digital vs analogue printing

[mccoywynne]

I'm having a discussion with a couple of photographer friends about the merits of what they call analogue printing ie prints from digital files ( scanned film or from camera) onto fuji crystal archive or other "photographic papers" versus archival ink jet prints. They say analogue is best ! The problem is that this is a very subjective point of view, but they won't have it. They say the "depth" in the analogue print is better, the range of colours or tonal range ( in black and white ) is better. I would rather they say " I much prefer the look of an analogue print, it suits my work better" rather than the definitive "analogue printing is much better than digital"

Are they right ? In the opinion of experienced printers on this forum is analogue better than digital in its ability to produce "better" prints ? Has anybody carried out exhaustive tests with the same image printed in different ways ?
I have read that the colour gamut achievable in digital printing is far wider than with analogue so this must mean the results from a "good" digital print must outweigh the results from a "good" analogue print.

Is it really a matter of subjective taste or is there any scientific evidence to back up one point of view against the other ?

Most interested to hear thoughts from the forum.

Steve

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I can only speak from my own experience, which includes about fifty years of wet printing (black and white only, no color) before I switched to digital.

For background, I studied with some superb print makers of the day (including Minor White and Paul Caponigro) and I have gotten positive responses from many viewers of my darkroom prints in exhibits over the years.

So when I switched to digital, one of my highest priorities was to raise my digital printing level to a point that my digital prints were as good (to my eyes, at least) as my darkroom prints. It took a few years, and lots of good information from folks like Jeff Schewe, Andrew Rodney, and Eric Chan, and from LuLa videos, but I eventually I got there, and now I cannot tell the difference between one of my own best darkroom prints and one of my digital prints of the same image. And, of course, the digital print had to go through the process of scanning (either print or negative) before I could print it digitally.

Thus, I am convinced that there is no perceptible difference between the two ways of printing. The differences that exist result from differences in the knowledge and skill level of the person doing the printing, and some from the availability (or lack of it) of digital papers that have the same look and feel as your favorite darkroom papers.

That's my two cents, and others will no doubt offer different perspectives.

-Eric

[kers]

Me too have spend a lot of time in darkrooms developing selenium toned barite prints, even color prints...
I must say i am very happy i have left it behind.

I bought a HPZ3100 44inch printer as soon as i made digital photos.
Now i have so much more control over printing than ever before; i can do color with ease, exactly reproduce a print after years.
More paper choices, the colors fade less fast.
It prints a very neutral BW and with the paper now available i can make it as beautiful as an analogue barite print.
Also you can make a very deep matte BW print as never before.
Apart from material as always you need the skills to get it right.
Often you see digital prints with too much sharpening and color, but that is a choice.

Of course inktjet printers use dots to make the image. With light you have more colours to blend. but the dots are so small that i don't see the difference...
In my case the BW prints are made with one black an two grey inks + some additive colour.

[Schewe]

Are they right ?

No, they are wrong...the total volume of color is greater with Digital (assuming Epson HDR ink set). The D-Max is better with digital, and assuming proper sharpening, the detail of ink jet printing is better. So what you are fighting is the old school vs the new school...and the odds are you will not be able to turn their minds around. Kinda like Democrat vs Republican...

[Telecaster]

Some years ago my friend Bruce pulled a bit of a trick on one of our more adamant "darkroom forever" acquaintances, convincing the fellow Bruce's Epson prints were darkroom-made while the actual darkroom prints were ink-based. Same photos, shot on b&w film, printed with both methods. Needless to say, the fellow's response when the ruse was revealed wasn't at all Oh wow, look at that, I guess maybe I've been wrong. Nope…it was anger. 

Bruce still uses film for some projects and does some darkroom printing, mainly 'cuz he enjoys it and (for certain photos) because he prefers the look he gets.

