James Prichard
VICO 501/Black and White Printing
Prof. Bill Schneider

Subject: I wanted to look at how the benefits of being able to output a
photoshop file to a 4x5 negative in comparison to a straight copy
negative. I had thought originally that my ability to do my own dodging
and burning, and touchup would make up for the loss in
information/sharpness of the image which I knew would not be quite as
good as a photographic copy negative.

Process:  I took a slide of a barn I had photographed in winter on a
Virginia highway. I scanned the image at 2000 dpi on the Kodak 2035 film
scanner closest to the door in the Viscom lab. I made sure the focus was
corrected and tried to get a preview as close as possible to the
original. After it was scanned and the excess black was cropped off the
edges, in Photoshop 5.5, I then individually moved my far left RGB
sliders in the Levels control panel to a black point. I then changed my
input:output values in Curves from 128:128 to 142:113 to darken my
midtones. You can see this difference when looking at the two images
side by side on the contact sheet. I saved the 15.5MB file as a
Photoshop document and saved it to a zip disk.

I hand delivered the zip to Ivey Seright, a large photographic and
digital lab in downtown Seattle. For an 18MB document, they charge $40
plus tax to output a negative. They converted the file to
black-and-white and inverted the colors. They used a Lambda to print the
negative. Lambda is a large format digital printer that exposes
photographic materials.  It can print up to 50" wide. I was sent back a
4x5 negative with about a 6cmx7cm image centered on it.

I made a contact of the two side by side and then, using an Omega
enlarger with a 75mm lens, made small 8x10 prints.  I used the 75mm lens
because it was the only one available at the time and came into a
problem with image coverage. There is not filtration used. Both prints
are printed straight with no dodging or burning. The paper is Ilford
Multigrade IV RC and it was developed in dektol using a 1:3 dilution.
They are not toned.

Conclusion: The photographic negative is vastly superior to the digital
one. On the contact it looks fine. In the enlargements is where the
fussiness of the digital negative really begins to appear. I was unable
to provide them any file sizes larger then what I did because the
scanners in the lab are limited. If I were able to get larger file sizes
and fill the entire negative, the digital negative might stand a chance.

I see this digital negative process as a good way to merge type and
photos together, maybe for self promotion or other. If you bought a
bunch of Ilfords postcards and wanted to photographically print a self
promotion piece, it would probably be $100 for the negative and then
time to run through and develop a bunch of contacts in the darkroom. You
wouldn't have to worry about dodging and burning as that should have
already been done in Photoshop and grain won't be as apparent in such a
small size.

Unfortunately I did not ask them but would assume by the emulsion that
this is black-and-white silver-based film. This would tend to solve the
archival problems of saving your digital images if they are
monochromatic.

I'm quite disappointed with the quality of the digital file but had
never had a photographic dupe made of any of my work and was quite happy
with that negative. It was a lot cheaper too.

(Bill's Note - I hope to get James' prints scanned and posted here at some point in the future.)