The Online Photographer

How's This for a Preservation Scheme?

Buy three boxes.*

When you get a great portfolio-worthy shot, make three prints.

Put one in a box at your house.

Put the second in a box at your friend's house.

Send the third to a relative to put in a box in their house.

When the boxes fill up, buy three more boxes.

In the immortal words of the third fiddle, viola.

Of course, I don't do this, so I can't claim that this is a feasible backup system. (It seems to me that one of the crucial tests of a backup system is, does the person who's talking about it actually do it? If he doesn't, it's a black mark against the system right there.)

Mike

*I like 8x10x1 boxes because you can put them upright on a bookshelf like a book. And who doesn't have bookshelves somewhere in the house? Can't be said of any friend of mine. Plus, 8x10s are scan-able on flatbed scanners.

P.S. Here's what's wrong with this plan. You'd send your pictures to your friend and your relative, but 1) they'd show them to other people, eventually crimping and dog-earing them and getting them dirty; 2) they'd like some of them and want to frame them for the mountain cabin or Junior's dorm room, or they'd take a few of them out of the box to take over and show another friend or send to Aunt May, and the pictures would never find their way back to the box; or c) you'd get a call 11 years from now (which would also be 10 years and five months since you last added a print to their box) and it would be your friend or relative saying, "I've got this box with 23 of your pictures in it and I have no idea where it came from. So I'm sending it back to you. Here's the tracking number...."

Oh well, on second thought, never mind.

I tell ya, the only way to preserve your work is to be famous. Then everybody wants it, there will be plenty of copies around, and people who own the prints will take care of them. The rest of us are probably screwed.

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Dave Levingston: "I've been working for more than three years on what I've been calling my 'Immortality Project.' It involves making sets of prints to be boxed and given to various friends and family for safekeeping.

"There's even one museum that has agreed to take a box.

"Originally the plan was for each box to hold about 300 prints of my best photos. After working on it for a while I realized that I would have to be immortal to complete the project. (About 20 boxes of various sizes from 17x22 to 8.5x11.) So, I've scaled it back to 100 prints. After three and a half years I've printed about 35 of them.

"I might get the 100 done before I die or, worse, go blind. And the hope is that someday 50 years after I've left this life, someone, somewhere will open one of those boxes and enjoy what I put in it. That's about as good as we can hope for, I think."

Shaun: "Printing up a self-published book is another way to go. Of course fine art print fidelity isn't in it, but it is an inexpensive way to put your best photographs in one place which can be easily distributed and passed down through a few generations. Leave a copy laying around and those photographs that are normally hiding in archival boxes will actually be seen."

Print Presentation: Larry Jasper Shows Us How It's Done

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post referred to "poly" as being short for "polyethylene." That's wrong—it's polypropylene. I never could keep the polys straight.

Come to think of it, my neice used to have a squadron of dolls named Holly, Lolly, Polly, Molly, etc., etc., collectively called "the 'ollys." And I never could keep them straight either.

Thanks to Michael Wall for this—the Polly Propylene correction I mean—and sorry for the error. —Mike the Ed.]

TOP reader Larry Jasper recently sent me some prints and I was impressed by the craftsmanship of his presentation. Thought I'd share.

The key protection is provided by the so-called "poly bag" (poly being short for polpropylene), which is extremely transparent and offers easy viewing plus great protection for repeated handling without dirtying the overmat.

Archival Methods poly bags, sold in boxes of 100, run about 60¢ each for 17x22" size and 33¢ each for 13x19" bags.

I deliberately caught a reflection here so you can see the bag. Except for reflections, polyethylene is crystal clear.

Larry's mat is "floated," meaning the edge of the overmat is set back from the edge of the picture. This demands precision in the cutting of the mat, because the gap should be equal all around (it doesn't look so below because of a trick in perspective, but it is), and it also demands that care be taken in matching the color of the printing paper and the color of the mat. But it looks more elegant and relaxed than an overmat that covers the edges of the print.

The latter has another disadvantage in that it can't show the exact edges of the print as the photographer intended.

Overmat, closed. Note the good match between the shade of white in the printing paper and the mat.

An overmat is created when two pieces of identically-sized mat board are hinged in the middle like the spine of a book. The print is mounted to the solid piece, and the piece with the cutout folds down on top of the print.

Overmat, open. The hinge is usually linen tape, a high-quality cloth tape.

The print is centered into the mat and then attached with a "T-hinge" of linen tape. One piece is attached to the edge of the print from the back, left partially sticking out; the part that sticks out is then taped down to the mat board from above.

T-hinge from above. A second piece of tape, sticky side up, is attached half to the underside of the print and half to the piece of tape you see.

Larry gilds the lily with a transparent photo corner on the bottom two corners; you really don't need to do this, though, except perhaps with very large pieces of paper.

Photo corner

A final touch is a studio emblem and a signature in pencil on the back:

Seal and signature

Signatures can go wherever you please; on the back of the print is the usual place, or on the front of the print visible in the lower right. It's up to you. The signature is sometimes placed on the mat board, either on the front on the lower right or on the back as Larry has done. The disadvantage of signing the mat is that if the mat board is ever replaced the signature is lost, so conservators don't like that practice. The most accepted practice is to sign on the back of the actual print, but behind the margin rather than behind the image area. Signing inside the actual image area on the front is considered poor practice by most, though I've seen it done.

This method of "bagging" or sleeving a matted print is ideal—and most common—for ready-to-frame prints stacked in bins allowing people to browse. Classically, matted prints in portfolio boxes are not bagged if they're intended to be viewed by curators. In that case, sometimes white cotton gloves are provided in the portfolio case to encourage the curators not to get fingerprints on the mats. Portfolios which make the rounds, however, are sure to get dirty and will need to be rematted eventually.

I suspect bags were frowned upon historically only because the plastic used to not be perfectly transparent. Curators hated to have to take prints out of sleeves just to view them. I don't know if poly sleeves have made that practice more common at museums, but I don't see why protected prints like this couldn't be used in a portfolio for more utilitarian presentations.

For storing prints privately, another great method that I like a lot—and that requires far less work—is to take a piece of archival mat board the same size as the print and the bag and place the print and board in the poly bag together. The board doesn't need to be attached to the print at all. The board protects the print from being bent or crimped, and the poly bag protects it from handling, pests, and atmospheric pollutants. It's not as elegant as Larry's presentation but it's simple and clean and it works.

The benefit of Larry's method for buyers is that the print is matted and ready to be framed—and is protected in the meantime. And the benefit of Larry's method for us (photographers, I mean) is that we get to control how we want our prints to be matted. I suppose a few buyers might re-mat an already-matted print, but I don't think very many would.

Mike
(Thanks to Larry)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Oskar Ojala: "Thanks for the presentation, I enjoyed reading. Couldn't be quite sure how the tape was supposed to be attached. I guess I need to get back to it tomorrow."

Mike replies: Does this help? The dotted line shows the bottom piece of tape, which is sticky side UP. It adheres to the back of the print, and leaves a tab sticking up. The second piece of tape (visible in the picture), sticky side down, crosses the top of the tab like a "T," hence the name T-hinge. Together they keep the print in position without obscuring any part of the front of the print.

The print is positioned in the window with the window closed, then weighted to keep it in position. Then the window mat is opened and the T hinge is made.

Much easier to show than to explain in words.

Ken Tanaka: "Nicely done. This is very similar to the standard storage format used for photographs in the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago and every other museum with which I'm familiar. The core purpose of the hinged mat in an archival collection is to enable a print to be handled without being touched. May I add three suggestions?

1. For long-term storage and handling I recommend placing a piece of glassine or other acid-free archival tissue paper over the print and under the over-mat. This is inexpensive surface protection and is also very standard procedure in museum collections.
2. Consider skipping using photo corners. They represent more long-term hazard than benefit. They often dry out, fall loose, and can end up sticking to a print's surface. They can also cause wrinkling by constraining the moisture expansion of some papers in non-controlled storage environments.
3. Skip the sticker. Yea, I know it's a branding thing. But anything stuck to a print is ultimately trouble and gives conservators chills. Your verso inscription is enough to authenticate the print."

Epson Announces Consumer 3880 Replacement

Epson recently announced the SureColor P800, which will parallel the workhorse 3880 in the new "prosumer" SureColor desktop lineup—a bigger version of the first SureColor model, the smaller P600 that was introduced to modest fanfare last September. The P800 is available for preorder (deliveries reportedly start mid-June, although no promises from Epson), and it's up on Epson's website.

The P800 will probably be the next-gen "sweet spot" home/desktop printer for avid amateurs and home enthusiasts, in the way the Nikon D750 hits the sweet spot among Nikon's full-frame traditional DSLRs*. Still, a printer like the P800 is for photographers who print heavily and at least once a week—like the carbureter in an old Alfa, it likely won't thrive unless it's driven hard and often.

[UPDATE: Several readers have said they leave their 3880s idle for considerable lengths of time without experiencing the head clogs Epsons were notorious for in the '90s. Still, it seems like heavier users are the ones who will see more benefit from a machine like this compared to a smaller paper-size printer with smaller carts like the P600 or Canon Pixma Pro-1.]

Like the 3880, the $1,200 P800 accepts 17-inch wide papers (sheets or rolls), and has large 80 ml ink cartridges (although the ones that come with the printer only have 64 ml). Ink carts retail for $60 each, making a full inkset $540 (about half the cost of the printer), although a full set of 3880 inks goes for $456 and the UltraChrome HD inks might eventually drift down toward that level.

Other big news: Epson expects the new UltraChrome HD inkset to have approximately double the print life expectancy (LE) of the previous generation of inks. The company is so far stating LE of 60 years, but has indicated that more extensive testing currently in progress will likely confirm 200-year LE for color prints that are stored, displayed, and protected properly, and as long as 400-year LE for B&W prints. The latter begins to rival the theoretical print LE of the very best-made silver-gelatin fiber-base prints, long postulated to be ~500 years. Personally I don't plan to live to be more than 150, so this is all sort of moot.

Finally, you can shrug off Epson's claims that the new P800 desktop printer is the smallest printer ever for its paper size. It might be, but it's only slightly smaller than the 10" high, 15" deep, and 27" wide dimensions, all closed up, of the 3880. Not enough difference to notice, much less count.

I'd recommend that anyone considering a P800 first read Michael Reichmann's P600 review over at The Luminous-Landscape.

Mike
(Thanks to Mike Plews for the nudge)

*I can tell when a product hits this sweet spot because I want it even though I don't need it. Very annoying. But fun.

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ed Hawco: "Well that's typical. I put off digital printing for years because I expected it would be too much trouble, too difficult to learn all the intricacies, and too expensive for my modest printing needs. Then I turned around in January and made the plunge; I got a shiny new 3880, expecting to spend a year learning the ins and outs of using it (and digital printing in general).

"Instead I spent about a week learning that stuff and now I know as much as I'll ever need to know. (Thanks to Ctein, by the way, for providing encouragement in a TOP comment that there isn't really that much to learn.)

"So now I have this great 3880, and I'm turning out beautiful prints on expensive Hahnemühle paper. Except that I don't sell prints, so I have an expanding pile of going-nowhere prints and a printer that just became obsolete. :-/

"Whatever. You always remember your first printer, and I'll remember this one for a long time because I'll be looking at it every day for the foreseeable future."

Steven Ralser: "I vaguely remember that you mentioned that Ctein was going to review the P600. Is this still going to happen? I need to replace my old canon iPF5000 and need to decide whether I should wait for the P800 or just get the 3880."

Mike replies: Plans to secure a review P600 fell through so Ctein has now requested a P800, since that matches his interests and the interests of readers more closely. We'll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Epson has no review units. We'll keep trying.