-Dave-

[KevinA]

Depends on what you call better I suppose. I shoot digital for a living, but honestly it's just button pushing, I don't feel I've created anything.
So right now I'm going back to basics for the hell of it, building a 5x7 pinhole with an Old Sinar 5x7 back. Wether or not my Canon would produce the same result printed digitally after a few photoshop session I really don't care.
I want to produce images that go nowhere near a computer, it's the journey I'm interested in. I already have a huge collection of 1's and 0's on many TB of hard drives.

[Rob C]

Well, I spent about six years of my early photo-life working in an industrial darkroom on b/white as well as both types of colour: trannie and print. After that, and until I left the UK twenty-one years later, I did all of my own commercial b/whites but not the colour. Why not colour since I knew how? Commercial suicide unless you had a great throughput. Same reason the commercial colour labs died after digital came along: not enough work to make it viable.

Now, with colour, I'd say my view is that the different films had independent signatures, and you knew where you were with them, short of X-Ray damage; the writing I preferred for most of my work was that of Kodachrome 64 Pro, not the slower, finer stuff that was too dificult to control in my circumstances of work, mostly in sunlight. That also meant no rush for processing; Ektachrome had to do for those rush jobs, unless you lived near a rare Kodachrome processing plant that offered 24 hrs. pro service. Sarah Moon used a very fast film for her personal reputation build. Compared with film, I think digital has some really good colours but also some shockers.

Regarding black/white: I'm not a great fan of digital capture to black/white conversions; I do it a lot, but am never really thrilled. I still prefer the wet production pictures - as long as they were on WSG and not those hellish matt or textured things whose sole purpose was, it seemed to me, to disguise shortcomings in technique. I simply refused to buy into the myth that some surfaces gave 'character'; nope, they gave excuses and were easy to 'spot'. Nothing beat the tonality of well-glazed WSG.

All personal, of course, and Schewe may well have a point about bias. Just as he may have his biases, too, the other way around.

Would I go back today, to the wet? As the original materials seem to have vanished with the dinos, what's the point, quite apart from the Spanish logistics making it impossible? It was bad enough when plastics came in to reduce washing times, and I hated Multigrade with a vengeance.

I'm afraid it (analogue) truly is of the past, out with the baby from that pesky bath.

Rob C

[KevinA]

Well, I spent about six years of my early photo-life working in an industrial darkroom on b/white as well as both types of colour: trannie and print. After that, and until I left the UK twenty-one years later, I did all of my own commercial b/whites but not the colour. Why not colour since I knew how? Commercial suicide unless you had a great throughput. Same reason the commercial colour labs died after digital came along: not enough work to make it viable.

Now, with colour, I'd say my view is that the different films had independent signatures, and you knew where you were with them, short of X-Ray damage; the writing I preferred for most of my work was that of Kodachrome 64 Pro, not the slower, finer stuff that was too dificult to control in my circumstances of work, mostly in sunlight. That also meant no rush for processing; Ektachrome had to do for those rush jobs, unless you lived near a rare Kodachrome processing plant that offered 24 hrs. pro service. Sarah Moon used a very fast film for her personal reputation build. Compared with film, I think digital has some really good colours but also some shockers.

Regarding black/white: I'm not a great fan of digital capture to black/white conversions; I do it a lot, but am never really thrilled. I still prefer the wet production pictures - as long as they were on WSG and not those hellish matt or textured things whose sole purpose was, it seemed to me, to disguise shortcomings in technique. I simply refused to buy into the myth that some surfaces gave 'character'; nope, they gave excuses and were easy to 'spot'. Nothing beat the tonality of well-glazed WSG.

All personal, of course, and Schewe may well have a point about bias. Just as he may have his biases, too, the other way around.

Would I go back today, to the wet? As the original materials seem to have vanished with the dinos, what's the point, quite apart from the Spanish logistics making it impossible? It was bad enough when plastics came in to reduce washing times, and I hated Multigrade with a vengeance.

I'm afraid it (analogue) truly is of the past, out with the baby from that pesky bath.

