Printing work

dave clayton

dave clayton

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So i was at a rather well equipped printing place yesterday half of the business is selling photography was some awesome landscapes there. But was chatting to the guy about printing work and he put the idea across that to progress we need to be printing our works more rather than it living in a digital domain. Given ive not had a print of any of my work now since i left uni is it time to start printing work more would this almost act as a quality control for your workflow and gotta be honest i love big prints of work
So whats peoples opinion on this are we printing less and just dumping stuff on a digital domain
 
If you have walls to put it on, then printing is great. However I'm part homeless and part nomadic - prints are just one more thing to have to store somewhere.
 
I print loads of my stuff, in fact now have a Pixma ix 6550 A3 Printer soon to be joined by a pro-100.
 
A photograph doesn't exist until its printed. I know this could be controversial but I really do think its true. On a computer screen its just pixels, on paper its real, it has substance, it lives, even if its a digital image.
 
Andysnap said:
A photograph doesn't exist until its printed. I know this could be controversial but I really do think its true. On a computer screen its just pixels, on paper its real, it has substance, it lives, even if its a digital image.
Click to expand...

its kind of true that to me also the holding it in my hand and up to the light is for me a great thing.

I just wish ink and paper cost less.
 
this is it my portfolio has stayed the same since graduation i need to get on and start printing a few images a week its not much money to send em away to be done so guess i should not be lazy.

Mr Bump said:
its kind of true that to me also the holding it in my hand and up to the light is for me a great thing.

I just wish ink and paper cost less.
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this is why i shoot large format there is something to be said for holding a 5x4 inch neg
 
Check out the deal @ Park Cameras.

The printer is £365 but for an extra £19 you get a full spare set of all 8 inks and a pack of A3 top Spec Photo paper all for £388.

Mine is on order :-)

Included in this bundle :
  • Canon PIXMA PRO-100
  • Canon CL-42 BK/GY/LG/C/M/Y/PC/PM
  • Canon PT-101 A3 Platinum Photo Paper 20 Sheets

http://www.parkcameras.com/24555/Canon-PIXMA-PRO-100.html
 
I have found myself in a bit of a photographic rut of late. Hardly shot anything in months. This hasn't really changed, but what has changed is I bought some chemicals and started sifting through the digitally stored back catalogue and making some prints. Inkjet prints don't really excite me too much but with some home chemistry and some traditional processes you can produce something rather different to the norm.
These are Cyanotypes, one of the oldest photographic processes harking back to 1846 ish. Original shot beside, for comparison.

Untitled by the matt1, on Flickr

Untitled by the matt1, on Flickr

Untitled by the matt1, on Flickr

Untitled by the matt1, on Flickr

Forgive me for I have sinned. The original shots are digital :coat:
 
While these days I'm way more digital than film, even before DSLRs were affordable I used to scan negs/slides and print enlargements up to A4. Since graduated to A3 and got a Pro-100 on order from Park (same deal as Mr Bump but with a screen calibrator thrown in as well for the same price). I am planning on getting back into film once I'm self propelled again, honest! Got a few little projects in mind to get me a bit more motivated.
 
Nod said:
While these days I'm way more digital than film, even before DSLRs were affordable I used to scan negs/slides and print enlargements up to A4. Since graduated to A3 and got a Pro-100 on order from Park (same deal as Mr Bump but with a screen calibrator thrown in as well for the same price). I am planning on getting back into film once I'm self propelled again, honest! Got a few little projects in mind to get me a bit more motivated.
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I got the deal also including the screen calimberalater as well :-)
 
My thoughts when my cash situation is better not that it will be shooting LF but i want to get everything in house. The idea of being able to have the neg come in one side of the system and the finished print out the other will deffo improve the quality of my work, and i think having finished prints of work will be a bonus over just the digital copies. Looking at having full E6 and C41 processing alongside the black and white, then having a color managed scanning and printing system. I think the hardest part of home printing is keeping the colors correct from neg to print, so will look for the best way of keeping workflow managed correctly.
Will be looking down the lines of a A3+ printer and a new scanner probs a epson 4990 seeing as the v700 has not come down in price and looking into a color monkey or some form of calibration between everything
 
@dave clayton Unfortunately theres no such thing as a colour calibrated scanning workflow for colour neg film as each film type varies so much (especially with the orange mask), and there is a good degree of personal subjection when it comes to scanning the neg, inverting it and colour balancing. You can use plugins like ColourPerfect which balance the colour to the individual attributes of each film type (this is how modern scan and print labs do it), which does massively help, but even then there is some personal choice as to how the final result looks.

For transparency IT-8 scanner calibration is a massive help in getting the colours closer to original, but even then there is still a good degree of subjection as you still have to set the levels etc.
 
I would definitely recommend the do it all yourself approach particularity with LF certain parts of the process can be quite an investment but will eventually save you a fortune i.e. I no longer use the dirty Tetanol E6 but its ok and if you buy the five litre pack which used to be about 60 that is 240 5x4's processed way cheaper than any lab, the equipment to do it need not cost a fortune either.

With the collapse in the value of drum scanners they can certainly be had for less than the cost of a new V750 which they will far out perform, more work to get one running but much more satisfying results.

With scanner profiling their are several schools of thought one of which says that you need a target on each film and another saying its the scanner not the film you are trying to profile I'm tending towards the later view but may cough up for some Wolf Faust targets some when to compare against the Hutcolor. I find on the few occasions I scan colour negative materail that applying the scanner profile anyway in photoshop gives better colours.

Even with a calibrated workflow its still possible to get some unexpected results in prints and you can have hours of fun messing around with colour spaces. Calibrating your screen is easy enough calibrating a scanner harder but doable but calibrating your own printer is beyond what must people might want to do in which case I can thoroughly recommend the hp Z3100 series of printers on a good day collection only 24" ones can be had for 600 - 800 and they contin a built in spectrophotometer so you can automatically create your own custom ICC profiles in about 15 minuites.

I print out things now and then I don't have the wall space so I give prints away mostly to the places I photograph or to the shops I have brought gear from, usually in obnoxiously large sizes Sheffield Park usually have some of the 36" ones on display.

Particularity if you are shooting LF I would say get some of your shops printed large at least as its the only real test of how good your work is or not.
 
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