Chris: "I want it I want it I want it I want it. But not enough to force me to replace my R2400. Not yet."

TOP Classic: Voja Mitrovic, Printer to the Greats

[Since Peter's personal Print Offer is ongoing this week, I thought it would be a good occasion to reprise his article about his friend and custom printer Voja Mitrovic, originally published in August 2010. —Mike]

The Untold Story of One of the Greatest Printers in Photography

Voja Mitrovic at the Coupole, Montparnasse, Paris, 1993. Photo by Peter Turnley.

By Peter Turnley

This is the untold story of one of the greatest printers of black-and-white photographs in the history of photography—Voja Mitrovic. It is time that this man, who has literally been in the dark since arriving in Paris from Yugoslavia in 1964, be acknowledged for his important part in the history of photography and his collaborations with many of the great photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Voja's story is also the story of the world-renowned photographic laboratory Picto, in Paris, created by Pierre Gassmann in 1950.

You've seen Voja's work without knowing it. He was a longtime printer for Henri Cartier-Bresson, from 1967–1997, and  has made prints for the past thirty years for the great Czech photographer Josef Koudelka. While others also printed H.C.-B.’s photographs, what is so important about the period Voja printed much of his work is that it corresponds to the time when collecting signed photographs first began to take off and change the public’s view of photography collecting and its connection to the art world. Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the key photographers whose work was bought and collected during that period. It was during the time when Helen Wright was representing H.C.-B.’s prints in the United States where most of his prints were collected. A large number of the signed prints of H.C.-B. on any wall in the world printed from 1967–1997 were made by Voja—this fact is little known. He also printed at various times for many of the world’s other master photographers: Sebastio Salgado, Werner Bischof, René Burri, Marc Riboud, Robert Doisneau, Edouard Boubat, Man Ray, Atget, Helmut Newton, Raymond Depardon, Bruno Barbey, Jean Gaumy, Frederic Brenner, Max Vadukul, and Peter Lindbergh to name a few. I have had the great fortune that Voja has been my printer for the past twenty years. He printed the exhibition and reproduction prints for my books Parisians, McClellan Street, and In Times of War and Peace, and he has made all of my signed prints for collection.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, left, and Josef Koudelka, right, begging Voja Mitrovic not to retire at his retirement party, Picto, Paris, Dec. 22, 1996. Photo by Paolo Nozolino.

I first met Voja (by the way, the "j" in Voja is pronounced like a "y") in June of 1979. It was during my first sojourn of eight months in Paris in 1975 that I heard of the great photographic lab where Cartier-Bresson’s prints were made—Picto. John Morris, then the photo editor of the New York Times and an early and long-time mentor of mine, and the great Czech photographer, Josef Koudelka, who I had met one fall day in the Luxembourg Gardens after he photographed me kissing my then-girlfriend on a park bench, had spoken to me of this great laboratory, a center world-famous for amazing black-and-white printing.

My first visit to Picto was in late winter of 1976, and I will never forget the sight of men and women in their white coats looking over and discussing the tonal values of some Cartier-Bresson prints lying on a table. I had never studied photography—I had always thought from the outset that one’s vision was more a function of knowledge or experience with almost any other aspect or domain of life than photography and cameras, thus I was more interested in studying subjects like languages, history, political science, economics, and art. But from that first sight of H.C.-B.’s prints at Picto, while knowing that my life purpose was to be a photographer, I had a singular determination to come and work at this laboratory and to gain the practical experience of learning to be a great printer.

Picto was the creation of Pierre Gassmann (see my photo at right, taken in Montparnasse, Paris, in 1996), who had left Nazi Germany in 1933 to come to Paris. While working as a young immigrant photographer in Paris before the war and spending time around Montparnasse, Pierre Gassmann had met and become friends with the eventual founders of Magnum, Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and also with photographers such as Brassai and Gisele Freund. After the war, in 1947, Gassmann put his own photography aside and began to make prints for the Magnum photographers, and then created Picto as a commercial enterprise in 1950. There is likely no one who had more knowledge of and contact with the important members of the world photographic community of the twentieth century than Pierre Gassmann. He was a very important mentor to countless photographers, including me. The famous photography laboratory that he created would intersect with the destiny of multitudes of photographers—and have a profound impact on the destiny of the young Yougoslav, Voja Mitrovic, who arrived in Paris in 1964.

Both Voja and Picto would have a tremendous impact on my own destiny. In June of 1979, after arriving back in Paris, I went to see Pierre Gassmann at Picto and asked for a job as a printer. Pierre, with his tough-love gruff voice, asked me what I knew how to do—and I exaggerated and told him that I was a great printer and knew how to do everything with black-and-white prints. He said to me, "We will see. You will have a three day tryout, and if you aren't as good as you say, you won't get the job." On my first day of my try out, I was given 100 negatives and told to make 8x10-inch prints of each by the end of the day. At 4 p.m., a tall, handsome man with a foreign accent, one of the printers in the lab—Voja—came to my enlarger and asked how it was going. I told him that I had only printed 20 negatives. He said to me, "You will never get this job—give me the negatives." I watched him take the hundred negatives to his enlarger, and in one hour, he printed the remaining 80 negatives, putting each sheet of printing paper in a closed drawer after exposing each negative. At 4:50 pm, he took out 80 sheets of exposed photographic paper and went to the open developing tank. I watched him chain develop all the prints, and one by one put all 80 prints, perfectly printed, into the fixer. At 5:10 p.m. that day, Pierre Gassmann walked into the lab and said, "let’s see how you have done." He put his foot on the foot pedal to light up the fixer tank with bright red light, and went through my 100 prints laying in the fixer-and a few seconds later, looked up and said to me, "you are as good as you said; you are hired!" After Gassmann walked out of the dark room, I took Voja aside, and said, "thank you. I will find a way one day to thank you for this!" He looked at me and said, "I was an immigrant also. I know what it means to need work—we need to help each other!"

While I worked as a printer at Picto in 1979 and 1980, I saw first-hand the amazing work of Voja Mitrovic. After I left Picto, and had finished my graduate degree in international relations at Sciences Po in Paris (where I was a classmate of the current French president Nicolas Sarkozy), I began to assist Robert Doisneau in 1981, and then embarked upon my own career, traveling the world as a photographer. While at Picto, I eventually became a pretty good printer, but knew that I wanted more than anything else to continue being a photographer myself. I was clear about that before ever starting at Picto—but I am sure that my experience as a printer has helped me understand better what I want from prints of my own photographs, and it certainly has helped me appreciate even more the mastership of Voja's prints. I also knew that I didn’t want to spend a life in the dark, and realized early on that I could never be nearly as good a printer as Voja, who has now printed my work for most of the past three decades.

Voja was born in Foca, in Bosnia, Herzegovina, part of the former Yugoslavia, in 1937. His father was killed during the war when he was four years old, and from this early age, he became aware that he would have to work to help his mother and family. He came to photography by accident—his family had a cow, and daily he would deliver a liter of milk to the house of a local photographer named Radmilo Mazic. One day this photographer asked Voja's mother if her son would like to be his photographic apprentice. In Sept., 1953, Voja began to work as Mazic’ apprentice. Mazic had studied photography at a school in Zagreb with teachers from the Ecole de Graphisme of Vienna. It was during this apprenticeship from the age of 14 to 18 that Voja gained extensive knowledge and skills in photography and printing. At the age of 19, he was obliged to do his military service and entered a unit of aviation photography of the Yugoslav Air force. After his military service, Voja worked for five years in a photographic studio in Belgrade where he was involved in all aspects of photography, making photographs, and developing film and making prints.

In September of 1964, Voja and another friend decided to embark upon a trip around the world before getting married and settling down. He arrived at the Paris train station on September 4th, 1964, with one hundred French Francs in his pocket and a backpack full of clothes and sausages—the money being the equivalent then of not more than US$100 now. Voja quickly discovered that with his Yugoslav nationality, it would be difficult to obtain the necessary visas to travel to other countries, and within two days of arriving in Paris, he had already found a job retouching prints at a lab near the Gare du Nord. This first job enabled him to obtain a "carte de sejour" and a work permit, which enabled him to begin to learn the French language.

Two years later, on April 2, 1966, he answered an announcement in a newspaper for a job as a printer at a lab called Picto. When he arrived at Picto, he met Pierre Gassmann and was given a tryout with three other candidates. Gassmann told him that he had been happy with one of his previous printers who was from Yugoslavia, and that he felt that people like him, who came from Central Europe, were good printers and good workers. Voja was hired that day. He worked at Picto for the next thirty years, until his retirement on January 1, 1997.

While there have been several people who have printed for Henri Cartier-Bresson—people such as Georges Fevre, Pierre Gassmann, Philippe Jourdain, Toros, Daniel Risset, and since Voya’s retirement, Daniel Mordac—few people , even in H.C.-B's close entourage, are aware of the role Voja played in printing his photographs over thirty years, most importantly during the time of the “photo boom”, that period of explosive growth in the modern acceptance of photography, of print collecting and photographic exhibitions. Collecting signed prints of photographers began in earnest by a large public in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this time, Voja Mitrovic printed a significant  number of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s collector prints, book prints, and exhibition prints. While I was at Picto in 1979 and 1980, Cartier-Bresson came to Picto almost every week to sign prints that would be sent to collectors in the United States—and many of these prints were made by Voja. I will never forget H.C.-B.’s frequent visits to the lab—witnessing him sign a print was a powerful sight, like a final conclusive act in a process of great creation—and it instilled in me the sense that a signed collector print is the summit of the photographic art. There was always an amazing spirit of conviviality at the lab between the printers and visiting photographers, and always a tremendous level of pride and respect within the walls of the lab. Everyone was aware that we were all involved with people and a process of artistic creation that was unique and special.

Voja Mitrovic and Peter Turnley, at Picto, Paris, 1994.

This was also a time when an important change took place in the world of printing—the introduction of multi-grade paper and filters, which allowed for a subtler rendition of details in both the shadows and the highlights of prints. It was also a time when the highest quantity of silver was in printing papers. Voja has indicated that there are certain qualities of richness in gray tonal values that he could never achieve with today’s papers, that he was able to obtain in the late 'seventies and early 'eighties. Also, since Voja’s retirement, many people, including myself, have noticed that the later prints of H.C.-B., sometimes became too pale, lacking detail in the highlights. Voja has indicated that this is not the fault of later printers' skills, but mostly because H.C.-B. himself changed in his printing taste a bit, asking for lighter prints in his latest years. He would often say that he didn't want his prints to be "dramatic" in the manner that was popular with many American photographers.

Most anyone who has ever spent any time printing in a darkroom knows the emotional difficulty and joy of making a great print. Josef Koudelka said that Voja has the mind of a computer. While I often saw other great printers at one point or another arrive at a moment of emotional and mental block when they couldn’t achieve a result they wanted with a print, Voja was always the picture of perfect methodical discipline, patience, and consistency. He has explained to me that from early age he knew he would have to work, and he learned quickly that whether he was doing something, or re-doing something, it was still simply work, and he respected that, and he would never become frustrated and emotional about doing something until it was done as well as it could be done.

—Peter Turnley

[We'll reprise Part II later this week —Mike the Ed.]

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Peter Turnley Prints

Peter Turnley, Paris 2013

It's not a TOP sale, but a lot of TOP readers will be very interested to know that as of this morning, Peter Turnley is launching his own limited sale of his prints. Here's the link. A number of our readers' favorites from our past sales are offered again, with prices not too much ($100) higher than ours—and you also have the choice of ordering your favorite in his larger standard 16x20" size if you'd like, which were never part of our offers. This is definitely the best way ever to get a large Turnley original.