Rob C

Since this thread I have been looking at lots of prints made with both techniques. I can quite believe a digital print can be as good as a wet print. The problem is I have not seen one.
 I found myself locked in a darkened room the other week, (I was only there to pick something up), I got my timing wrong, it was the local camera club having a print competition. I didn't know this sort of thing went on still.
At the interval on closer inspection of the prints, they all suffered from the same over cooked on the computer effect. Too sharp and too saturated. I think the nature of digital pushes the technical to get it near the limit, get it to look as sharp as knives, make all the colours bright etc. It robs many images of any soul.
Yesterday I went to a Cartier Bresson show, it was some of his shots of Paris. Lots of images from a technical point of view missed the mark...it mattered not a jot.
 That's the difference to me between lots of digital and film, with film you know it's not going to be perfect, the goal with digital appears to be have it all perfect, have the eye pin sharp, have just enough depth of field, balance the histogram, boost the saturation and sharpen until it bites.
 People will say you have a choice with digital on all those things, it just looks to me that everyone makes the same choice, including the pro labs. I think thats were the difference between the two shows the most, the mindset each tends to create that dictates the final outcome, more than the technical abilities/limitations of each.

[Rob C]

Since this thread I have been looking at lots of prints made with both techniques. I can quite believe a digital print can be as good as a wet print. The problem is I have not seen one.
 I found myself locked in a darkened room the other week, (I was only there to pick something up), I got my timing wrong, it was the local camera club having a print competition. I didn't know this sort of thing went on still.
At the interval on closer inspection of the prints, they all suffered from the same over cooked on the computer effect. Too sharp and too saturated. I think the nature of digital pushes the technical to get it near the limit, get it to look as sharp as knives, make all the colours bright etc. It robs many images of any soul.
Yesterday I went to a Cartier Bresson show, it was some of his shots of Paris. 1. Lots of images from a technical point of view missed the mark...it mattered not a jot.
 That's the difference to me between lots of digital and film, with film you know it's not going to be perfect, the goal with digital appears to be have it all perfect, have the eye pin sharp, have just enough depth of field, balance the histogram, boost the saturation and sharpen until it bites.
 People will say you have a choice with digital on all those things, it just looks to me that everyone makes the same choice, including the pro labs. I think thats were the difference between the two shows the most,2. the mindset each tends to create that dictates the final outcome, more than the technical abilities/limitations of each.

1. Yes, that's my view exactly; I think 'perfection' in the sense of everything looking crisp, having a total black and an absolute white in every circumstance misses the point of image, which is about the representation of, essentially, an idea, and not an exercise in following the 'rules'.

2. Indeed; in fact, in an attempt to break from that perceived sterility I do my utmost these days to avoid too much photographic reality. That's just too easy an option: do very little yourself to change things and you get that sharp picture saying pretty much nothing more than hey, don't I look perfect? Hence my liking for blur and the introduction of a little bit of faked granularity, just enough to remove that deadly slickness from where it doesn't quite belong.

Of course, this comes from my wearing my amateur's hat; wearing the old alternative would have had me singing a different song.

Rob

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

There are a few differences between digital printing and chemical printing:

With chemical printing you are given a limited sets of parameters. You have a film curve and a paper curve. In B&W printing you have some gradation from hard to soft, but each comes with it's curves.

With chemical process yo have a chain where quality is lost at each stage. If you are familiar with MTF, each stage has an MTF and the final quality is the product of all MTFs along the way.

So MTF of the print is MTF (lens) x MTF (film) x MTF (enlarging lens) x MTF (Paper).

With digital you have MTF (Lens) * MTF (sensor) * MTF (capture sharpening) * MTF(output sharpening) * MTF (printer)

The sharpening steps here can restore sharpness lost in the process.

Also, digital processing has much less noise, not least because digital sensors are much more efficient capturing photons (light) than film. That allows for better processing.

Large format film may have an advantage over small digital sensors, but I would bet that in most cases digital, when correctly processed, will outperform film.

