In Praise of The Darkroom

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In Praise of the Darkroom: Why I Love Silver Gelatin (for black and white prints)

Photographers these days talk a lot about the respective advantages and disadvantages of shooting with film versus shooting with a digital camera. Such arguments tend to boil down most frequently to things like exposure latitude, resolution, and both short-term and long-term equipment costs.

We don't often have significant and informed discussions of printing. In fact, we don't often have them at all. Like it or not, this is mostly the fault of your average consumer to pro-sumer level digital photographer. While printing plays an integral and almost necessary role in negative film processes, its role tends to be far less important in the digital community. This is due first and foremost to the fact that printing is never a necessary part of viewing a digital photograph. But also, the vast majority of digital photographers either print at home using an inkjket or dye-sublimation printer, send their photos to a web-based printing service, or take them to a local consumer-grade lab to be printed. For your average consumer or pro-sumer, this is perfectly acceptable. (I should note here that this is also sometimes the case with film shooters who scan negatives).

But what if you are a pro? More specifically, what if you care about print quality? This greatly changes your printing requirements. Many of the following arguments I will make I believe apply to making professional grade color prints as well. It should be obvious which ones they are.

I should take a moment here to qualify my competency to write this essay. I have both a solid level of experience with traditional chemical photographic processes and extensive experience with some of the best software, printers, and paper in the professional inkjet industry.


What Does it Take to Make a Professional Quality Black and White Inkjet Print?

Let's talk printers. Actually, let's talk Epson. It is the industry standard. It is not possible to make a professional quality black and white print with a 2200 or below using stock inks. End of story. For some printers, there are black-only ink sets available from companies like Piezography. They do work well. They also take away your ability to digitally tone beyond what tones a given paper exhibits, without buying another tone ink set. You will need an Epson 4800 or better. That will cost you $2000. At least. You will also need a RIP. ColorBurst (Epson's stock RIP) will not do. QuadTone seems appealing, since it's free and it's made specifically for black and white prints. It does not handle K3 (CCMMYKK+K) stock inks as well as you might think. You'll need something like Bowhaus OPM, which weighs in at an affordable $250. Okay so $2250+ and you're off to the races, right? Wrong.

Let's talk profiling. You'll need a spectrocolorimeter and accompanying software. Something like Pantone ColorVision's PrintFix Pro will do for a modest $500 or the X-Rite i1 Design for $1000. So grab a sheet of your favorite paper and make a profile. Great! Now grab 100 more sheets and spend the next two weeks tweaking the profile. You can give up in frustration. That's okay. Just call someone to come calibrate it for you. It'll only set you back a few grand minimum.

Let's talk paper. Okay so at this point, you've got your printer, your profile, and your paper. What if you decide you want to print on a paper with a different surface? Go back to the profiling step and start over. Repeat this process until you have profiles for all the papers you wish to use.

Let's talk recurring costs. First you'll need ink. Lots of it. Don't worry, it's only $60 a cartridge. Times 8 cartridges is $480. Times how often you go through them over the course of a year is a lot of money. Did I mention you'll have to buy a new printer every couple years? You know what that means! Start over at step 1! Isn't this so easy and fun?

As you can see, the process of making a professional black and white print is both costly and time-consuming. What I've described above is not exceptional. It is the norm. The prices I've quoted for equipment and ink are average. The prices for profiling are actually on the conservative side, especially if you hire someone to do it for you.


Why Can't I Print With a Normal Printer?

Normal printers (Epson 2200 and below, Canon mid and small-format) have several distinct disadvantages. With stock inks, they are never able to escape problems of metamerism (the quality of prints changing color due to the temperature of the light they are viewed under). They are also unable to accommodate heavy weight papers and have less flexible ink systems. You could go with a Piezo system, which will run you between $400 and $700, plus the cost of their refill inks. On top of all that, you still have to go through all the paper profiling steps described above and purchase all the necessary equipment. You save some money on the printer, but everything else is the same. Additionally, using a black-only ink set will of course bar you from using the same printer to make color prints. You'll need to buy a second printer.


Why Would I Do All That When I Can Just Send My Prints To a Printer?