This is an opportunity for people who missed our past sales, or who wish to add to their existing collections.

I started hanging framed prints in the new house recently, which (like putting pictures on the refrigerator door!) is one of the best parts of moving. In a prominent position by the eat-in counter, visible from the garage door which is naturally the main entry door, I hung my framed ID#16. Mine was a gift from Peter, but it's identical in every way to the smaller print available in this sale. It looks fantastic on the wall. I'm going to show you a few pictures of prints on my walls when I get home again (and ask to see some of yours, if you want to share. But let's leave that till later).

These are just superlative prints, of some of Peter's best-known pictures. As usual, the prints are made in Paris by Voja Mitrovic, who was Hentri-Cartier-Bresson's printer for many years. The famous Paris Rooftops picture is available again in this sale as well—as a poster, its has been one of the most popular pictures ever, selling an estimated half a million copies. But very few people own original signed silver-gelatin prints of the image. Very few people outside of TOP's readership, I should say.

If you do buy one (or two, or three, or...), please indicate that you heard about the sale here!

And of course, among the pictures offered for the first time at a reduced price, I have a new favorite (see above). You know what they say: sigh.

Mike
(Thanks to Peter)

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Bob Smith: "Oh God. TOP has done it to me again.* There are seven of these I want. I can't afford any of them right now. I am going to screen cap the seven and study on them for the next few days. Then I am going to 'rob Paul to pay Peter' to flip the old bromide around. Right now ID#1 is at the top of the list but I have a feeling I'll be drawing straws for the winner in end.

"*Mike, I know it isn't you putting on this sale, but if I wasn't a religious reader of TOP I would never have owned any Turnley prints and seen how beautiful they are in person and...."

Printing with Digital Negatives

[Ed. note: This is the last post expanding on the techniques used for the prints in the current Carl Weese print offer. This one is especially for those who really might consider trying the process.

Hope you've enjoyed these support posts as much as I have. September's Print Sale closes at 7:00 p.m. tonight, U.S. Central Time. —Mike]

Carl Weese, Steep Rock, one of the two platinum prints we have
for sale until this evening.

-

By Carl Weese

I’ve been watching the progress of digital negatives for contact printing, mostly from the sidelines, since the mid-'90s. For me, the premier distinguishing characteristic of, “The Platinum Print” comes from my use of large- and ultra-large-format (ULF) camera negatives to make contact prints with a rich, smooth, subtle tonality. For years I’ve told students that if you want the eye-popping, crunchy-toned brilliance of West-Coast-style silver prints—make silver prints. Or now, monochrome inkjets on baryta-coated papers. Don’t make platinum prints for the presumed status, but for the inherent physical/visual character of the medium.

Early digital negatives had hardware, software, and media difficulties achieving this goal. As earlier mentioned, to get the platinum print’s full measure of tonal smoothness, the negative has to be muscular enough—in the UV light-blocking way—to produce a full-range print with no contrast agent added to the print sensitizer formula. You can get a full-range print (Dmax to paper white) from a weak negative, by adding lots of chemical contrast agent to the print formula, but it will end up with all the tonal allure of an '80s photocopy (that’s me: everyone is entitled to their own taste in tone so your mileage may vary).

In recent years, overhead transparency materials have improved in the amount of ink load they can support, while current generation printers and their pigment inksets can block lots of UV, and do it with smooth tonal transitions. So, game on.

Without doing a whole treatise, (and here is an excellent one generously provided on the web by Ron Reeder and Christina Andersen—my final approach is indebted to their method while drawing on half a dozen others along with notions, usually looking for something simpler, of my own) here is the problem and the solution.

Even the latest printers, inks, and substrates need to be tricked into making output for this purpose. You have to test the digital output in the platinum lab, back and forth, in a feedback loop until you get the results you want. You need to be able to make a good Pt/Pd print, or take a workshop with someone who can, to begin the process.

First step is to find out how much exposure with your UV source you need to get a good black through the transparency material, with your chosen Pt/Pd printing formula—this is the same as finding “minimum time to Dmax through filmbase plus fog” in silver printing.

My next step is to combine a step tablet file with a small file of a picture (see the first illustration below) that has been adjusted so that it makes a first rate monochrome digital print. If you flip and invert this file in Photoshop, then output on transparency material as is and print it in Pt/Pd, at the minimum time for a good black, you’ll get a dark gray mash of squashed tone. To trick the printer, you need to play games in the print driver to make it use as much as possible of the inks, along with black, that best block UV light. For Epson, that’s yellow. For HP, it’s vivid green. I’m using Epson, and the next step is to find another control fairly deep in the print driver called Color Density. Run up the slider, and you’re telling the print driver, “more ink! MORE!” Other printers and drivers will have similar but different controls.

The goal is to find settings that render the whitest patches of the step tablet and the brightest highlights of the picture file as convincing white at the basic print exposure. But at this point, all the middle tones will still be dark and muddy. The sensitometric curve of the Pt/Pd paper doesn’t at all match the linear ink laydown of the printer. You have to go back to the positive file and raise the brightness of the middle values using some form of curve. There seem to be as many ways to produce this curve as there are people trying to make these negatives. When everything comes together, you wind up with a negative that has enough range to make a full scale Pt/Pd print with no contrast agent, with a tonal distribution that moves smoothly from dark to light without breaks, jumps, or roughness. The step tablet is very helpful for quantifying these transitions in terms of % density, but I think the picture section is an invaluable reality check.

Some want to have a single Holy Grail perfect curve. This theoretically allows you to feed any well-adjusted picture file into the “black box” of a Batch Action and take the resulting negative through the platinum darkroom on autopilot. I prefer, and have ended up with, several different curves that I choose, or experiment with, for different pictures. The Church works with my standard Action, and prints in four minutes (on Arches Platine using an 85:15 Pd/Pt ratio), which is a bit of a safety factor over minimum time to black for the paper/formula used. "Steep Rock" needed a different Action that helps bring out subtle separations in all the delicate low values at the right side of the picture. It also prints at four minutes. If that special shadow-enhancing curve had been a bit strong, I might have found that an extra thirty seconds of printing exposure was needed to nail everything down. As long as the print ends up as I want, that’s fine with me. No reason to give up the subtle controls of the platinum darkroom to utilize along with the precision controls of digital imaging.

Different papers and different chemical formulas can make all sorts of changes in print color and tone, but the feedback loop of print driver controls and platinum darkroom printing times needs to be worked out for each chemical or paper variation.

That’s all there is to it.

Combination step tablet and picture-file test prints, with small (4x5) files of the print offer pictures.

Ganged output of test negatives emerging from the printer.

A pair of test negatives on OHP material, viewed on a lightbox.

A set of ganged test files on OHP material, placed on a prepared sheet of paper, in the vacuum frame, ready for exposure.

During exposure the darkest parts of the picture “print out”—begin to form image density without development.

The print appears almost immediately in the developer.

Wet processing consists of developer, water wash, two chemical clearing baths, and a final wash. Actually a simpler procedure than processing silver-gelatin prints.

Final print during exposure on my smaller (12x15) UV exposure unit.

Carl

Carl Weese has been making platinum/palladium prints for 20 years, teaching the process for 15 years, and is the co-author of the book The New Platinum Print. He lives with his wife Bettina in Woodbury, Connecticut.

©2014 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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Jim Hamstra: "For years I also used camera negatives from 4x5 to 11x14 to make platinum prints. When I started using digital cameras I tried several ways to make digital negatives; the best results then were with Burkholder's two negative process. It took exposure through two different negatives in a pin-registered system to get enough density. I had given up on digital negatives until a couple years ago when I saw a carbon print which was made from one of Jon Cone's Piezo negatives. Jon Cone has six or seven tone black and grey pigments that will print a continuous tone negative on an Epson printer and he has made profiles for different DR negatives. I had asked him about negatives for platinum and last fall I went to Santa Fe where he was doing a workshop as he assured me it was a simple process. I took a file that looked fine on the screen and applied a hand drawn curve to the image to adjust for how platinum shadows and highlights print. He then made a negative and a few minutes later I printed it making the best platinum print I had ever made from a digital negative. Since then I bought a new 3880 Epson and a set of Piezo inks that will print both negatives on Pictorico film and paper prints without having to change out any inks. As the process uses six shades of pigments the negatives are continuous tone not relying on dots for the shade.

"If you have never seen a Piezo negative, Carl, let me know, I will send you one of my outtakes. I have shown them to Dick Arentz and he seemed impressed with the density."

Perfect-for-a-Saturday Platinum Podcast

Looking for a great way to while away some time on a lazy Saturday? Carl did a wonderful podcast about his platinum/palladium printing with our friend and sometime contributor Roger Overall at The Documentary Photographer.

(Carl and Roger talk about the Drive-In Theaters project for about the first 18 minutes.)

Outstanding!

Mike

[Oh, and I'm naturally fond of the bit that starts at about 26:45. Thanks guys.  :-)  —Mike the Ed.]

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The Bright Future: Second-Generation Negatives for Pt/Pd Printing

By Carl Weese

[Carl is the Print Sale artist this month, offering two of my personal favorites from among his prints. The sale is open until Monday evening at 7:00 p.m.  —Mike]

One reason it’s been over four years since we did a TOP platinum/palladium (Pt/Pd) Print Offer is because, after managing to print the 8x10 negative of The Pike Drive-in Theater (below) well over a hundred and twenty times four years ago, I resolved never, ever, again to commit to making scores of direct contact prints on handcoated paper working from a unique, irreplaceable negative. After that, it wasn’t until late 2013 that I worked out a procedure for creating digital negatives for Pt/Pd printing that gave me fully realized, successful prints according to my sense of what platinum prints should look like.

The Pike Drive-in, Montgomery, Pennsylvania, 2001, part of
our April Print Offer four years ago

Pt/Pd materials can only be contact-printed because they are much too slow for projection enlargement. Contact exposures run to several minutes in full sunlight or the artificial equivalent. But photographers have long found ways around this. For a famous example, Paul Strand made platinum prints from some of his most iconic early pictures, like “Blind,” as little gem-like direct contacts, and also as 11x14-ish enlargements. For the larger prints, he enlarged the original negative onto a glass plate, resulting in an interpositive. Then he contacted that to a second glass plate, to create the final enlarged negative for printing.

Paul Strand, Blind, 1916

Of course, as noted, enlargement isn’t the only reason for second generation negatives. Handcoated Pt/Pd paper isn’t the smoothest stuff in the world; it needs to be exposed in carefully controlled humidity levels (which can change accidentally), and the negative has to be held against the paper under pressure, exposed to strong UV light (which heats it up), then removed and put somewhere safe...for every single print. To make a big edition of conventional enlargements, you clean the negative and get it safely ensconced in the enlarger where it’s touched by nothing but light until you are finished. Every single Pt/Pd print, on the other hand, requires lots of negative handling, and to expect permanent error-free perfection is ridiculous.

Also, The Pike negative, which began needing a 12-minute exposure, faded during the course of the printing, ending up at 6.5 minutes. Thank goodness, the contrast hardly changed, and I only really needed to keep pulling back the exposure to get consistent prints to the end—but it was nerve-wracking. Somewhere around sixty prints the negative picked up soft blotches that printed as gray blobs, and wouldn’t come off with film cleaner. A soak in wetting agent followed by water washing fixed the problem, but…never again. The other two pictures in the 2010 offer got through their 40+ printings each without a hitch, but it wasn’t relaxing.

The professional printers who make platinum editions or book insertions for celebrities or famous photographers almost always print from second-generation negatives even if the original was large format. I mean, can you imagine—"do you have another negative of that Moonrise shot, Mr. Adams?"