Best regards
Erik

I'm having a discussion with a couple of photographer friends about the merits of what they call analogue printing ie prints from digital files ( scanned film or from camera) onto fuji crystal archive or other "photographic papers" versus archival ink jet prints. They say analogue is best ! The problem is that this is a very subjective point of view, but they won't have it. They say the "depth" in the analogue print is better, the range of colours or tonal range ( in black and white ) is better. I would rather they say " I much prefer the look of an analogue print, it suits my work better" rather than the definitive "analogue printing is much better than digital"

Are they right ? In the opinion of experienced printers on this forum is analogue better than digital in its ability to produce "better" prints ? Has anybody carried out exhaustive tests with the same image printed in different ways ?
I have read that the colour gamut achievable in digital printing is far wider than with analogue so this must mean the results from a "good" digital print must outweigh the results from a "good" analogue print.

Is it really a matter of subjective taste or is there any scientific evidence to back up one point of view against the other ?

Most interested to hear thoughts from the forum.

Steve

[digitaldog]

I have read that the colour gamut achievable in digital printing is far wider than with analogue so this must mean the results from a "good" digital print must outweigh the results from a "good" analogue print.

Far wider indeed. Here's a gamut plot of a Lightjet vs. an Epson 3880. Lightjet is the red plot, Epson the semi-transparent full color (to show what colors exceed the Lightjet):

[Rob C]

Hi,

There are a few differences between digital printing and chemical printing:

With chemical printing you are given a limited sets of parameters. You have a film curve and a paper curve. In B&W printing you have some gradation from hard to soft, but each comes with it's curves.

With chemical process yo have a chain where quality is lost at each stage. If you are familiar with MTF, each stage has an MTF and the final quality is the product of all MTFs along the way.

So MTF of the print is MTF (lens) x MTF (film) x MTF (enlarging lens) x MTF (Paper).

With digital you have MTF (Lens) * MTF (sensor) * MTF (capture sharpening) * MTF(output sharpening) * MTF (printer)

The sharpening steps here can restore sharpness lost in the process.

Also, digital processing has much less noise, not least because digital sensors are much more efficient capturing photons (light) than film. That allows for better processing.

Large format film may have an advantage over small digital sensors, but I would bet that in most cases digital, when correctly processed, will outperform film.

Best regards
Erik

Erik,

That's life viewed from a techincal point of view. But it represent only one part of the whole: art ain't technical; art is gut feeling.

Since the advent of digital many people have tried to show that idea to be flawed; however, I feel they all fall down in one way or the other. It's really about the photographer and what, if anything, his work is able to express. It is perfectly true that digital capture can probably handle some work far better than could film, but within the realm of people photography, I'd disagree.

Three of the best people photographers of whom I am aware are below; they are far from young, they still work regularly. I would be surprised if anyone not familiar with the ages of the models could identify the capture processes each has used.

www.hansfeurer.com

https://www.google.es/search?q=gil+bensimon+photography&biw=1257&bih=889&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=hHZCVdq8JMixUcj5gpgH&ved=0CCMQsAQ#imgrc=qW0HDBCeuiwF0M%253A%3BzWNYqucj4baSXM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fattheloft.typepad.com%252F.a%252F6a00e54ecca8b9883301a511aab7a5970c-pi%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.imageamplified.com%252F2014%252F04%252Fvogue-paris-karlie-kloss-andreea-diaconu-in-bronzage-culture-by-gilles-bensimon-claire-dhelens-may-2014-wwwimageamplif.html%3B650%3B845

http://2bmanagement.com/peter-lindbergh/

Now, that's magazine printing and web-viewing; perhaps you are on about printing for the wall? In that case, it boils down, surprise! surprise! not to technical but to aesthetic parameters, including opinion. Sure, I'm biased because of my many, many commercial printmaking hours spent in several darkrooms including two of my own, but I have yet to see anything to touch a double-weight glossy black/white print that's been beautifully glazed: the tonality is the best you can get. IMO, of course. Colour prints? I think I might grant digital superiority there: never was very fond of colour prints, even of those I had to make myself. No question that the advent of Layers makes life for a colour printer much more simple!

