Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/04/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Thu, 06 April 2000, "Michael Darnton" wrote: > > I'm finding this whole topic entertaining, because three months ago I had > the sudden realization why I hadn't taken anything but vacation pix since I > quit $$$ photography 20 years ago. The problem was the very unsatisfying > combination of slr cameras and the darkroom. So I gave away the darkroom, > put the slrs in mothballs, bought an M4-2 and a bunch of lenses and have > been having a great time--with inkjet printing. > > The precipitating events were two: on the camera side, borrowing my wife's > Oly Stylus VF camera; on the darkroom issue, going to a museum exhibition > where the best prints on the walls were B&W, from inkjet printers. Smart > Blur and Unsharp Mask are fun toys (which I rarely use), but the real tool > of photoshop is Curves. The learning curve is steep. I started with color, > printing on a Fujix printer, and there's simply NO way to equal those > results with color in the darkroom if you understand and properly use > curves, and with color, some of the specific color tools. Once I got the > color thing straightened out, moving back to B&W I found that my whole > approach to printing is different, and for me, at least, the results were > several orders of magnitude better than anything I'd ever been able to do in > B&W (and I WAS a good B&W printer, long ago). At this point, inkjets lack > only sharpness at the level of observation that no one but photogeeks > notices (most of the people who look at my pictures will never pull out a > loupe to check the structure of the image :-), but I'm sure that's going to > happen soon enough. > > Silver's not dead, but silver paper may be. > > --Michael Darnton Most of what Michael has written here applies for me as well. I lost my passion for about 10 years when I was using only auto-exposure cameras and a wet darkroom. The AE camera gave (and continues to give) good results but I lost the degree of control and personal involvement that can make the difference between a good photo and one with passion; the wet color darkroom never had the degree of control nessesary to transfer the passion from the slide (or neg) to a print. The SL and digital printing are my optimum combination, but IMHO silver paper is not dead. I've yet to see an inkjet print that can compare favorably to a LightJet print from the same digital image file. I've yet to do much B&W work in Photoshop but the possibilities are as mind-boggling as for color photos. Doug Herr Sacramento http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/telyt ___________________________________________________ The ALL NEW CS2000 from CompuServe Better! Faster! More Powerful! 250 FREE hours! Sign-on Now! http://www.compuserve.com/trycsrv/cs2000/webmail/