Another reason I put in months of effort working out a satisfactory second-generation negative printing approach is that film is going to keep getting more scarce. Even if it doesn't disappear—Ilford deserves credit for putting in great effort to keep large, ultra-large, and exotic-format films available—it's already getting expensive. Digital negatives open up the possibility of making prints in the platinum medium even when it is impossible or impractical to begin with film exposures. My tests of 8x10-ish Pt/Pd prints from digital captures show some astonishing results compared side by side with prints originating from vastly larger film negatives, so there’s a bright future on that front.

Carl

©2014 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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Sal Santamaura: "Carl, was that a pyro-developed stained negative that faded during the course of printing? If so and, going forward, you've any desire to make large numbers of contact prints from in-camera negatives, why not just drop the pyro? I've never heard of a conventionally-developed gelatin silver sheet film negative 'fading,' even from repeated exposure to UV. The unstained image is, after all, metallic silver."

Carl replies: Sal, it was a pyro neg, but what faded apparently was about a stop of secondary overall stain, an unnecessary but harmless artifact like fb+f. The last prints, at the shortened exposures, were if anything slightly "cleaner" in value separations. Even without silver printing, a pyro developed negative scans much better than a negative developed in HC110/D-76-type developers with sufficient contrast to make a first-rate Pt/Pd print with no contrast enhancement in the formula, so I still prefer to work with pyro both for the direct printing and for scanning—haven't printed silver from large format in quite some time now.

Joe: "Cool coincidence: After Carl's print was released here four years ago, I visited The Pike drive-in to shoot the projection booth for my series 'The Booth.' The Pike is just a few miles from my home town, Muncy, Pennsylvania, though when I was growing up we had an even closer drive-in, The Starlite, which shut down long ago.

"The last I heard of The Pike, the owner was struggling to raise money for a digital projector. Almost all the studios no longer ship 35mm prints, so it's go digital or shut down if you want to show current movies."

Carl replies: Joe, I've seen your "Booth" series online and like it. The digital conversion is a problem that all drive-in theaters face, and was a spur to pushing to complete as much coverage as I could back in 2012, but since then I've been happily surprised, almost amazed, how many theaters, even quite small ones, have been managing to make the costly upgrade. One of my favorites, the Mt. Zion in West Virginia, is still struggling but I have my fingers crossed for them.

Ed Richards: "Given that the hand-coated media is not very smooth, it is not going to capture much detail from the large format negative. Seems a perfect case for digital negatives. Maybe even from one of those small, convenient cameras you have started to carry.  :-) "

Carl replies: Ed, there are some mysterious things that happen with contact printing. A specialty material I use for some pictures is a Japanese tissue called Masa. One side is super smooth and hard as steel, the other side is more like a highly refined blotter paper. You can print on either side, making it really two papers in one. The thing is, if you print on the rough side using a vacuum frame the neg is mashed into perfect contact with the compressed paper fiber. The rough texture returns when the print is fully processed and dried, but when you look at the print you clearly see picture details finer than the texture of the paper, a stunning effect. Don't know if it's an optical illusion or what.

In working out my digital negative approach I consistently used both scans from 8x10 film and RAW captures in 4/3s format. It's amazing how well the captures hold up technically.  Aside from technical tests though, I've done hardly any digital capture work intended for Pt/Pd printing, though that surely will change in the future.

cfw: "Many years ago I attended a (very) brief introductory, hands-on session about Pt/Pd printing. The digital negative I used for my assignment was not 'dense' enough (for lack of a better term), and my print came out barely visible. I also did not have the right pressure on the negative/paper. Since then I've been meaning to invest in the basic equipment (not cheap) to do this type of printing, but always find some excuse to not get it together. The digital negative I used was produced from a conversion process in Photoshop, directly from the digital file (not a scanned negative), and I remember that getting the digital negative right in the beginning is a make or break deal for the final print. It was a lengthy process of trial and error, using different curves, getting the gradations and shadows just right. Just making one print come out right is a Herculean task. I can't phantom doing 100+ prints at a time."

Will Your Photos Outlast You?

Words and photographs by Gordon Lewis

One of my ongoing interests—I won’t use the word concerns because that could imply worry or anxiety—is how long my images will last. Given my own impermanence, I lack the hubris to expect that any photographs I’ve produced will last forever. I’d certainly love for later generations to consider my work good enough to be worth maintaining, but that’s up to them to decide, not me. In any event, I won’t be around to enjoy it.

All I’d really like at this point is that my images last at least as long as I do. I’m 61 years old and have been practicing photography for over 45 years. I’m happy to report that most of my photos are in remarkably good health. (So am I, by the way.) I still have negatives and prints from the late '60s that I developed when I was in high school. These are all black-and-white; I wasn’t shooting in color then. Although I’ve been reasonably careful about proper processing and storage, I haven’t been fanatical, so the fact that these images have lasted as long as they have is a testament to the fundamental stability of B&W film and print media. Although it’s more difficult to produce prints or JPEGs from my old film images than from files shot with a digital camera, it’s still possible. If I reproduce my film images digitally, the results can be significantly better than what I was able to achieve in the darkroom. (And I was a pretty damned good B&W printer, thank you very much.)

I shot this photo of the legendary bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins, at the Ash Grove, a folk and blues club in Los Angeles. The Ash Grove burned to the ground in 1973. Hopkins died in 1982. This image is scanned
from the original Tri-X negative.

There are exceptions of course. Prints I made on resin-coated papers are much more prone to bronzing and other discolorations than my fiber prints, especially when mounted under glass. Color transparencies have been more stable than color negatives and prints, though some of my oldest color prints have that authentically “aged” look that digital filters try to mimic.

Ironically, some of my early attempts at digital archiving have been the least stable of all. Images I once copied onto Zip Drives and Kodak Photo CDs are now irretrievable. I’m still able to read my Kodak Picture Disks on 3.5" floppy media, but the resolution and image quality are only slightly better than what you’d expect with a decent camera phone. That said, my more recent digital archives on external hard drives are doing fine so far.

Another exception to digital decay is my digital prints. Inkjet pigment prints of mine have been framed and exposed to indirect sunlight for at least ten years and still look as good as the day I printed them. I also have images that have been digitally printed onto silver-based color paper. These have been stored in boxes, folders, or albums and still look fine, which is to say they generally don’t look as good as the prints I made myself, but they are more than good enough for family archiving purposes.

This, in my opinion, is one of the strongest arguments for making any prints you produce as archival as possible: Why go through the time and expense of printing if fading may cause you to have to reprint years later, with no guarantee that you’ll be able to find the original negative or file, or duplicate your original printer profile, paper, and settings? It’s far more efficient to get it right the first time. Also, should I—or you—drop dead tomorrow, prints in clearly labeled boxes, envelopes, or folders are a lot easier for your survivors to find and share than raw files on one of your backup drives.

If there’s any drawback to being consistent and well organized in the way you maintain your images over time, it’s that word will begin to spread among your friends, acquaintances, and relatives whose own photo filing methods are, shall we say, lacking. You’d be surprised how often I get calls or emails from people I photographed years ago and barely remember, asking if I still have the prints or negatives and, if so, whether I can send them a copy. More often than not, I can. I don’t mind either; after all, it’s flattering that my photographs would be important enough to someone else that they would seek me out for copies years later.

This is one of my first successful attempts at shooting and processing my own film. It’s of my dog Prince and was most likely shot in the summer
of 1967, on the front porch of my home.

The person you don’t want to be is the one who can’t find a photo you shot three months ago, has no backup copies of his image files, either no prints or prints and negs stored in a damp basement, or has all of his images stored on a hard drive that has started making “funny noises.”

Laugh if you’d like, but for those of you who have been active photographers for at least a decade or two, can you locate your earliest images and, if so, what condition are they in? I’d really be curious to know.

Gordon

©2014 by Gordon Lewis, all rights reserved

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Jordi P: "As a 19-year-old it is a question I sometimes ponder. I am thinking about my own lifetime posterity rather than poshumously. Still have the original files of my first pictures I took in 2004 as a kid.

"(Cringed a bit on the decade mentioned on the last paragraph.) Took up film shooting for learning and all the negs, prints and slides shot I have in a drawer. Should get around classifying them one day. On the external HDD's I got I finally got sround to sorting the photos by year and month subfolders last christmas. Should do a backup soon again.

"The after I die question is one I don'think about! Despite growing in the digital age, I mistrust digital media for unassisted archiving. Given the nature nowadays of this medium, I expect a 'digital dark age' of some sort. Causalities: In 2009 and 2011 I misplaced (lost) a couple of folders. Sadly the former contained photos of a family friend that passed away. Resalised its value late. Nowadays I do a lot of casual photography around my college life and for sure I am going to be the one who keeps photos of things. A quote that has been etched in my mind, by Mr John Free, is: 'It's not about you, it's about them.' So I hope to not be the guy with lost files as it isn't only me the one affected."

Stephen Cowdery: "I have tens of thousands of images going back to the mid-'60s, negatives and slides, all in pages in three ring binders by year. I can find any image in a couple of minutes. B&W negs are all perfect, color negs have shifted but are usually restorable, Kodachromes, Anscochromes (GAF) 3M slides are very good, but Ektachromes are all over the place—some from the '70s have faded to red quite badly, others are OK.

"I worked many years in a lab specializing in printing from old media. The only B&W negs which were a problem were very old nitrate-based ones which had started to dissolve(100+ years old.) Color negs from the '50s were usually very bad, old slides from that era usually had some fading (except Kodachromes) and often had fungus spots.  Prints were all over the place—the old prints in the best condition had all been toned."

Wolfgang Lonien: "Gordon! So good to hear/read from you. Though it's only since December, I miss your 'Shutterfinger' blog—but I also understand the perfectly good reasons to stop you listed there. Wishing you and yours well from Germany—and thanks for this article as well!"

Speed: "My prints, negatives and slides are like Schrödinger's cat—they are both there and not there. In my mind all are well preserved in sleeves, envelopes and folders in a box in the basement. In reality they may be lost. As long as I don't open the box...."

Joseph Brunjes: "shoot most of my serious work on 8x10 tintype. I like tintypes because you get a 'print' minutes after the exposure. (I procrastinate with printing my B&W negatives.) We still have tintypes from the 1860s that were not stored in climate controled spaces or behind glass. My varnished plates should easily last hundreds of years."

Are They Or Aren't They?

(Are inkjet prints really superior to traditional color printing methods? Ctein and I weigh in. See the last Featured Comment just added to the "Big Mystery" post.)

Mike
(Thanks to Ed)

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MHMG: "The fascinating thing about inkjet prints is that they aren't as homogeneous or consistent in appearance as more traditional photographic processes. Folks still call color choromogenic prints 'C-prints' as a holdover from a very early Kodak color paper that wasn't even on an RC base. The look just hasn't really changed all that much over the years. Ditto for Ilfochrome (a.k.a. Cibachrome) or Kodak dye transfer prints. They are all quite easy to recognize due to the unique constraints of the chemical and material processes involved. In contrast, Inkjet prints have an enormous degree of freedom with respect to both image-forming colorants and media. An inkjet print can be made to mimic many historic processes or it can be made to look like no other process that has ever come before it. So, it's all up to the printmaker what kind of aesthetic is going to be achieved with inkjet printing.

