Contact Prints vs Digital

[iliosgallery]

Back in the low-tech poverty stricken days of the first 2/3rd of the 20th Century photography was practiced on a shoe string by guys like Edward Weston. Weston did nothing but shoot 8x10 film using the same camera and lens for several decades. The exposed film was developed to match the contact paper he was printing to. Pretty simple, really: blow the dust off film and paper, lay the 8x10 film emulsion side down on 8x10 paper, expose evenly according to film density and paper speed and you’ve got yourself a top notch, A-1 undiluted image packed with detail and ultra smooth gradations. Each microscopic clump of blackened film silver got translated directly into its corresponding shade of grey on paper. The relationship was strictly one-to-one. No intermediaries were involved, no digitizing, no bending of curves, no rasterizing, no dithering, no interpolating, no metamerism. (I’m sure there are at least a few more manipulations that I haven’t mentioned.) What’s more, the dynamic range capable of being captured was huge thanks to the ability to expose for shadows and develop for highlights on individual sheets of film. And when processed according to archival methodologies both film and print would last hundreds of years. According to Ansel, maybe 400 years. True enough, colour is missing from this paradigm, but within its monochrome limits the contact print was king of the hill in its day.

What is of interest to me in the first decade of the 21st Century is: what in digital practice corresponds to contact prints? Given a full frame 21, 24 or even larger 45 or 65 MP sensor what is equivalent to the B&W contact print? Considering that printers like the Epson series prefer to process 300-360 ppi can digital really achieve the structural and visual integrity of the B&W contact print? Certainly B&W 8x10 wasn’t (isn’t) for everyone, but that’s not the point. The question is what is its digital equivalent?

Andy Christopher

[Tim Gray]

platinum contact print of a digital negative

[Ben Rubinstein]

Direct Print Button.

[Craig Lamson]

Back in the low-tech poverty stricken days of the first 2/3rd of the 20th Century photography was practiced on a shoe string by guys like Edward Weston. Weston did nothing but shoot 8x10 film using the same camera and lens for several decades. The exposed film was developed to match the contact paper he was printing to. Pretty simple, really: blow the dust off film and paper, lay the 8x10 film emulsion side down on 8x10 paper, expose evenly according to film density and paper speed and you’ve got yourself a top notch, A-1 undiluted image packed with detail and ultra smooth gradations. Each microscopic clump of blackened film silver got translated directly into its corresponding shade of grey on paper. The relationship was strictly one-to-one. No intermediaries were involved, no digitizing, no bending of curves, no rasterizing, no dithering, no interpolating, no metamerism. (I’m sure there are at least a few more manipulations that I haven’t mentioned.) What’s more, the dynamic range capable of being captured was huge thanks to the ability to expose for shadows and develop for highlights on individual sheets of film. And when processed according to archival methodologies both film and print would last hundreds of years. According to Ansel, maybe 400 years. True enough, colour is missing from this paradigm, but within its monochrome limits the contact print was king of the hill in its day.

What is of interest to me in the first decade of the 21st Century is: what in digital practice corresponds to contact prints? Given a full frame 21, 24 or even larger 45 or 65 MP sensor what is equivalent to the B&W contact print? Considering that printers like the Epson series prefer to process 300-360 ppi can digital really achieve the structural and visual integrity of the B&W contact print? Certainly B&W 8x10 wasn’t (isn’t) for everyone, but that’s not the point. The question is what is its digital equivalent?

Andy Christopher

I have an Edward Weston negative printed by his son Cole and given to me by my brothers wife, Coles daughter.  It's hanging in my office, the image is 'Rain over Mudoc Lava Beds" 1939

Its a wonderful image, with great tonality and detail, but the problem is size.  It's just plain small and all that great detail is lost. You have to wonder what a nice 30x40 might look like......

[Moynihan]

"What is of interest to me in the first decade of the 21st Century is: what in digital practice corresponds to contact prints? "

Interesting question, to me at least. Do you mean by what "corresponds" as to the higest resolution, quality of tonal gradation?
I really cannot say i guess, having not tried a wide variety of digital cameras, and having not tried any "medium format digital". I have done 8x10 B&W contact printing though. It and digital are, technologically so different, i think it might not be possible to equate one to something in the other. And in saying that, i am not referring to "quality" aspects in any way. The two processes are very different. Digital is a medium of multiple "intermediacies", more than enlarged film mediums were (in respect to film/contact). Very different beasts.