Rob

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi Rob,

I am just an amateur photographer. I have been doing B&W printing from say 1965 to 2000, or so. After doing military service in 1980 I had some respiratory problems and had issues with darkroom chemical, so when the Epson Stylus EX arrived it was a great relief. Since that time I have learned a lot about colour management. So, for me at least the digital workflows is a relief.

Now, I never stated that I would have been an Ansel Adams in the wet darkroom, but I am also no Ctein in the Digital Lightroom.

I would say that it is a great advantage with digital that I can have full control. My printing capacity is up to A2, going beyond that it would be Durs Lambda at a Swedish pro labb. But, I just post the processed image and they print it without human involvement. So far I have been extremely happy.

Best regards
Erik

Erik,

That's life viewed from a techincal point of view. But it represent only one part of the whole: art ain't technical; art is gut feeling.

Since the advent of digital many people have tried to show that idea to be flawed; however, I feel they all fall down in one way or the other. It's really about the photographer and what, if anything, his work is able to express. It is perfectly true that digital capture can probably handle some work far better than could film, but within the realm of people photography, I'd disagree.

Three of the best people photographers of whom I am aware are below; they are far from young, they still work regularly. I would be surprised if anyone not familiar with the ages of the models could identify the capture processes each has used.

www.hansfeurer.com

https://www.google.es/search?q=gil+bensimon+photography&biw=1257&bih=889&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=hHZCVdq8JMixUcj5gpgH&ved=0CCMQsAQ#imgrc=qW0HDBCeuiwF0M%253A%3BzWNYqucj4baSXM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fattheloft.typepad.com%252F.a%252F6a00e54ecca8b9883301a511aab7a5970c-pi%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.imageamplified.com%252F2014%252F04%252Fvogue-paris-karlie-kloss-andreea-diaconu-in-bronzage-culture-by-gilles-bensimon-claire-dhelens-may-2014-wwwimageamplif.html%3B650%3B845

http://2bmanagement.com/peter-lindbergh/

Now, that's magazine printing and web-viewing; perhaps you are on about printing for the wall? In that case, it boils down, surprise! surprise! not to technical but to aesthetic parameters, including opinion. Sure, I'm biased because of my many, many commercial printmaking hours spent in several darkrooms including two of my own, but I have yet to see anything to touch a double-weight glossy black/white print that's been beautifully glazed: the tonality is the best you can get. IMO, of course. Colour prints? I think I might grant digital superiority there: never was very fond of colour prints, even of those I had to make myself. No question that the advent of Layers makes life for a colour printer much more simple!

Rob

[Rob C]

Hi Erik,

It's not a call about whether either of us would have been a St Ansel; rather that I got the impression from your post that you figured that digital invariably, because of the marriage of lens/printer/system measurements, produced a finer product. (I also note that my spelling of 'technical' looks kind of more cute when I write 'techincal' instead!)

I never suffered problems from chemicals; the guy from whom I took over the colour printing in the industrial photo-unit where I was working before going solo did suffer, very badly, from dermatitis all over both hands from, I think, not enough care with colour chemicals. For those, I always wore rubber gloves, but never for b/white because it was hands on or not at all. We were very often doing runs of thirty to fifty prints from each negative, so putting thirty of them through a dish at one time meant you had to feel them properly or you were lost. What I did realise was that wearing clear nail varnish stopped the fingernails turning brown. My wife never told me if she worried about that.

In a sense, colour printing was pretty much close to digital printing, because it was all done at a distance, as it were: you never watched a sheet of paper develop: it all happened inside a Kodak tank. I vaguely recall there was a filter of sorts that could be used in a safelight, but we never took that route.

Incidentally, being an amateur doesn't, by definition, mean somebody has to be less capable than some professionals are; far from it, unless you get into fairly specialised fields of work.

