Digital to film negative

[unpopular]

But why go back into the darkroom at all? Well, this is 21st century America and so yeah, there's no reason. No one today would value a b&w silver print properly processed to last at least a millennium when they could have a print made in ink that will fade away in a small fraction of that time. No more need for film recorders.

Joe

This is the best reason for doing it. A silver negative can be viewed with the naked eye for many years in the future.

Except that it is a gross exaggeration. While carbo process might last 500-1000 years, silver-based process will likely not, and less likely so under adverse conditions. Most modern carbon printers will produce digital negatives using an inkjet. Carbon-based pigments for b/w inkjet photography would easily out perform silver photography in terms of archive.

The only art medium that can truly last "mellenia" without significant control would be fresco. While photofresco is theoretically plausible using carbon process techniques, to my knowledge it has not been developed.

 

[vintagesnaps]

That could be a good alternative Orrin, thanks for posting that link. I'd like to try to learn how to do it myself one of these days....

Digital Negatives


- When there was major flooding in NYC, galleries were able to restore some photographs that were traditional silver prints while inkjet prints were unsalvageable. I accidently spattered a few drops of water on a couple of my inkjet prints once and they peeled apart like they'd been superglued together. I've also managed to get a few drops of water on my own darkroom prints which just affected the gloss and I was able to smooth it out.

I think it depends on the materials used; traditional B&W negatives and prints seem to hold up over time and using archivally safe materials would probably help newer prints last longer.

 

[unpopular]

while intended for semiconductor design:

Nanotube ink (Nink): for Inkjet Printing of Carbon Nanotube Inks

could be applied to (very expensive) photography with archival qualities that would be limited pretty much only the substrate

 

[ann]

ALso, google Mark Nelson, he teaches workshops and has a book as well for making a "digital negative" and then using it in traditional /alternative process darkrooms.

 

[Ysarex]

But why go back into the darkroom at all? Well, this is 21st century America and so yeah, there's no reason. No one today would value a b&w silver print properly processed to last at least a millennium when they could have a print made in ink that will fade away in a small fraction of that time. No more need for film recorders.

Joe

This is the best reason for doing it. A silver negative can be viewed with the naked eye for many years in the future.

Except that it is a gross exaggeration. While carbo process might last 500-1000 years, silver-based process will likely not, and less likely so under adverse conditions. Most modern carbon printers will produce digital negatives using an inkjet. Carbon-based pigments for b/w inkjet photography would easily out perform silver photography in terms of archive.

The only art medium that can truly last "mellenia" without significant control would be fresco. While photofresco is theoretically plausible using carbon process techniques, to my knowledge it has not been developed.

Sorry I didn't specifically say gold or selenium toned silver print, but it's assumed if your working to archival standards.

Joe

 

[lenny_eiger]

There are a lot of people doing this, and for good reason. There actually two main reasons.

The first is for alternative processes like platinum, gravure, gum, cyanotpype, VanDyke, carbon, etc., that need a negative the size they are going to be printed. If you are shooting with a 4x5 and want to make a 16x20, then you have to enlarge the negative to that size.
The other reason is that there is often a lot of work done in the darkroom to make the print one is after. Burning and dodging, two-bath development, masking, and other techniques. Using PhotoShop one can do this once, output a new negative and all the changes are made going forward. There is far more control in PhotoShop, one can also remove something thats objectionable, add shadow detail from another negative, etc. And, of course, all the spotting is done only once.

This is being done by a lot of people...

Lenny

EigerStudios
Museum Quality Drum Scanning and Printing

 

[RishiNair]

Hi, It is good that you are thinking differently but cost might be a factor which will differentiate. Nowadays, print technology is more into digital space rather than on relying on negative form of method which were used more in older days. You can take a example of litho which is another type of old age printing which took more time to generate the prints. The advantage of digital printing is that it takes less time and you can order when it is required instead of giving order in bulk. I would recommend you to visit PrintSop website and understand how do they run digital printing service.

 

[Gavjenks]

I see no good reason why you'd want to do this today. But it should soon be pretty cheap if for some reason you wanted to. In the very near future, they'll probably be selling retina-level resolution monitors for cheap junky desktop monitors and stuff.