There are several good reasons to print at home instead of sending your prints off. Most importantly, you have an unparalleled level of control over tone and paper choice. Large web-based printing houses and local professional labs alike have very limited paper choices beyond your standard gloss, semi-gloss, and matte. Anyone who has been in the industry during film's heyday will recall using the phase "Print it again" at the local pro-lab too often. You can use it as much as you like. Your black and whites will never look the way you want. Even if you aren't a complete control freak, you will still have to send them off to a specialty lab (most likely somewhere else in the country unless you live in NYC or LA). There is no such thing as "good enough" if you are serious about your work.


How I Escape These Problems in the Darkroom

I'll refrain here from going into the details of the equipment and chemical costs of a darkroom, except to say that most of the necessary equipment is literally being given away, and that many chemical stocks are very long-lasting.

The fact of the matter is that for anyone with enough time to make prints in a darkroom, you have an amazing measure of control over paper surfaces and toning at a cost that is less than printing yourself or sending off your work for custom prints. There exist an enormous variety of papers in a multitude of surfaces that all print the same image in the same chemicals, and respond in similar ways to toning. As a black and white film shooter, that is the end of the story for me.


What If I Shoot Digital? Hybrid Approaches

There are three hybrid approaches that make traditional darkroom printing possible for the digital photographer, two of which are little-known. The first is having a negative made from a digital image. Easy, low cost. Second, are digital enlargers, which are traditional negative enlargers fitted with heads that project digital images onto paper. High cost. Third is making the negative yourself using a film recorder. Though some companies still manufacture them, the most common, affordable, and widely available film recorder is called the Pro Palette or Digital Palette, which was manufactured by Polaroid until recently. It interfaces with your computer, usually via SCSI, and will print digital images onto film from 35mm all the way up to 4x5. On a normal day on eBay, a clean, functioning unit will set you back between $0.99 and $75.


 

What If I Shoot Digital? Hybrid Approaches

There are three hybrid approaches that make traditional darkroom printing possible for the digital photographer, two of which are little-known. The first is having a negative made from a digital image. Easy, low cost. Second, are digital enlargers, which are traditional negative enlargers fitted with heads that project digital images onto paper. High cost. Third is making the negative yourself using a film recorder. Though some companies still manufacture them, the most common, affordable, and widely available film recorder is called the Pro Palette or Digital Palette, which was manufactured by Polaroid until recently. It interfaces with your computer, usually via SCSI, and will print digital images onto film from 35mm all the way up to 4x5. On a normal day on eBay, a clean, functioning unit will set you back between $0.99 and $75.



Way to shoot the tangable honesty of film in the foot...
 
Way to shoot the tangable honesty of film in the foot...

If you can keep your answer relevant to the thread, I'm curious as to what "the tangible honesty of film" is. Otherwise, shoot me a PM. (I will say, though, that whatever that means, I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of it in order to a) Get more people into the darkroom, and b) Get more people caring about the quality of their prints).
 
widely available film recorder is called the Pro Palette or Digital Palette, which was manufactured by Polaroid until recently. It interfaces with your computer, usually via SCSI, and will print digital images onto film from 35mm all the way up to 4x5. On a normal day on eBay, a clean, functioning unit will set you back between $0.99 and $75.

interesting! did not know about that one and it sounds not very pricey. If it is not produced anymore, I wonder about driver support though.

I wonder if the quality is sufficient for 35mm slides. I have a vast mixed digital/slide film collection of images, and sometimes it would be useful to project both in one presentation using my slide projector.
 
interesting! did not know about that one and it sounds not very pricey. If it is not produced anymore, I wonder about driver support though.

I wonder if the quality is sufficient for 35mm slides. I have a vast mixed digital/slide film collection of images, and sometimes it would be useful to project both in one presentation using my slide projector.

Alex,

The software needed is called RasterPlus. It is available on eBay or a few other sources on the web for a pretty small amount of money and is sometimes bundled in with the Pro/Digital Palette. There may even be a free copy or two floating around the web somewhere. As for slides, it is very capable. I've printed many of them from the Pro Palette in our lab. If I recall correctly, the machine prefers to print on Elite Chrome, though I believe it can print on Ektachrome as well.

Most units print at 36-bit depth, approx 4000px wide by 3000px high onto 35mm. That's 12MP.
 
Interesting stuff, very thought provoking. Having said that, I've know for a long time that I want access to a darkroom again - hopefully I'll get my wish before I get too old (or dead) to do anything about it.
 