"Like many other reflection print processes, when made well, inkjet prints are amazing and when made poorly they are an embarrassment to be called photographs. That said,  on technical merits we can break the arguments about print quality down further:

1) As for sharpness and grain structure, even the best multi-channel inkjet printer screening patterns cannot match the super high resolution of a light sensitized analog print paper, but most optically enlarged negatives and slides could never make use of this exceptional print resolution unless the film was contact printed. This practical limitation gives today's digital image files and sharpening/noise reduction algorithms a chance to compete very well in terms of human perceived print sharpness and grain structure in the final print. This perceptual reality is especially true when making very large scale prints.

2) Color gamut of inkjet exceeds most traditional color processes with the possible exception of dye transfer (although dye transfer had a less than optimal cyan dye in particular), but even with as much control as the printmaker had over color and tone in a dye transfer print, the total color and tone control in digital imaging and inkjet printing far surpasses the control we had with analog processes.

3). With respect to overall print durability (which helps prints last longer) one has to be careful when debating inkjet versus traditional color processes. Uncoated inkjet prints do tend to be much more abrasion and scratch sensitive, but coatings can be used to create inkjet prints with as much or more physical durability as traditional silver gelation prints when the application requires it. As for light fastness, humidity resistance, gas fade resistance, and thermal stability, inkjet prints range from extremely fragile to far more stable than any other traditional color photographic processes depending on choice of colorant and media. In this regard, the printmaker must choose wisely...

"...Which brings the whole debate back to P+I+P+C!"

On Vintage Prints (A Last Word)

Before we leave the topic, I'd just like to quietly point out that all the objections to inkjet prints within the photography market are very reminiscent of the objections to photography itself, back in earlier days. Not creative enough, too mechanical and thus insufficiently expressive, too automatic, too easily duplicable (and thus not unique or limited), too common and accessible to everyone without discrimination, and so on*.

Of course none of that is actually true. Try getting a print today to look just like a particular photographer's print from an era past and gone—and you don't have to pick someone like Robert Demachy as an example, either; the films change, the papers change, the methods and even the visual taste involved is peculiar to each particular maker.

Ken Tanaka mentioned this the other day: when Walter Rosenblum made his own prints from Lewis Hine's original negatives and then used his status as a Hine expert to certify them as genuine, eventually people realized that the "fake" (modern) prints looked too much like Walter Rosenblum prints. In other cases where modern prints are made from historical negatives, too, experts (and sometimes even ordinary folks) can tell the difference. I saw some modern prints made from Lartigue negatives, and while I thought they were beautiful (I tend to like replicas), there was no mistaking them for vintage prints.

Another example. When Ctein and I were going through the back-and-forth process of printing my "Wisconsin #7" (the streetlight in the snow) for my last sale, we couldn't get it to look like my original prints of the picture—partly because I stupidly didn't keep a print for myself from the earlier sale, leaving Ctein without a guide print, but also partly because I was then using a paper that's no longer available and a printer that I no longer have.

At some point—with the accelerated pace of progress, probably sooner than we can guess—inkjet printers themselves will be replaced by a newer and more efficient technology—prints from which will look somewhat different. At that time, the prestige of "vintage" inkjet prints from the era when inkjet printers were ubiquitous will begin inexorably to rise—and thousands of photographers will wish they had made more inkjet prints of their old digital files when the process was still current and it was still easy to do so**.

Mike

[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said that Jim Hughes had mentioned the Hine/Rosenblum controversy. It was actually Ken Tanaka, who mentioned it in a comment to the "And the Winner Is" post. Apologies to both for the mistake. —Ed.]

*And thus, they're slow to be accepted as valid and valuable art...just as photography itself was slow to be accepted.

**I've been impressed by a certain development that I've seen in my own life and work. I was mostly a "darkroom nomad" during my heavy film-shooting years (from 1980 to 2000). I had my own darkroom a couple of times—never for very long—and otherwise I used darkrooms at schools where I was a student or schools where I taught. (Or just didn't have access to a darkroom at all.) I also was often short of having enough money for paper, too. Consequently I was always "putting off" making prints of negatives I liked; either I'd stop at the workprint stage and put off making the finished print, or I'd make one finished print and assume I could make more whenever I needed to.

In the meantime, the world changed. Even now I don't have time to make new wet prints from old negatives, and most of the papers available now don't fit the old negatives as well as they fit the papers they were made for. (See here if you don't know what I mean by "fit." Be warned, though, it's complicated.) Suddenly those old prints made when the negatives were made are indeed "vintage prints"—and I wish I'd made more of them when it was natural to do so.

Meanwhile, I'm doing the same damned thing now—I've got a collection of files awaiting printing, and I'm making the assumption in my head that I'll have time in the future to catch up. I guess I never learn.

P.S. That ghost story this morning? Completely made up.  :-)

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Bob Gary: "Absolutely the truth, I'm sure, for a lot of us. So, we all have generations of "vintage" print projects waiting to be done, and quite possibly may just skip the unprinted ones slated for the darkroom and print them out in inkjet. I've gone back to early 1912 negatives and had to scan and print for the present time, not bothering to "match" the end result with a corresponding original print. It's always going to be different. There always seems to be more old negatives than actual surviving prints that need to be done. And, there's as much fiddling with scanning parameters as there was with darkroom exposures and chemicals. Toss in the Photoshop techniques in lieu of the enlarger printing skills, and the current printing processes are just as intensive, yet different."

xtian: "I think you are absolutely & totally 'spot on' with your point. I would only add that this whole thing not only applies to inkjet prints but also to digital photography in general. I have said from the beginning that this bickering is a total rehash of went went on between painters and photographers beginning around 1848."

Richard Newman: "I think that part of the problem is that some people tend to consider the difficulty of the technique, time required to learn the technique, and the time required to create the image, as significant value factors in judging the quality of the image. Therefore, a photograph, which can be exposed, 'Photoshopped' and printed in a day cannot be as valuable as a sculpture, oil painting, or etching—even if the images are essentially identical. This was a factor in accepting photography as an art form (how could a Kodak 'point and shoot' print be valuable? Not much skill, or years to learn how to work the shutter). And it applies to print evaluation. They further justify it by pointing at the large percentage of prints that are mediocre at best, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of painters, sculptors and such were (and are) mediocre. If digital printing could be made more mysterious it might get better reviews."

Mike replies: Ansel Adams foresaw "electronic photography" (what we call digital), but if I remember correctly, he also said on a few occasions that he wished photography weren't so easy.  :-)

P+I+P Standards: A Proposal for Future Printmaking Standardization

The following idea comes from Bruno Masset—it's his idea, not mine. (I just like it.)

He suggests that for high-end inkjet prints (distinguished from the kind of thing that gets spit out on bond paper by four-color dye printers all over the world) that "something technically correct (and therefore defensible) and bland (and therefore without any undesirable connotations)" is needed.

His suggestion is "IHD print," for "Incremental Halftone Deposition."

I looked it up, and "IHD" is also largely available—Microsoft now calls its the Advanced Content interactivity layer in HD DVD "HDi," and apart from that there are only four other entries for the acronym on Wikipedia's disambiguation page, none of them pertaining to imagemaking.

Bruno continues:

Incremental: Microscopically (at the dot level) and macroscopically (at the picture level), the inks are indeed deposited sequentially and incrementally by the print head(s).

Halftone: Just like halftones, inkjet printing is, at a fundamental level, a discrete, non-continuous, dot-based printing system.

Deposition: Self-explanatory.

Bruno adds: "one could also, if necessary, distinguish between 'Organic IHD process' (dye-based inks) and 'Inorganic IHD process' (pigment-based inks)."

•     •     •

Bruno didn't mention this, but I think that we also need a certification process for specific combinations of materials—a basic suite of test procedures that the community can agree on for determining a reasonable expectation of print life expectancy (LE) and decent handling properties.

I'm on thin ice here, because a number of organizations work in the field of materials testing and conservation and no doubt are much further along in their science and their procedures than I'm even aware of. And I don't have time to do original research into existing published International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards that relate to image permanence and life expectancy and durability. But what I would suggest is a new standard for Paper + Inkset + Printer (P+I+P) combinations that would "approve" a set of P+I+P materials and equipment as being a known quantity that come up to a baseline standard for quality, permanence, and handling properties.

Bruno's naming suggestion would distance premium inkjet prints from the (deserved) perjorative connotations of the worst practices of the medium, and an ISO standard approving specific P+I+P combinations would enable photographers to easily ensure that their choices of P+I+P combinations are acceptable to the collector and exhibition market, and it would create an objective standard so that galleries, museums and collectors didn't have to just take photographers' words that the work they're buying is "archival."

And of course an ISO certification for a paper-inkset-printer combination doesn't in the least limit the freedom of manufacturers or print creators. Manufacturers can make whatever they please and photographers can use whatever they please. This idea would just give a further option for those on the creation side who want assurance that they're working with the best materials, and those on the market side who want assurance that the prints they're trading and collecting were responsibly made and won't self-destruct.

If in the future you were to visit museums and see prints on the wall identified as a "Certified Inorganic IHD Print (2014)," it would be much more useful than just the words "inkjet print" or any of the random replacement desciptions that are now used haphazrdly. Like for instance "archival pigment print.*"

Bruno's original comment appears in its entirely in the Comments to the "Big Mystery" post.

Mike
(Thanks to Bruno)

*Because, really, anybody can slap the word "archival" on anything—especially if there's a financial inducement to do so—and no one can reasonably contradict the claim. Even the word "pigment" is suspect—were the inks pure pigment or simply a dye ink with some pigment added? And how can a dealer or museum reasonably stand by a claim of "archival pigment print" when the terms aren't defined and they're taking the artist's word for it anyway? And anyway nowhere in that casual description is the paper taken into account. It's all very suspect—and that must be hindering the acceptance of premium inkjet prints in the marketplace. When, really, the very best inkjet materials and the very worst inkjet materials are simply worlds apart.

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Jeff: "Wilhelm Imaging Research (WIR) has long made attempts to achieve some degree of standardization…but that's a long topic. Even with such tests, real world print display conditions involve numerous other variables, e.g., lighting, glass, etc.

"And beyond that, there are other print techniques that likely help or hinder print longevity, and that's been true long before the advent of digital printing. How, for instance, are Paul Strand's silver prints affected by his sometimes use of varnish spray? Should he have been required to disclose that to print buyers? There are certainly modern day inkjet equivalents involving toning, etc.

"This is not a new issue and, as far as I know, there have never been agreed-upon standards, even for 'silver prints.' Why should this be any different? I think change (real and perceptual) will come based on the market, not based on some required standards. I don't collect vintage silver, or platinum, prints any differently."

Mike replies: You're kind of talking past me here, for which I might be to blame. I'm not talking about a standard for actual LE. I'm talking about a certification procedure for various specific combinations of materials and equipment, so that printing services, photographers, professionals, and other printmakers could easily determine whether their materials and equipment were considered "safe to use" or "acceptable to buyers" or "of known high quality" or whatever words you want to use.

I didn't even mention what the criteria for certification might be.

Thus, Brand E Model X printer might be certified to use with Y inkset but not with other inks; and Brand E Model Y printer with Y inkset might be certified if used with papers A, B, C, D, E, F, N, P, and Q but not with any other papers.

The advantage of this is that when subsequent buyers, exhibitors, and owners want to know if the materials used were of a certain quality, they'd have an objective measure for confirmation of that.

The certification might even use one of a number of actual independent standards as a qualification. For instance, certification might stipulate that the print meet either "Wilhelm Imaging Research Test L" or "Aardenburg Imaging Light Fade Test Z" as part of the criteria.

Get the distinction?

