Hello Shel, Interesting observations. Certainly one aspect of this issue is the person doing the printing. I'd venture to say (and I include myself), that few people who are making prints were darkroom wizards and may not be able to tell a decent print from a great one until they are shown and also taught how to produce a great one.
Another interesting angle that I ran into when shooting medium format and holds true today even more is, even when shooting film, for the most part, creating the print has become a digital process. Here in Sacramento, all the labs switched over to digital output. So my nice 67 negatives were being scanned and then printed. The only thing that would really affect the output quality was the quality of the scan. For a reasonable cost, the scanners were really built into the digital labs. These are not very high resolution scanners, but designed for quick throughput. I did find a couple of places that would do very good scanning on high end equipment to the tune of about $75.00 per image scanned. That would work for one or two fine art images, but would be a recipe for financial disaster with a wedding. This issue, among others moved me over to the digital side. Currently, my printing needs are mostly served by sending out to mpix.com or my local lab that is using Agfa DLabs and Epson big printers. I print at home for a quick and dirty or a one off for some reason. Thoughts? -- Best regards, Bruce Thursday, April 14, 2005, 8:48:30 AM, you wrote: SB> During the past few months I've had a chance to closely examine a number of SB> prints made from digital cameras and printed with inkjet printers of SB> various brands. The images were made with Canon, Pentax, and Nikon gear, SB> printers (that I know of) were Epsons, HP's, and Canons. Most everyone who SB> has sent me prints, and most that I have examined, were described by their SB> makers as being of great quality, as good as anything made with SB> conventional photography. SB> For the most part, Phooey! Of the eleven prints I've received all but SB> three were clearly over sharpened. While this is not a result of the SB> process specifically, it is a result of the print maker being either SB> careless or unskilled at his or her craft, perhaps because they've not made SB> their own prints before or not having had the chance to examine high SB> quality prints carefully, or believing that sharpness is a very important SB> quality. SB> The few that were supposed to be B&W renditions all had obvious color casts SB> to them, and while one person on this list noted that there are numerous SB> types of B&W (warm tones, cool tones to break it down into two main SB> catagories), the color casts were really obvious and gross, and the prints SB> looked nothing like any real B&W prints I've seen. This is not to say that SB> the tones and color casts were not always pleasing, but they were too SB> obvious and too far removed from the traditional B&W print that I thought SB> the photographer was striving for. SB> Just a few days ago I received two prints from a list member, one made on SB> their HP inkjet printer and another, from the same image and file, made by SB> a commercial outfit. They were miles apart in color rendition - the green SB> background, for example, was soft and almost desaturated in one version and SB> much more saturated in another. Neither looked anything like the same SB> image posted here and viewed on my monitor. This, and Rob Studdert's SB> recent test of how monitors and computers treat a color image, only drives SB> home the point that consistency is so often inconsistent, and what you see SB> isn't always what you get. SB> A couple of prints that I received showed "bronzing" in certain light, SB> although that's not the correct term and it may be misleading. It's when SB> the color changes a bit and appears a little metallic - metatastizing or SB> something similar I believe it's called. Unacceptable behvior for a print SB> that should be neutral when viewed, imo. SB> And then there are the little inkjet dots that on some prints were clearly SB> observable, although only upon very close scrutiny, and not from any SB> distance, where the dots ran together nicely and looked like continuous SB> tone. Still, they were there, and I cannot wonder how they would affect SB> our perception on a subliminal level. Yeah, that may sound like a lot of SB> bullshit psychbabble doublespeak to some, but I cannot wonder how things we SB> don't clearly see and hear can affect our observations and feelings. SB> Overall, I am not impressed with the results from the purely digital SB> workflow. I think the processes involved, for the most part - especially SB> on the consumer level - has a long way to go before consistent, quality SB> results can be had. Of course, as Herb Chong pointed out, the results may SB> be consistently repeatable, but then I can eat a bad hamburger and get a SB> repeatable result. SB> One thing I must add is that Paul Stenquist and Rob Studdert had agreed to SB> make some prints from my own files so that I could compare them to results SB> of a known quality, and I have been remiss in sending them the promised SB> files from which they'd make the prints. So while my comments here stand, SB> the test and comparison is not yet complete. SB> Shel