Alex,

The software needed is called RasterPlus. It is available on eBay or a few other sources on the web for a pretty small amount of money and is sometimes bundled in with the Pro/Digital Palette. There may even be a free copy or two floating around the web somewhere. As for slides, it is very capable. I've printed many of them from the Pro Palette in our lab. If I recall correctly, the machine prefers to print on Elite Chrome, though I believe it can print on Ektachrome as well.

Most units print at 36-bit depth, approx 4000px wide by 3000px high onto 35mm. That's 12MP.

Thanks Max,

4000x3000 should be sufficient I suppose.

I will look into this and think about it.
 
What would you suggest to someone who doesn't have the space (l.a. apartment) or access to a darkroom? (honest question, I want to know)

I do develop my own black and white film at home (as of this week), but i'm resorting to scanning my negatives for inkjet prints.
 
If you can keep your answer relevant to the thread, I'm curious as to what "the tangible honesty of film" is. Otherwise, shoot me a PM. (I will say, though, that whatever that means, I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of it in order to a) Get more people into the darkroom, and b) Get more people caring about the quality of their prints).

Inbound
 
I read an article in Lenswork today that talked about pretty much JUST this.
 
What would you suggest to someone who doesn't have the space (l.a. apartment) or access to a darkroom? (honest question, I want to know)

I do develop my own black and white film at home (as of this week), but i'm resorting to scanning my negatives for inkjet prints.

Try rental darkrooms. Here are a couple in L.A.

http://eecue.com/log_archive/eecue-log-550-LA_Photo_Center.html

http://www.translightcolors.com/home.html

(well this one's in Irvine) http://www.cityofirvine.org/depts/cs/finearts/open_studio.asp
 
Max,

There is a lot of good stuff and misinformation in your thoughtful post, so I hope you won't mind if I tackle it in small bites.

...

What Does it Take to Make a Professional Quality Black and White Inkjet Print?

Let's talk printers. Actually, let's talk Epson. It is the industry standard. It is not possible to make a professional quality black and white print with a 2200 or below using stock inks. End of story. For some printers, there are black-only ink sets available from companies like Piezography. They do work well. They also take away your ability to digitally tone beyond what tones a given paper exhibits, without buying another tone ink set. You will need an Epson 4800 or better. That will cost you $2000. At least. You will also need a RIP. ColorBurst (Epson's stock RIP) will not do. QuadTone seems appealing, since it's free and it's made specifically for black and white prints. It does not handle K3 (CCMMYKK+K) stock inks as well as you might think. You'll need something like Bowhaus OPM, which weighs in at an affordable $250. Okay so $2250+ and you're off to the races, right? Wrong.

Let's talk profiling. You'll need a spectrocolorimeter and accompanying software. Something like Pantone ColorVision's PrintFix Pro will do for a modest $500 or the X-Rite i1 Design for $1000. So grab a sheet of your favorite paper and make a profile. Great! Now grab 100 more sheets and spend the next two weeks tweaking the profile. You can give up in frustration. That's okay. Just call someone to come calibrate it for you. It'll only set you back a few grand minimum.

...​


You don't need a spectrophotometer or a colorimeter (a colorimeter and a spectrophotometer are two quite different things) to make B&W profiles. A good old densitometer will do. $50 on eBay. It doesn't have to be accurate or calibrated. It does not take 100 sheets and two weeks to tweak a profile once you know what you are doing.

You can use a 2200 with K3 inks for B&W with a RIP. You don't have to use Piezography, and you can vary the tone by including a coupe of toners in the ink set. A 2200 with a dedicated B&W ink set is able to achieve a greater density range than is possible in the darkroom.

More later.

Best wishes,
Helen
 
Helen beat me to it...

Also, there is a extremely wide variety of papers available for the 2200 with pre-existing profiles as a start. It isn't as bad as people make it out to be.

2200 ink cartridges DO NOT cost $60 a pop. Try $8-12.

2200 is more than capable of accommodating thick paper.... there is an option for rear-feeding.

Metamerism was a problem on the 2200 mainly on glossy media. Not so bad on matte with the proper inkset. I do believe Epson addressed this issue in the R2400 (the 2200 replacement) and above.

Your section "Why Would I Do All That When I Can Just Send My Prints To a Printer?" is not really an issue of wet darkroom versus digital. It is actually the difference between doing your own prints in a personal darkroom versus sending your prints out to a printer. The issues you bring up will impact either digital or film B&W shooters who send their prints out.
 
We said Max and Helen. I just don't have the time to do wet process anymore. Maybe the better way to say it is, I choose to do other things besides take the time to do wet B&W.
 