That said, I find what i can do so far with digital to be exciting, (and this is as to both color and B&W). Digital processing has allowed me control in color, that exceeds the control i had in a b&w darkroom (for me at least. I know with certainity there are chemical B&W printers that do and did exceed my modest skills

With digital, i normally am going for a print. I prefer printing "native" sizes, at usually 360ish ppi, or more, without interprolation or whatever. Being equipment-wise limited to 10mp in capture, i print in the 8x10ish range. Recently, i have been playing arould with HDR software, shooting 5 frames (1 ev apart each) even in scenes that do not have an extreme range of light. In PP i do not go for the cartoon thing, rather, for detail and tonal range. In a way, given the subjects (i.e., stationery, no motion) it reminds me somewhat of when i used to use a view camera.

I am not saying the result is like a contact print. But i am getting a wealth of detail and tonal richness, a dimensionality, that i enjoy.

[Moynihan]

Its a wonderful image, with great tonality and detail, but the problem is size.  It's just plain small and all that great detail is lost. You have to wonder what a nice 30x40 might look like......

It would not look as nice, unless you were standing much farther from it, and then, maybe, still, something would be lacking...
Since Weston contact printed only, his previsualization included the final size of the "object", the print.

When thinking of small prints (contact or otherwise) that are made "seriously", i think it is useful to think of the print as not an image of an object. Rather, the print is the intended object, in and of itself?

[Dale_Cotton2]

M'sieur le Ilios Gallerie wrote:

what in digital practice corresponds to contact prints?

It may be useful to turn this question around: Is it possible to create a print via digital capture that passes a double-blind test when viewed beside an excellent 8x10 contact print? And, if so, what would it take in the way of camera, ppi, printing technique, etc.?

Given that the technique of contact printing cannot apply to full colour images; the above experiment would necessarily be confined to b&w. If digital b&w is itself a limitation, that would skew the results. Also, many seem to feel we don't yet have inkjet papers that rank with the best (air-dried?) traditional fibre. So for me, the question would be, even if we can distinquish a digital print by some artifact of digital b&w or by the paper texture, can we still achieve an equivalent goodness from the digital process?

Yet another approach would be to take what one feels is an excellent digital image file, then print it at increasing ppi up to 480 (on an Epson - maybe more on a Canon or HP?). This without upsampling, so each print at higher ppi would necessarily be smaller than the last. Is there some point in this series at which the viewer feels contact print quality has been achieved?

To forestall a possible class of retort: I feel responses that take the form "contact printing and digital printing are different beasts and so cannot be directly compared" would be unhelpful. None of us are in kindergarten here, the question as originally asked recognizes this issue and asks for a judgment call to be made.

[sojournerphoto]

M'sieur le Ilios Gallerie wrote:

It may be useful to turn this question around: Is it possible to create a print via digital capture that passes a double-blind test when viewed beside an excellent 8x10 contact print? And, if so, what would it take in the way of camera, ppi, printing technique, etc.?

Given that the technique of contact printing cannot apply to full colour images; the above experiment would necessarily be confined to b&w. If digital b&w is itself a limitation, that would skew the results. Also, many seem to feel we don't yet have inkjet papers that rank with the best (air-dried?) traditional fibre. So for me, the question would be, even if we can distinquish a digital print by some artifact of digital b&w or by the paper texture, can we still achieve an equivalent goodness from the digital process?

Yet another approach would be to take what one feels is an excellent digital image file, then print it at increasing ppi up to 480 (on an Epson - maybe more on a Canon or HP?). This without upsampling, so each print at higher ppi would necessarily be smaller than the last. Is there some point in this series at which the viewer feels contact print quality has been achieved?

To forestall a possible class of retort: I feel responses that take the form "contact printing and digital printing are different beasts and so cannot be directly compared" would be unhelpful. None of us are in kindergarten here, the question as originally asked recognizes this issue and asks for a judgment call to be made.

Yes the Canon drivers work at a native input resolution of 600ppi and the HP Z is at 600ppi on 'Best' or 1200ppi on 'HIghest' resolution. I've not tested the latter in a direct comparison, but I made a print at 600ppi native from my old Canon 5000 on Hahne PR Baryta that was really very beautiful. A 1Ds3 gives about a 9 by 6 print at 600ppi, so it's worth holding and viewing. A 5D about 7.5 by5, so a very nice album print. The print I'm referring to here was in colour, but the principle is the same. One other area that I've thought about but not worried about is that Bayer interpolation means that there isn't really the full 600ppi of data in the file, but the interpolated data is actually of lower resolution. This perhaps means that there are gains from going higher in input resolution than you expect, certainly I think that there is a visible improvement from 300 to 600ppi. ON the other hand, I've just printed a 36 by 24 from my 5D - so 121 ppi upressed in Qimage - and it does what it needs to:)


Mike

[Josh-H]

Direct Print Button.

Bwahahahahaha!  

[John.Murray]

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