Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/08/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Die transfers also stand out. Most folks would never see these in the consumer end of photography. I had an opportunity to buy a collection of civil aviation images done with die transfers. They still hold up very well, unlike type-C prints. For while, there was a brief period were extremely high end printing was being done with automotive paints. I think it was being done somewhere in Northern CA. S.d. On Aug 21, 2009, at 7:17 AM, Brian Reid wrote: > A few weeks ago I was sitting in my mother's living room at her > summer house in Maine, looking at the West wall, which is covered > with family pictures. Mostly group pictures, mostly 11x14 and > 16x20. The oldest is from 1934 and the newest is from 2009. I spent > a lot of time looking at them, studying them, remembering where > each of them came from, thinking about the event at which that > picture was taken. > > I printed about half of those pictures. The others were either > printed by commercial photographers or by my mother, who is a > skilled printer and who taught me most of what I know about > darkroom printing. > > The prints before 1970 are all black-and-white. Starting in 1970 > there are some of each, and everything since 1990 is color. > > The 3 most recent prints are all inkjet; all of the others are from > a darkroom. The older prints are mostly on Agfa Indiatone > Brilliant; the B&W prints from the 1960s to the 1990s are all on > Kodak Polycontrast G. The inkjet prints are all on Hahnem?hle Photo > Rag and Museo Silver Rag with Epson pigment inks. The darkroom > color prints that I made are all on E-surface Ektacolor and Endura > papers; I don't know what the pro labs used. > > My feeling after studying these prints for a long time was that the > inkjet prints are the best of the lot; they have a warmth and life > to them that is better than any of the silver prints. I don't think > that this is because of deterioration of the older prints -- these > have been kept out of the sun, and there are a number of extra > prints kept in a drawer to which I made spot comparisons. > > Part of it is that Photoshop gives me more nuanced control printing > than I ever had in the darkroom. And part of it is that the pigment- > on-baryta imaging is just a wonderful way of making this kind of > images. > It might be that if I took pictures of mountains or ducks or > buildings or national forests, that inkjet papers wouldn't be as > good. But I take pictures of people, and I think that modern inkjet > papers with modern inkjet printers are the best imaging system ever > sold commercially. > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information