So let's say in 10 years, you can buy a cheap monitor that puts out 600 DPI resolution.
1) Simply write a program that flashes the monitor on and off again in a measured amount of time. Measure this and brightness to determine a proper exposure for some type of film.
2) Put the monitor and computer in a darkroom
3) Turn it facing up
4) Lay a piece of sheet film on top of it.
5) Lay a piece of heavy opaque acrylic or something on top of that to hold it flat and stop reflections of the room from getting into the image.
6) Run the program and flash the monitor on and off with your image you want to analog-ize.
7) repeat 4-5 indefinitely, only taking seconds each image, and no printing issues.

Whic a 600DPI monitor, you could enlarge to twice the size of the neg you use. 4x5 sheet film could print to 8x10 with no issues, etc. Same as printing at 600DPI and taking a photo of it or whatever, but easier and no printing and no special equipment at all
=D

 

[Gavjenks]

The first is for alternative processes like platinum, gravure, gum, cyanotpype, VanDyke, carbon, etc., that need a negative the size they are going to be printed. If you are shooting with a 4x5 and want to make a 16x20, then you have to enlarge the negative to that size.

You could just contact expose a positive on modern film instead of paper. Then again to another piece of film (to make it a negative again, not a positive), then do your infinitely many prints at the new size using normal non-special process printing.

1) Doesn't really take much longer than digitizing and printing and taking a photo of that, etc.
2) No digital/pixelization at any point, which could easily mess up the look of an alternative process print
3) No need to buy a scanner, or a LF film camera for every single size you may want to print at. Nor rigs to line them all up and light them, etc....

The other reason is that there is often a lot of work done in the darkroom to make the print one is after. Burning and dodging, two-bath development, masking, and other techniques. Using PhotoShop one can do this once, output a new negative and all the changes are made going forward. There is far more control in PhotoShop, one can also remove something thats objectionable, add shadow detail from another negative, etc. And, of course, all the spotting is done only once.

Why not simply print your prints in a device called... a printer? If it's already digitized. You've already lost any potential "non digital look" by cramming the data into pixels and such. So just print directly and call it a day. Re-filming it doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[molested_cow]

Before I graduated, the school wanted to have both digital and film records of our work, so we took digital photos(of course) and sent the photos to a company that converted it to slides(positive). It has nothing to do with quality. They just want the records in more than just digital format.... just in case.

 

[webestang64]

Back in the early 2000's there used to be self-contained machines that converted digital images to film. They were never really all that popular. I recall only ONE photographer in my area who actually bought one. My memory's not good on this, but I thought they were called "film burners" or something like that. These were for digital image file conversion to 35mm FILM storage. I tried a number of brief Google searches, but today, the idea is mostly about going the other way, from film to digital, so despite repeated search strings, I got a lot of useless hits. THe majority of digital-to-film now seems centered on cinematic conversions, called "film-out", where the goal is to convert digitally shot cinema productions to film prints.

FILM Recorder, that's the term I believe, now that I've had a couple more minutes to think about it.

I make film negatives from digital at my lab here in St. Louis. Yep.....I use a film recorder. I can make color print, E-6 slides or BW negs, 35mm or 120 negs.

 

[runnah]

This would be like taking out the fuel injection in your car and replacing it with a carburetor.

 

[vintagesnaps]

An inkjet print is completely different from one done in chemistry - different paper, different gloss' maybe people haven't seen or handled one to realize the difference. That's why I'd like to eventually be able to make negatives from some of my digital images.

When I get color film developed I usually get prints made by the lab because I like the quality. If I was shooting digitally for a job I may not need to have that option but for my purposes with certain photos I'd want to have a negative to work from. I've made what I think are nice inkjet prints but they're just different, it just depends on the purpose.

 

[Gavjenks]

An inkjet print is completely different from one done in chemistry - different paper, different gloss' maybe people haven't seen or handled one to realize the difference. That's why I'd like to eventually be able to make negatives from some of my digital images.

Even so, it seems like a strange way to go about it to actually try to put it on literal photographic FILM first.
If you want a chemical print, why not just print off the image on transparency paper in an inkjet, then contact print to your paper, without ever involving any film? Not only is that massively faster and more convenient, but it also involves fewer transfers to new media, thus less opportunity for degradation.

Remember, there's no need to do anything BUT contact printing, since you don't have to dodge or burn or anything, as you can do that in photoshop more efficiently.

 

[Jack Colbran]

Is this thread still live? Anyone got a film recorder they want to sell.