the previous answers. If you buy an epson photo printer, you don't have to limit it to color or black and white. You can print both black and white and color on the one printer. A program like photoshop (retail $700, ebay $200, friend of a friend $50) has been supporting printed output to single tone images, double tone, tritone, quadtone, pantone on and on for years. This covers the black and white need. The problem might enter when you try to calibrate the color values, get everything running properly, and try to get the black and white you can live with. For example, the epson photo stylus 1200 printer is optionally pantone calibrated, support the black and white mixtures out of the box. Your printer can make black and white pictures using COLOR CARTIDGES. But you never hear people say it. However if you load quadtone cartidges from a place like (ww.missupply.com) your printer is almost stuck to it. You can revert to color again only after you PURGE and CLEAN OUT the nozzles on the printer. It can be done and has been done.

Black and white has a very bright future with the digital technology.

If you want black and white images, and you use photoshop full version, taking a color neg. scan might get your results. This is because photoshop can convert the RGB image to any kind of single up to quadtone you're looking for. You can manually change the black and whites step by step with the keyboard (burning and dodging, test prints, etc) in minutes compared the hours it takes in the darkroom, with instant results using the preview box which shows the image changing as you press a key.

-- Jeff Epstein (noemail@nospam.com), January 09, 2000.

I must say that I sympathise with Josh, and will mourn the passing of "wet" photography and its craftsmanship. But I suppose the Daguerrotypists must have felt the same about Mr Fox-Talbot's invention of the negative, and wet plate enthusiasts must have shuddered at the new-fangled pre-packed dry plate users, who in turn resented flexible film when it came along. Be that as it may, there is no denying that Digital photography is the way forward; it is superior creatively, environmentally (no more wasted silver and toxic chemicals), and economically. However at present it is decidedly inferior in terms of quality, image permanence and choice of cameras (2.3 megapixels, 3x zoom, blah, blah, blah. One camera - umpteen badges.)

We still need film and its enthusiasts as the "gold standard" to which digital photography must aspire. For myself, I don't think that 8 bits is enough to represent the subtle tones of a good black & white print and until digital can equal the quality of film at a comparable cost, I'll hang onto my darkroom thanks. I do have a 2700 dpi, 36 bit film scanner, which is just about the equal of 35mmm film, so when the first sub-$2000, 25megapixel camera hits the shops, I'll be there.

Yours only slightly tongue-in-cheek,

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), January 10, 2000.