Trecento: "I have only one problem with your proposal: you want an ISO certification. I hate paying ANSI for the privilege of reading supposedly public standards. For instance, ISO 18915, "Methods for the evaluation of the effectiveness of chemical conversion of silver images against oxidation" (i.e. silver print permanence!) costs $114 USD. Erecting a paywall would significantly reduce the effectiveness of your proposal. As an alternative model, I would suggest something similar the different Open Source licensing models, like the LPGL. A nonprofit entity is created to hold the trademark for IHD, and creates a set of standards for how/whether prints can be marked as IHD."

Hugh Crawford: "I'm pretty sure that no one uses halftone screening which is an amplitude modulation technique. Everything I have seen uses stochastic screening.

"I'm not so sure about the incremental part either. Canon printers for instance seem to put down the different inks all at once, i.e., any one color drop of ink can have any of 10 other colors deposited over it.

"Deposition has a nice ring to it however.

"So: Variable Stochastic Deposition print?

"VSD also stands for the Swiss printers trade group, Variable Sized Dots, and Voltage Sensitive Dyes, which might confuse someone, but I wouldn't worry too much. And the Swiss printers trade group is probably too freaked out about inkjet technology in general to care.

"As an aside, I wouldn't want to get the whole organic vs. inorganic and dye vs. pigment terminology baked into the name. The average consumer has no idea what organic means. Gasoline is organic, water isn't. Lake pigments have pretty much the same performance as dyes. Some azo dye (see Cibachrome) is a lot more archival than some nonorganic pigments. Carbon and bone black is about as archival and organic as you can get, yet it gets listed as a non-organic pigment in some listings. Quinacridone seems to be a leading high-performance archival pigment, and it's organic.

"If the ink manufacturers would just tell what was in the ink rather than keeping it a secret, that would go a long way towards legitimizing inkjet printing. No artist paint manufacturer would try to sell ink or paint that didn't say what the pigment was.

"Painters used stuff like Alizarin Crimson, a.k.a. Turkey red or Mordant red 11, that faded away to nothing. Now painters are much more careful, yet I have never heard of anyone asking what pigments were used in a million dollar painting, and I doubt most artists would say. Most painters I know are more than a little proprietary about some of their pigments.

Crabby Umbo: "Regarding the word 'archival,' I remember calling the rep of a slipcase portfolio company because I found out the item wasn't made out of inert and safe material, and it it was labeled 'archival.' When I told them of my concerns they said: '...Well, we think it's made pretty well....' Didn't get it at all...."

Tuomas: "I understand the need to raise the status of 'archival inkjet prints,' but how about just calling them 'prints'? You know, like cellular phones are increasingly just phones and digital cameras are cameras."

Joe Holmes: "Wait a minute. Are we brainstorming a solution without a problem? Who's being duped by this 'dye ink with some pigment added'? Where are the collectors demanding refunds for fake archival prints? Where's the outcry that's being addressed? In my walk through this year's AIPAD show in NYC I saw plenty of inkjet prints selling for high prices."

Bron: "In my painter's hat, I own books on materials and methods dating back almost three-quarters of a century. Even the oldest offers advice on permanent pigments, fugitive pigments, and advice on admixtures that may cause problems.Pigments now all have color index numbers, as well as ASTM International permanency numbers, and most mixed artists paints have the index numbers. I can put together a palette that is completely permanent, based on permanent pigments. Doing that for inkjet inks would be a step in the direction you're advocating, and might lead to different palette choices of inksets, so an artist could choose certain colors balanced against permanence."

Michael Bearman: "I disagree. Standardization will create a race to the bottom, as everything at or above the minimum standard will be necessarily be equal (whether or not that is so); hence, it will be in manufacturers' interests only to build to the cheapest minimum. In any event, when has the longevity of art ever had anything to do with its value? Van Gogh's colours today are more than a bit different than when freshly painted. And Museums and galleries are stuffed to the gills with paintings, prints, etc. that cannot be removed from controlled environments."

Robert P: "I went to an opening of a photography exhibition where the prints were selling (and they did) for thousands. The photographer would not admit that they were inkjets, even though I knew that he had printed them himself on an Epson or an HP (I forget which). He was very insistent that they were not ink, but pigment, and he seemed to think I was trying to catch him out whereas I simply wanted to know what he had printed with, as they were stunning. One of the only times that I have seen a gallery be totally open about it was an Eggleston show in London a few years back when I was told they were Epson prints. I guess Eggleston was big enough for it not to matter."

Pete: "Think I'll just stick with Pigment on Paper. It doesn't sound like something someone in a lab came up with."

MHMG [Mark from Aardenburg Imaging —Ed.]: "I'm no stranger to certifications and the like. But honestly, artists will not and should not be subject to certifications. They should use whatever materials they wish to when creating their work. Likewise, museums and archives should never impose a litmus test of any kind for what is deemed worth collecting (and to my knowledge, with the exception of the personal tastes of individual curators, they don't).

"What is needed is a central database of P+I+P (actually P+I+P+C, where C is any possible further treatment like a coating) that informs both artist and collector of the fragility (or lack thereof) of the final work, and gives insight into what kind of optimal care is needed to care for that historic and/or artistic work over time.

"Consider the seminal work The Pencil of Nature by Henry Fox Talbot. If I were to run Talbot's 'Calotype' process through the Aardenburg light fade testing protocol it would probably receive a shockingly low rating of less than 1 megalux hour (six months or so at the industry-standard assumption of 450 lux for 12 hours per day) because the salted paper prints tipped into Talbot's book were all made before Sir John Hershel suggested sodium thiosulfate ('hypo' or 'fixer' to those of you old timers who remember spending time in a photographic darkroom) as a means to remove the residual silver halide crystals from the print. Competent museum curators understand that this early historic print process is light sensitive and have implemented strict policies to ensure that it's inherent fragility is 'rationed' for future viewing audiences wisely. As such, The Pencil of Nature, a work of art that we might 'certify' to last only six months in these modern times is still with us (albeit only about a dozen copies remain) after more than 175 years. I hope folks can now understand why Aardenburg Imaging and Archives doesn't try to reduce light fastness testing to a simple 'years on display' rating. The end-user or collector has a huge role in creating appropriate storage and display environments, and thus has a major say in how long a print will last."

Big Mystery

I was having a conversation with a representative of Canson yesterday, and the subject turned to something I still consider a significant mystery. Why, when "Archival Pigment Prints" (read, inkjet done right) is by a comfortable margin the best color printing method in the history of photography, does inkjet printing continue to suffer from the persistent stigma of such low prestige?

Some Canson materials (along with a number of other selected papers you might be familiar with), are among the most beautiful materials ever made for color photographic printmaking. Surface, thickness, feel, flatness. The printing process is almost infinitely flexible and controllable, and the results quite easily possess the best archival life expectancy of any readily available, practical printmaking method. Yet inkjet is still the poor stepchild of print types.

I can think of ten ways to explain this. And yet none of them really make sense. Is it purely a matter of status and availability? Sometimes I think that if the finest inkjet methods had a distinctive name and a proprietary workflow, and an Epson Stylus Pro 3880 or a Canon Pixma Pro-1 cost $100,000 insteand of $1,000, people would be falling over themselves in their praise and covetousness.

It's just a very curious state of affairs, and one I wouldn't have thought would survive this long.

Mike

P.S. Canson sells an "Infinity Discovery Pack" that contains samples of 12 of its papers, so you can see and feel them for yourself.

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Bryan Geyer: "Gosh—I'd guess that the reason is because inkjet prints were all so crummy, and faded so readily, for so many years. Yes, that was before the pigment ink era, but it was inkjet, and the stigma sticks."

Richard: "Some people still feel manual stick cars are better than automatic. [Wait—you mean they aren't? —Ed.] Some like records more than CDs or MPG files or any digital file. Some still much prefer film even though digital is also 'better' in so many ways. And some people much prefer classic lenses to 'BETTER' modern lenses that are sharper, more contrasty and less prone to flare (this is a bugaboo with me: cannot stand it when someone says a lens is better simply because it's sharper—I guess, if you're trying to shoot Air Force Test Charts). Mostly in this case though I think it's because inkjet printing is seen as simply press-the-button and walk away and easily duplicated over and over vs. a hand-crafted analog print."

Geoff Wittig: "I suspect it's the result of a misconception of what's actually involved in high quality inkjet printing. Most folks have clicked the 'print' button on their laptop and 12 seconds later gotten a mediocre print on Staples™ generic paper out of their inkjet, so how hard can it be?

"Pretty darn challenging, actually. It's true that once you have your workflow nailed down, you can reliably produce beautiful prints of uniform quality. But getting to that point requires painstaking experimentation with lots of trial and error, and endless proofing. Your raw file processing and Photoshop work (including color management, contrast 'budgeting' and sharpening routines) have to dovetail perfectly with the surface quality and warm/cool white of your chosen paper. Certain images really call for specific papers to bring out their best qualities, so you actually need a range of choices at your fingertips.

"The almost limitless permutations of digital processing/inkset/profiles/papers provides a huge toolkit allows you to squeeze out that last iota of image quality. But this is also why it's so challenging. My wife laughs at me for being so persnickety, but when I put a near-miss print next to a really good one, it's screamingly obvious."

Jack Luke: "I've been lucky enough to be printing on a 7900 and Hanuman 300 gsm fibre gloss stock for the past year in uni and it matches the quality of the C-types we have coming out of the RA-4 in most regards. I will say that one thing inkjet printing can't match is the feeling of depth you get from a high, high gloss C-type. Without waxing lyrical too much, the image seems to sit inside a C-type print as opposed to on the surface with an inkjet."

Kenneth Tanaka: "The pathology of this particular disorder starts with dealers. Dealers have infected collectors and museums with this prejudice against inkjet prints in an attempt to maintain preciousness, and prices, of chemical prints and photos. Of course art students pick this up and, not wanting to grow up as inferior artists, assume the same position. It's all very absurd and more than a little nauseating.

"But I'm happy to report that the fever seems to be breaking. I'm seeing more inkjet prints in the Art world, and fewer nonsense names for the method. Mercifully I think 'giclée,' the poster child for 'nonsense name,' is finally disappearing. 'Pigment print' seems to be the descriptive title being commonly adopted by major museums. Meanwhile, I've been experimenting with digital C-printing and have been finding it a very interesting printing technique. But that's a subject for another article."

Judith Wallerius: "I think the root of that low prestige lies in the impression of familiarity. The process of inkjet-printing is not different enough to commandeer the kind of respect the other photo processing procedures do. And it's difficult to truly appreciate archival vs. not archival quality unless you are years or even decades down the road and of one print is only a faded greenish impression left, while the other is still as vibrant as on the first day.

"People look at darkrooms full of chemicals and enlargers and it's an alien thing to most, full of steps in a process they don't comprehend. And they know that. They used to send off little metal containers that they knew they weren't to open themselves lest they'd destroy the content irretrieveably, and after a mysterious interlude they would receive envelopes with finished prints. There was a mystery to it, and an artist who was able to create and put to use all that themselves was a bit of a magician.

"That the quality of the modern inkjet printers is comparable to or can even surpass those processes doesn't matter so much when the printer looks just like a bigger version of the thing that's plodding along in the office or that they swear at when it gives mysterious error codes instead of printing. And even the size of the printer doesn't matter much, we've all seen huge printers or plotters in copy-shops for years. They look like the same thing that's now putting out those archival prints; there simply is nothing to be in awe of. With an inkjet-printer instead of darkroom work, the difference to the thing they already know has been reduced to a matter of degrees instead of being something completely other. That those degrees still make all the difference doesn't matter. It's not different enough to feel 'special,' and I don't see that changing anytime soon (or maybe even ever). I also doubt that a higher price point or proprietary work flow would change that, since people would still know what the process is—and even their office printer uses proprietary cartridges, so there's nothing impressive there.

