On 2013-05-01 15:31, Jonathan Turner wrote:
In answer to your question Karl, I hope to be printing around A2 size (16x24" I think)...basically I'm hoping to do a portrait project in my home city of Leeds, UK, and I really want to shoot 5x4. Part of the apeal of 5x4 is the level of detail in the image, so the scan quality is kind of important. The other thing that interests me in using 5x4 is a different kind of interaction with subject...it's much slower, and more deliberate, and I think that creates a differnt kind of atmosphere in the image.
Back around a decade ago I did an evening of 4x5 portraiture as a training exercise for myself, precisely to make me work slower and more deliberately. I limited myself to two sheets per subject. And in fact got some very useful shots out of it, and even learned some.
Anyway, it's an idea I've been mulling over for a few years now, and think the time has come to put thought into action...but as with anything that involves film, expense is an issue... buying the film, and then processing is expensive as it is, but I'd not realised quite how expensive scanning can be! For the amount of scanning I'd like to have done I reckoned I could actually buy a half decent scanner and do it myself, though the problem is whether the scans will be good enough to be useful...I would at least like to give each of my subjects a print (as a thank you for being involved), so the scans need to be at least good enough for that.
Most of my scans from that are on a flatbed; only one I had to resort to commercial scans for. Your standards may vary :-).
One might ask, why scan at all, if working with film...why not just print in a darkroom...? Well, I used to love spending time in a darkroom, but I actually find the best way, and perhaps the most convenient way, is to shoot and scan the film, and the use Photoshop as my darkroom. I just don't have the resources or time to spend in a darkroom unfortunately. There was a thread on here a few weeks back about Avedon's American West series (which is partly my inspiration...though he was shooting 10x8" of course) - he had a whole team of people working with him, both on the shoots and in the darkroom...I don't have that, just me and hopefully a couple of friends to assist... so scan/PS seems to be the best way forward.
I went to digital output years before I started doing digital capture, so I'm entirely sympathetic there.
Galen Rowell went to digital printing in...looks like 1999 here; see his article...apparently can't be directly linked. It's under www.mountainlight.com/articles.html, titled "World's Best Prints" from Outdoor Photographer, June 1999.
One more thought; unlike Avedon's series, I want to shoot colour - (interestingly my lab in Leeds doesn't even process 5x4 colour neg any more...they'll do E6, and B/W, but not colour neg...so I have to use a lab about an hour up the road...) and I wonder if scanning colour 5x4 is any more complicated than scanning a B/W 5x4...are there any pitfalls with colour reproduction, and detail that I should be aware of? Hopefully a flatbed will be good enough to make some small colour prints from, and to make a final selection for exhibition (and high res scans...)
Color is always more complicated than B&W, there are more variables. But scanning color negs isn't terribly hard. Scanning slides is much harder.
-- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
