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Author Topic: Is there an affordable Digital Enlarger?  (Read 2762 times)

Deardorff

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Is there an affordable Digital Enlarger?
« on: November 24, 2014, 10:12:42 pm »

Enjoy shooting digital at times but would really like to be able to take the digital image files and enlarge in the darkroom in B&W.

Are there any digital enlargers that will do this? Anything affordable for a home darkroom?

The old Beselers and Omegas still work great with real negatives but would be nice to have all the control digital can provide and then project that 'negative' onto Seagull paper for a nice fibre based print developed in chemistry and treated as my other B&W work.
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Mark Lindquist

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Re: Is there an affordable Digital Enlarger?
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2014, 11:34:09 pm »

Could you edit the image digitally, then invert the image and print on film that could then be printed in the darkroom?  Just a thought-
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Mark Lindquist
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Jim Kasson

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Re: Is there an affordable Digital Enlarger?
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2014, 12:07:35 am »

Enjoy shooting digital at times but would really like to be able to take the digital image files and enlarge in the darkroom in B&W.

Are there any digital enlargers that will do this? Anything affordable for a home darkroom?

Are contact prints OK?

This is really old, but it might get you thinking:

http://blog.kasson.com/?p=7
http://blog.kasson.com/?p=8

Modern printers are a lot better, and I got pretty good at this hybrid digital/chemical thing (should we call it digical?), but a few years ago I gave away my vacuum frame and haven't done any silver printing since. The printers that are better at making contact negatives are also better at making inkjet prints.

Jim

Stefan Ohlsson

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Re: Is there an affordable Digital Enlarger?
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2014, 03:33:27 am »

Enjoy shooting digital at times but would really like to be able to take the digital image files and enlarge in the darkroom in B&W.

Are there any digital enlargers that will do this? Anything affordable for a home darkroom?

The old Beselers and Omegas still work great with real negatives but would be nice to have all the control digital can provide and then project that 'negative' onto Seagull paper for a nice fibre based print developed in chemistry and treated as my other B&W work.

Never heard of an affordable digital enlarger. The only one that I've seen is the DeVere, and to call that affordable is hard to do. But to print out a negative on film with your inkjet printer and then contact print it is affordable and you can use all of the silver papers that still are on the market. There are many good tutorials on the net how to do a wonderful negative. And we've made negs for photographers that then will use them for platinum or silver printing. As you can adapt the contrast curve to the printing method, the results are better today than ever before.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2014, 04:27:58 am by Stefan Ohlsson »
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