"A distinctive name would help (hence the 'giclée print' cop-out that masks the archival inkjet print's true identity), but the process would still need to be sufficiently removed from being seen as inkjet-printing to eventually garner the same kind of respect / awe that traditional printing methods receive.

"Silly as it is, human nature demands something to have at least a bit of an air of 'I can't do that' for it to be seen as truly impressive (and, in turn, very simple things can impress people when they just think they're special and out of their range of ability or reach). Inkjet printing just doesn't fit that bill—no mystery, no magic to be found."

David Miller: "I can think of a couple of factors that are at play here. First, you cannot easily see the hand of the master in an inkjet print. Someone with a lot of digital processing and printing experience may appreciate the work that went into a superb print, but for most people it will be devalued by the conviction that 'anybody could do that.' What makes an Ansel Adams print more valued than one made by a highly skilled assistant? We intuit the hand of the master in the final product. (I've seen a number of stringed instruments built by Stradavari and other Italian masters of his time. There are elements in the workmanship that seem crude compared to a first-class factory-built 'replica.' But as a former luthier myself, I can see exactly how the maker held his knife, how he shaped a soundhole with a single powerful cut where a lesser mortal would have used five. The beauty and humanity of those old instruments is breathtaking.) Secondly, an inkjet print is devalued for the collector by the knowledge that it could be reproduced exactly by the pressing of a button—hence the inflated price for a 'limited edition' print. (As Mark Twain said, 'Buy land; they're not making it any more.')"

Rodger Kingston: "I printed Cibachromes for myself and clients for nearly 30 years, and I agree, by any comparison inkjet printing is an absolute breeze, and well-made inkjet prints can be as beautiful and permanent as any process, including my long-lost and oh-so-permanent Cibachromes. I suspect that the Rodney Dangerfield problem here may be that inkjet printing, itself, requires no hand work by the photographer or printer. All the work is done beforehand, in Photoshop or whatever, and when the image is 'ready,' all one has to do is to push the Print button of the ink jet printer. No artistry or craftsmanship involved; could that be why they don't get no respect?"

Ed: "You are working from a flawed premise. Inkjet prints are simply not the best color printing method in the history of photography. Any pure optical analog process eclipses them: dye transfer, Ciba, RA-4, etc."

Mike replies: I think they are, with the exception that most past techniques had distinctive "looks" that specific individuals might have liked and preferred. In terms of controllability, color purity, sharpness, lightfastness, enlargeability, and permanence, the best 2014 inkjet technology surpasses any and all "readily available, practical" traditional color techniques. I'm not sure about color gamut, and surfaces are a matter of taste. But even if you prefer the specific look of RA-4 prints, say, I can't see how you can make a defensible case that they are technically superior. They really just aren't.

Tech. Ed. Ctein adds: Speaking to the point that Mike didn't—color gamut—inkjet printing is vastly superior to any chromogenic or dye-bleach process. This isn't debatable.

Dye transfer is something of a red herring, as it isn't accessable to 99.9% of the photographers out there. But if it must be discussed, one must consider the substantial number of consummate dye transfer printers who chose* to switch to a digital printer. Any assertion that dye transfer prints are objectively superior has to be questioned closely.

As Mike said, we're talking about broadly objective qualities, here, not what someone personally likes or doesn't.

(*Yeah, it was a choice—dye transfer supplies are still available to the very few that are dedicated to the process.)

How to Sign Photographs Part 4: Expert Opinion

Here is Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Introduction: Okay, so I've heard back from three individuals: a senior museum curator (well known, with many fine books to his credit); a very distinguished gallery owner (photography art dealer) with four decades in the business and an impressive list of credentials and lifetime accomplishments; and a serious photography collector who invests substantially in fine art photographs and occasionally advises galleries and museums on emerging trends. Since two of the three prefer to remain anonymous, I'll present them all that way. You'll have to take my word for it that they are among the top people in the field, but they are.

Note however that these individuals do not speak monolithically for their entire professions or categories; they're individuals, and speak for themselves, and this short post should be considered a sampling of opinion rather than a survey of opinion. Note also that our dealer tends to concentrate a bit more than the other two on the work of living artists who are still working and creating new work (that is my notion, and I'll let you know if any of the three wish to contradict that).

Here are their answers to my short questionnaire.

•

Mike Johnston: Do museums generally prefer signed prints over unsigned ones?

Museum curator: Yes, certainly, but the actual history of the makers and objects always needs to be taken into account. A signature is a clear indication of both authorship and of quality (that is, a fine print rather than a work print, press print, etc.), so it's obviously necessary to have a signature in all cases in which one is to be expected. Historically, of course, we know that there are many bodies of work that were routinely not signed—in the 20th century, important figures like Eugene Atget basically never signed his prints and Stieglitz did so rather rarely. In those cases, we go by other criteria to be assured that the authorship and originality of the print are what we want. With 19th century work, a handful of artists either signed their prints or affixed facsimile signature ink-stamps...but many more did not. With contemporary work, it is natural for collectors to expect that all works would be signed—there is, after all, very little good reason for not doing so.

Collector/investor: Marginally, but for vintage prints it would be rare. Instead, verso stamps are common* and would be fine for contemporary prints as well.

Photography art dealer: Yes, collectors want signed photographic prints. The only exception would be estate prints with some form of documentation from the estate representative, with documentation.

•

MJ: Is there a generally accepted preference for prints signed on the front or the back?  

Museum curator: There is no strong preference here from collectors—it's more the preference of the artist. My personal preference is for signatures on the back, leaving the front "clean."

Collector/investor: Absolutely, back.

Photography dealer: Personally,  I prefer to see prints signed on both the front and back. Do not know how others dealers feel about this issue.

•

MJ: If there is a recto signature, should it remain displayed when the print is framed?

Museum curator: My preference is no; this strikes me all too often as a kind of affectation, adding little or nothing to our appreciation of the image itself.

Collector/investor: Hell no.

Photography dealer: It would be optimal if the signature is visible on the recto when matted, but [it is] not always possible.

•

MJ: Does the presence of a signature make any difference to the value of a piece, or is that too dependent on related issues and specific cases to make a general statement about? 

Museum curator: See my answer to [the first question] above. In the cases in which we would expect a signature as a sign of authenticity and print quality, the lack of a signature would pretty consistently have some impact on the value/desirability of the work. In the cases in which a signature isn't expected in the first place, it would obviously make no difference.

Collector/investor: Very rarely.

Photography dealer: The photographer's signature is always important. Hard to offer a first class vintage photograph to a serious collector without a signature or substantial attribution.

•

If I receive any more answers to my queries I'll add them to this post and alert you to the edit.

My thanks to all concerned!

Mike

*In a follow-up email, our collector/investor added the following: "[Where stamps are concerned] a lot depends on the facts and circumstances. I suppose we can also add blind stamps to the list, although that is hardly common anymore. I think a rubber stamp is more common and more archival. But to address one example of variability, for iconic photojournalistic images it is more desirable to have all sorts of press information stamped and pasted to the back than it is to have modern print with a big signature.

"I suppose that for modern prints, if [the print] has any value whatsoever—which, let's face it, is a one in a billion proposition—it is usually clear what a finished print is and what it isn't.

"Another issue is editions, a modern phenomenon. That is usually in light pencil on recto."

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Jim Hughes: "Regarding the signing of prints: I have a large 'Tomoko in Her Bath' print that Gene Smith gave me as a birthday present (long story—he wanted to give me a watch, but Evelyn convinced him I'd rather have the actual and spectacular, if a bit dinged, print which I'd reproduced in the 1974 Minamata essay in Camera 35). He inscribed the print, almost invisibly, in a dark area in the lower left with a black ball-point pen, probably a cheap Bic. Lee Witkin, who matted and framed it for us (reluctantly, it seemed, since he'd always had a tough time getting prints from Gene to sell in the gallery), had taken to calling this, Gene's final signing practice, 'Signed in the image with Stylus.'

"Subsequently, this print hung in my office on a wall that backed my computer desk; the searing image of suffering and love is the one I looked at every day as I sat down to write another chapter for my biography of Smith, a process that took many years.

"Witkin's book The Photograph Collector's Guide, done with Barbara London, is an excellent source by the way. It includes examples of many photographers' signatures. A couple years back, ICP attributed on its blog a note to Helen Gee at Limelight Gallery in the 1950s as having been written by Gene Smith when, in fact, it had been written by Minor White. When I saw it online, I suspected the language did not sound like Gene's and checked the Witkin book for other possibilities. White's reproduced signature was clearly an exact match while Smith's, of course, was nothing like the signature at the bottom of this note. So rather than admitting the mistake, ICP just removed the document from the blog without a word of explanation."

And the Winner Is...(Yes, More About Pens)

Those of you who don't make and/or sign prints must be nearing terminal sufficiency on this topic, but let's face it, if you aspire to be an art photographer in the accepted sense you do need to make physical objects. A few more items:

1. To sign or not to sign, and where: I'm collecting some data on what the art market actually wants and expects with regard to the signing of artwork. I've sent a very short questionnaire to several museum curators, eminent gallerists, and serious collectors. I've already gotten two very useful replies, and if/when I get a few more I'll summarize the findings for you. A foretaste, though: in contrast to what I wrote yesterday, not everyone agrees with Ken that a recto signature isn't necessary.

2. Front-runner emerges: After signing many dozens more prints, it has emerged that my favorite pen of all for Canson Baryta Photographique paper is the Prismacolor Premier Illustration Marker Fine Line .05 black pictured above. This pen is almost always sold in sets of various colors or tips, so I thought I'd offer a direct link for the single pen alone. Here's the single pen and here's the page at Blick Art Supplies where you can find all the pens in the series. Hope this helps someone somewhere.

My endorsement is not a guarantee that the manufacturer's promise that "these markers contain premium, pigmented, acid-free, archival ink that is lightfast, permanent, non-toxic, and water resistant" is absolutely true at face value for your papers and your conditions. Just sayin'.

I'm also finding it's a good general-purpose writing marker, and it's not expensive ($1.61 ea. if you order 12), so I've ordered a dozen to have on hand. More working pens in the house is seldom a bad thing.

3. Ctein's take: Ctein was psyched that a recto signature isn't considered mandatory (we both came up in the era when it was), and he and I had a phone conversation about the various options for the back of the print: a stamp, a plate or label, and a third interesting option—but I'll let him tell you about it.

Mike

ADDENDUM from Tech. Ed. Ctein: Personally, I'm delighted to find out that collectors [at least some —Ed.] would prefer that I don't sign and title my prints on the front. Decades of practice have made me very good at that, but it's the most nerve-racking part of the whole printing process. A slip-up can ruin a print. If it's an inkjet print, it's a nuisance and some wasted time and a modest amount of money. If it's a dye transfer print, many, many hours of work go down the drain. It is much easier signing in soft pencil on the back; I've never screwed that up.

Regarding the signing of inkjet prints, stamping with ink raises all sorts of concerns.  The inherent archivality of the stamp is the least of mine. Inks are notorious for penetrating, bleeding, or outgassing. You'd want to have  an ink that would adhere to the paper, would not smear, would not penetrate if you're printing on fiber-based paper, and won't transfer anything or outgas solvents to a sheet of paper below it  (whether or not there is an interleaf sheet between the prints—those are not impermeable barriers). These physical requirements are likely to be very different for fiber-based prints and RC prints.

Signing in soft graphite pencil (e.g., a retouching pencil) is an entirely safe practice. Signing or stamping on the back with ink is an unknown.

With one exception: rather than physically stamp, you can print the information on the back of the paper with your inkjet printer. At least in theory. You can even scan in your chop or your signature and print that as well.