Max,

There is a lot of good stuff and misinformation in your thoughtful post, so I hope you won't mind if I tackle it in small bites.



You don't need a spectrophotometer or a colorimeter (a colorimeter and a spectrophotometer are two quite different things) to make B&W profiles. A good old densitometer will do. $50 on eBay. It doesn't have to be accurate or calibrated. It does not take 100 sheets and two weeks to tweak a profile once you know what you are doing.

You can use a 2200 with K3 inks for B&W with a RIP. You don't have to use Piezography, and you can vary the tone by including a coupe of toners in the ink set. A 2200 with a dedicated B&W ink set is able to achieve a greater density range than is possible in the darkroom.

More later.

Best wishes,
Helen
[/INDENT]

Helen,

I have an extensive amount of experience in this area. I do not believe any of it is misinformation (obviously I would not have posted it if I thought that was the case). More to the point, I don't believe any of it is wrong.

I understand what a spectrophotometer and colorimeter are, I use both regularly in a variety of scientific settings. I used the term "spectrocolorimeter" in this case because that is how DataColor refers to their apparatus.

You are correct in noting that a densitometer will suffice. The hardware packaged with those two products I mentioned basically is a densitometer. You could go buy one on eBay, but you'd still be missing the profiling software. Of the RIP software I mentioned, only Bowhaus does an adequate job of color-managing greyscale printing with K3 inks. I believe that densitometry is something that needs to be addressed in the professional inkjet printing community. Normal reflection densitometers are not ideally suited to this application because they are incapable of distinguishing between magenta and light magenta, and cyan and light cyan. That said, they are certainly up to the job for the most part. But given that magenta ink is the single greatest contributing factor in metamerism, the fact that our printer is laying down two different kinds and our tools cannot tell the difference I believe is problematic.

As for how long it takes to really nail a profile, I beg to differ on the time frame and wasted paper. Perhaps my 100 sheet + 2 weeks figure is a slight exaggeration for something like your standard semi-gloss paper, but it isn't far off in my experience. There are a number of factors to consider in profiling, and not all of them can be streamlined into a single workflow. Correcting for ink density problems will often affect metamerism and color-casting, and vice versa. As for the time frame, trial and error is very much a big part of precise profiling in my mind. Things like fine tuning ink density for a particular paper, for example, can be rather time consuming. Further, there are often variables affecting profiling that are not always readily apparent and take extra effort to correct. For example, after a significant amount of work profiling a 2200 to print on Epson's semi-gloss paper, I finally realized that the paper itself was contributing significantly to my metamerism problems.

As for what the 2200 is capable of. I don't believe it's capable of much of anything without a dedicated black ink set. For those on a budget, buying the ink set and a second printer to do color work can be problematic. I've spent much more time profiling the 2200 than the higher ups precisely because it is such an impossible machine to profile. I found that even the Bowhaus RIP had great difficulty getting metamerism, color cast, and density right simultaneously. The QuadTone RIP is positively useless without a dedicated black ink set. It's not even very good on the 4800+ models. Remember that QuadTone was originally developed specifically for black-only inks, and was later adapted for K3.

As for comparing the density range to silver gelatin prints, I do not wish to do so at all. I'm perfectly happy to grant that inkjet printing is capable of a wider density range. My argument here, is that at time, energy, and fiscal costs equivalent to or better than color-managing a printer (or two printers in the case of black-only), there is a greater range of freedom with respect to paper surfaces and toning in the darkroom. I will add, though, regarding your comment about density range, that I do not believe this is an important consideration even for your average professional. Most people, pros included, will never invest the time, energy, and expense into tweaking their printer so that they can take full advantage of its density range capabilities. Very few individual black and white printers (not labs) will go as far as someone like Nick Brandt to get an inkjet absolutely perfect and absolutely consistent on a given paper. Just as many professionals elected to print onto enlarging papers when they knew that better results could be had printing on silver chloride, most people printing at home, even with expensive setups, will not go the extra mile to get everything they can out of their printer. The crowd I am speaking to here is not composed of people like myself, and Brandt, and perhaps you-- the zealous and perfectionist ones. The people I am speaking to are the ones who believe it is easy and cost-effective to make great black and white prints at home. I do not believe that it is, especially when you take recurring monetary costs associated with ink and printer replacement and their consequential time and energy costs associated with re-profiling.
 

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