Shel wrote:
> In addition, there are now a wide variety of color
> and B&W films, all with different characteristics. How does digital
> deal with that? What id I want a grainy looking photograph, like TX
> in Acufine, or something along the lines of Agfapan APX 25 in
> Rodinal? How can digital provide those characteristics?
But why SHOULD digital reproduce those characteristics? Its purpose isn't to
MIMIC film photography. All media have their own characteristics. Although I
certainly love b&w photography, I'm aware that its characteristics are
aesthetically arbitrary. I've learned to love 'em, sure, but there's nothing
_inherently_ beautiful or desirable about grain et al.
> And then there's the final print. From what I've seen, unless one is
> using something like an Iris printer, the stuff that comes of the
> typical ink jet printer pales in comparison to a well-printed
> photograph made in a chemical darkroom. While it may be good enough
> for some people, thus far from what I've seen it just doesn't do it
> for me.
Here, you and I totally disagree. I've never worked in color because I
generally dislike the aesthetic properties of color photographic media. Type
C prints are typically plagued by what Bertram W. Miller called "arrastres,"
meaning contamination of one dye layer by another, producing impure colors;
and I've never, ever cared for the typical "look" of slides, especially when
people "underexpose" for "color saturation"--ugh, that airless world with
its exaggerated shadows, from which no light can escape.
The only traditional color media I've seen that have held much promise are
masked matte Cibachromes and dye transfer, neither of which techniques I've
ever mastered or stand much chance of mastering.
Digital color is literally and figuratively the liberation of color. It's a
wonderful medium IMO--the colors have all the color-purity advantages of ink
on paper, the contrast range can be as wonderfully long and soft as you wish
it to be, and the surface of the matte papers I find to be lovely (I've also
never cared for the surfaces of glossy photographic papers, although I will
say the glossy inkjet papers do a disconcertingly good job of mimicking
that).
As far as black-and-white is concerned, I've seen some _stunningly_ good
prints made digitally. But I have to say I'm not very interested in b&w
digital, simply because I have no problem with b&w traditional. I don't need
b&w improved. I love it the way it is. Film and optical enlargements leave
nothing to be desired, in my opinion. But color is an entirely different
story, in my view.
--Mike
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