Ciao -

Rob

[KevinA]

Erik, I think you just proved what I said.
Just because digital has lossless wider gamut, does not mean it's better.
I'm yet to see a digital portrait that looks as beautiful as one shot on Kodak portra, sharper yes, lots of bright  colours yes but not as beautiful. You can argue with digital you can make it like film. Seldom does anyone do it and usually when they think they do they try and make it look like bad film.
Why does less grain mean it's better anyway?
A few years ago I shot some aerials of London for fun on a Rolleiflex, only about 2 rolls. I put them on my site with all the thousands of digital images. An architect selected 6 images and paid the license for the use. I was curious and contacted them, explaining that out of all the thousands of images to choose from they picked 6 shot on film.
They didn't know they were film but just preferred the feel and atmosphere of those images. I didn't say are you sure all the others have less noise and larger gamut.
That to me was the ultimate blind test, a new client handing over money after choosing from my website without any contact with me.
The more digital progresses the bigger the difference and better  film looks, it's the difference between a comfy chair and a dentists chair, one might have all the bells and whistles and electric motors but I wouldn't want to down a beer and watch TV on it.

[Rob C]

Erik, I think you just proved what I said.
Just because digital has lossless wider gamut, does not mean it's better.
I'm yet to see a digital portrait that looks as beautiful as one shot on Kodak portra, sharper yes, lots of bright  colours yes but not as beautiful. You can argue with digital you can make it like film. Seldom does anyone do it and usually when they think they do they try and make it look like bad film.
Why does less grain mean it's better anyway?
A few years ago I shot some aerials of London for fun on a Rolleiflex, only about 2 rolls. I put them on my site with all the thousands of digital images. An architect selected 6 images and paid the license for the use. I was curious and contacted them, explaining that out of all the thousands of images to choose from they picked 6 shot on film.
They didn't know they were film but just preferred the feel and atmosphere of those images. I didn't say are you sure all the others have less noise and larger gamut.
That to me was the ultimate blind test, a new client handing over money after choosing from my website without any contact with me.
The more digital progresses the bigger the difference and better  film looks, it's the difference between a comfy chair and a dentists chair, one might have all the bells and whistles and electric motors but I wouldn't want to down a beer and watch TV on it.

Resonates! Spent one hour in such a chair yesterday, and paid a hundred euros for the pleasure. Essential for what it does, but that's it!

Many top guys use/used film for as long as they possibly can/could. Of many, Albert Watson is the first coming to mind. This wasn't because of fear of the new, ignorance or anything like that - they have the means to employ any digital guru they wish - but from the evidence of their own eyes. Never mind digital, I first noticed the decline when plastic Multigrades became the norm.

Rob C

[digitaldog]

Just because digital has lossless wider gamut, does not mean it's better.

Better is subjective. A wider gamut is a colorimetric fact. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive. If the image content fits within the gamut of both, then it's not even a colorimetric fact for that image. Better is going to still be subjective.

[Rob C]

Better is subjective. A wider gamut is a colorimetric fact. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive. If the image content fits within the gamut of both, then it's not even a colorimetric fact for that image. Better is going to still be subjective.

Isn't that what the art of photography has ever been about? Isn't that why some top guns get the work that other top guns do not?

In which case, where the presumed superiority of a digital system?

Rob C

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Isn't that what the art of photography has ever been about? Isn't that why some top guns get the work that other top guns do not?

In which case, where the presumed superiority of a digital system?

Or the supposed superiority of film, that you seem to be claiming in a number of recent threads ...

Cheers,
Bart

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I wouldn't regard continous printing from digital originals analogue printing…

There are many different perespectives:

• Do we print ourselves or give away printing to a lab?
• Digital printing is easy, but achieving great results may need some learning.
• Especially with colour, I would think that photographers were slaves to film makers and labs.
• With digital we are masters of our workflow, but with freedom comes responsibility.
• With digital we have full control, Lightroom, Photoshop and colour management

For me, digital was a challenge but foremost a deliverance.

This interview with Charles Cramer is one of my all time favourites here on LuLa: https://luminous-landscape.com/videos/luminous-landscape-video-journal-issue-16/interview-charles-cramer/

Best regards
Erik

Or the supposed superiority of film, that you seem to be claiming in a number of recent threads ...

Cheers,
Bart