Feb 8Liked by Lester Picker, RWB, Paper Arts Collective
Hi Les,
Absolutely agree re practice making better (not quite perfect!). Or perhaps "re-doing" rather than "practice" Here's my story:
I have been going back through a collection of Cibachrome prints I made several decades ago in a "wet" darkroom and reprints of some of the images made digitally between 15 and 4 years ago. Interestingly, in several cases I preferred the Cibas to the more recent ink jet versions. In any case I have selected about two dozen of my favorite prints for reprinting. Even looking at the not so old ink jet versions I see how to improve the prints. Or perhaps my concept of how the scene should look or how I want it to look has changed. The originals were mostly on Velvia 35 mm with a few old Kodachromes. The digital prints were made from scans on a Nikon coolscan with resolution of about 4000 dpi. For a few of my re-exams I concluded that either the resolution was not adequate and/or the scan did not capture the full contrast on the transparency. So for these I have been using a nikon slide holder to photograph the slides with a Z7 + macro lens and multiple stepped exposures (typically 0, +1, -1 f-stop, sometimes a greater range ) varying only the shutter speed on the Z7. The combination of HDR reimagine plus a resolution of about 8000 dpi on the Z7 usually results in marked improvements in the final image I use for printing.
For more details, the images were all made on NikonF2, F4, or F100 bodies with Nikon lenses. If anyone is interested i'd be happy to share further info on techniques I use. I can be contacted at
Printing is good, but doesn't give enough quality to proper individual editing. Making quality prints for editing makes no sense. I used to do dummy books with paper prints, and now rarely do
Hi Les,
Absolutely agree re practice making better (not quite perfect!). Or perhaps "re-doing" rather than "practice" Here's my story:
I have been going back through a collection of Cibachrome prints I made several decades ago in a "wet" darkroom and reprints of some of the images made digitally between 15 and 4 years ago. Interestingly, in several cases I preferred the Cibas to the more recent ink jet versions. In any case I have selected about two dozen of my favorite prints for reprinting. Even looking at the not so old ink jet versions I see how to improve the prints. Or perhaps my concept of how the scene should look or how I want it to look has changed. The originals were mostly on Velvia 35 mm with a few old Kodachromes. The digital prints were made from scans on a Nikon coolscan with resolution of about 4000 dpi. For a few of my re-exams I concluded that either the resolution was not adequate and/or the scan did not capture the full contrast on the transparency. So for these I have been using a nikon slide holder to photograph the slides with a Z7 + macro lens and multiple stepped exposures (typically 0, +1, -1 f-stop, sometimes a greater range ) varying only the shutter speed on the Z7. The combination of HDR reimagine plus a resolution of about 8000 dpi on the Z7 usually results in marked improvements in the final image I use for printing.
For more details, the images were all made on NikonF2, F4, or F100 bodies with Nikon lenses. If anyone is interested i'd be happy to share further info on techniques I use. I can be contacted at
Jayfrogel@me.com my website is www.jayfrogel.com
Bob and Les,
Would you be willing to share some links to sources for portfolio boxes that you like?
Thanks,
Bruce
Yes, it absolutely does!
Printing is good, but doesn't give enough quality to proper individual editing. Making quality prints for editing makes no sense. I used to do dummy books with paper prints, and now rarely do