There are two practical issues that arise here:

1. The first is whether the ink  would properly  adhere to the back of the paper and not smear or transfer to an adjacent sheet—not a problem with fiber-based papers, but it might not work with RC papers. You'd have to try it.

2. The second is that it requires running the paper through the printer face-down. That may or may not scratch the surface of the print. It will depend entirely upon the printer and inkset, the chosen paper path, and the kind of paper: RC  vs. fiber base, glossy, semi-matte/gloss, or matte surface. Matte surface papers, in particular, are notoriously easy to scuff and mark. Again, you'd have to give it a try with your particular paper and setup.

For what it's worth, I just ran the experiment on my current setup: Epson 3880 printer, rear paper diagonal feed, and Canson Baryta Photographique paper. I'm delighted to find out that front-side scratching is not a problem. I get an un-marred print whether I print the backside first or the frontside first (allowing a day of blotting and drying after printing the frontside before printing on the back).

I'm pretty sure your mileage will differ, but I'm a happy camper.

Ctein

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Ming Thein: "We must have tested 30+ different pens over the last few months as part of the Ultraprint development process. I've found that either the Faber-Castell pigment markers (grey body, silver clip) or the dark blue bodied Pilot 'Drawing Pen Pigment Ink' pens work best—on both Canson Baryta Photographique and Canson Infinity Platin Fiber Rag (the latter of which is my personal preference)."

Kenneth Tanaka: "Just to be clear...I think people should 'sign' their photo prints any way that makes them happy, including potentially not signing them at all. My earlier remarks were 'observational'; I was reporting what I have observed having had the opportunity to closely inspect many, many prints of many of the most influential photographers of history. That is, I was not attempting to be prescriptive.

"Signatures are, of course, symbols of authentication and authorization. So to the extent that a signature represents an artist's authority it will naturally be desirable to a collector if all other factors are equal. But they often aren't 'equal'; that's the hitch. There are, for example, more than a few situations where a photographer never signed highly-desirable 'vintage' prints of his work, but did sign much later and poorer prints that often go unsold, or bought-in, at auctions.

"Then, of course, there is the whole issue of the authentication of the signature. One of the most famous cases of photo print fraud in our times was the case of the Lewis Hine prints which were signed. I am acquainted with someone who was burned by this incident, having purchased a 'Powerhouse Worker' print from an established dealer. Despite the Hine signature, an expert thought that the print just 'looked too pretty' to be authentic...which it was not. (The collector received a full refund, by the way.)

"But I digress. Few, if any, of us sell into the 'Art' market , so 'Forever Authentication' is not really a major factor for consideration. Marks made by pencils, pens, crayons will all last more than long enough to do the job. (In fact the 'lasting' nature of most marks is what gives conservators headaches.) Our signatures are principally marks of pride of authorship. So again I recommend that you sign your photos wherever and however it makes you happy to do so."

Mike replies: Good points all. Especially the observation that it's unlikely ever to be a serious issue for most if not all of us. What I'm learning from the other experts I'm consulting also seems to indicate that there is considerable latitude for preference—what the photographer prefers, what her or his customers prefer, what the gallery owners prefer. So the best thing is to do it your way—then that will become what is characteristic and expected of your prints, if and when anyone in the future is paying attention.

Terry Letton: "For what it's worth, the prize of my minuscule print collection is a portrait of the Indian poet Rabandrandath Tagore. It is not signed but is stamped on the back Studio of Edward S. Curtis. Good enough for me."

Richard Alan Fox [whose question started all this —Ed.]: "Super thanks Mike."

Clayton Jones: "I make B&W prints, but on matte paper. My favorite paper is Epson's Hot Press Natural, which accepts a signature beautifully with a #2 pencil. This means a light signature can be applied. My favorite pencil for this is the Papermate Sharpwriter #2, an inexpensive mechanical pencil that can be purchased at CVS and Walgreens (just about anywhere).

"During the short period when I used glossy papers, I used a Staedtler Marsmatic 700 refillable pen which was loaded with the same light gray pigment ink I used in the printer, so I knew it would last as long as the print. I have never liked bold, black recto signatures which pull the viewer's eye and compete with the picture. I like the signature to be there, but not draw attention to itself."

David Paterson: "Messing up prints while attempting to sign them is definitely an issue with me, so for some time now it has been my habit to print a digital signiature and abbreviated date in the bottom right-hand margin of each print. I don't sell a huge number of prints but I have never had a complaint since I started doing this."

The Verso Stamp

"Manuscript" is a word that originated in 1590–1600, from the medieval Latin manuscriptus, meaning "written by hand."

Traditionally, penmanship was taught in schools and there were various matters of etiquette that pertained: personal notes and letters from gentlemen and ladies were properly written by hand, for example. Of course for centuries there was no alternative.

And of course a person's signature was her mark and affadavit in the days before magnetic strips and ID numbers. It was a sign attesting to personal attention and approval, a source-mark. The signature of Elizabeth the First of England was appropriately regal.

The colonial merchant John Hancock's signature was so admired that his name became a slang synonym for "signature." More recently, the U.S. Treasury Secretary's literally loopy signature got a lot of attention because it goes on all the money printed during his tenure. Many people like the idea of Jack Lew's loops on the money.

Handwriting itself is supposed to be a sort of fingerprint. There are handwriting analysts and forgers of handwriting (and of signatures) and charlatans who claim to decode personality traits from a person's handwriting.

Funny thing is, though—I don't have any handwriting.

Well, I sort of do, of course. But what I mean is that I don't write by hand and never have very much. When I was young I wrote letters constantly, but they were all (Emily Post turns over in grave) typed. I write to you more or less every day, but it's all typed into the ether and almost never becomes ink on paper at all. The byline at the bottom is typed.

I've been aware as I signed prints yesterday that there was something faintly contrived in that act. I'm not a Dickensian businessman whose signature is required on a hundred documents a day. I can go a year without signing anything other than a check, and I don't pay for things with checks very often any more either. Also, I have physical difficulty signing prints. My hand cramps up and my mind gets the yips (I could never write a signature like Jack Lew's, for instance—I'd constantly be making too many or too few loops). I ruined not one but two of Ctein's beautiful prints yesterday by simply messing up the signature. Ack, in the immortal words of Bill the Cat.

So I think I've decided that this last print sale is the last time I will sign any of my prints.

Peter Turnley has written eloquently here of the meaning, to him, of the act of signing a print, and how memorable it was for him when he first saw Henri Cartier-Bresson signing his. Anyone who signs their prints should continue doing so proudly and without apology. However, as Ken Tanaka mentioned in the comments yesterday (and which I've since confirmed with a couple of collectors I know), collectors now are just as happy with prints signed on the back (verso when referring to a sheet of paper, the front being recto), and a stamp is as good as a signature.

What's a stamp?

Fortunately, Luminous-Lint has collected many examples, and has a nice page explaining the various types.

Studio stamps, courtesy Luminous-Lint. The one in the middle
is Gertrude Kasebier's.

More about this later, but if a rubber stamp on the back will satisfy posterity and the market, I think, personally, that I'm going to switch over to a stamp as soon as I work out the details.

Pending further research. I'll keep you posted.

Mike
(Thanks to Ken Tanaka and Cal Amari)

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post got recto and verso recto'd and verso'd! Sorry for the mix up. —Ed.

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Featured Comments from:

Phil: Get one of these:

Winsor: "I for one treasure the 'AA' initials on a couple my hung prints indicating that he approved the prints made by an assistant. I don't know about collecting and debating the effect on value, but I certainly appreciate the connection to photographer of a real signature no matter how tortured or abbreviated. A stamp just moves away from that and seems to say that so many prints were made it is not a work of art, just a manufactured object. A stamp is sort of like a title page in a book. People still want a signed first edition."

John Krumm: "A stamp sounds about perfect for me as well. My handwriting is not very good, and my signature only OK. When I have signed prints in the past I can't get myself to relax and sign like I might a check. So I draw the signature slowly, which usually doesn't look so great. No fun. I suppose you could even stamp the paper on the back ahead of time, to avoid messing up the print later."

Steven Willard: "Another option is a 'chop' stamp which is the Asian version of a rubber ink stamp that are frequently seen on Japanese and Chinese prints or paintings. They are custom made and closely held and are used in place of a signature."

Stephen Gilbert: "Hey, if it's good enough for Walker and Weegee...I think the stamps are quite cool, in an old-timey kind of way. Maybe you could solicit designs?"

Jamin: "Well, it was a good story and I had to read more, but according to Wikipedia Jacob Lew changed his signature just so new money wouldn't have those loops."

Nick Rains: "I think signing demonstrates 'contact' between the artist and the print and it adds an analogue element in a digital world. I too am left handed and totally get your cramping and the 'yips' when starting to sign a print. I once got tangled up signing a 60x30" Cibachrome print and had to re-print it."

Mike replies: Ouch.

Pen for Signing Prints

Yesterday, Richard Alan Fox asked me what pen I'm using to sign my prints.

Complicated question.

You might recall that some time ago I told you that I'd some online research and bought a handful of different pens to try. I was after something that wouldn't damage prints, was considered permanent, and didn't smudge.

I then did various trials with the six or seven types of pens I bought from various sources. The one I ended up using the most is labeled "Kaiser CD/DVD Pen." I bought two of these, from different sources, one of which (if memory serves) was just advertised and sold as an archival marker for negatives and film.

Rather incredibly, I can no longer find this pen online at all—there's a different pen that comes up under that name, but it doesn't look like the two I bought. C'mon now! That was only six months ago. But the product I have seems either to have changed skins or gone extinct.

The Kaiser pens I have are probably made by Staedtler. They seem very similar to the Staedtler Lumocolor permanent CD/DVD 310. (Note that the pen at the link comes only in a .4 mm width. The ones I'm using are not marked, but have at least .6 and probably 1 mm tips. You might want to check out this one as well, which comes in three widths.)

This Pilot pen seemed to have the best writing properties on Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique fiber-base paper—although as you can see at the link, the performance information provided is neither very exhaustive nor very reassuring—closely followed by the Prismacolor Premier Illustration markers. The Sakura Pigma Micron pens smudged the most of all the ones I have, so I eliminated those early on.

So, can I recommend any of these?

No.

I mean, not necessarily. I don't have the ability to do adequate tests—I can't guarantee to you that they'll work the way the manufacturers say they do. All I did was try out their writing properties, evaluate the way they look, and test that they were smudge-proof on the papers I'm signing. That's all. I picked the pen I used to sign most of the prints (the Kaiser) because it was the most smudge-proof (I'm left-handed, so smudging can be a problem). Beyond that, I'm trusting that I wouldn't have bought these if the online description (which, in the case of the Kaisers, as I said, I can't even track back to, it turns out) didn't look appropriate, and I'm simply trusting that those descriptions were accurate and truthful.

That's not good enough for me to make a recommendation to others.

Good luck. When it comes to pens, it's truly a dense forest out there.

Mike

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robert e: "Thanks for the report. Timely for me, as I mean to try out Canson Baryta in the near future, and I'm wondering if graphite will work on that. I'll report back in the event I have to try pens and find something interesting, but I'm hoping I can stick with graphite. I feel (don't actually know for sure) that it's the most benign option, and we know it's stable. Yes, it can be erased, but who's going to do that to a signed print they bought and framed? Plus, it's cheap. I just came across this: apparently archival standards for pens are covered by ISO 11798. Googling turns up at least a couple of European pen makers with certified inks. (ISO 18916 covers general imaging materials.) FEI, Mike's original pen hunt article is here."

Mike replies: Pencil doesn't work on the Canson paper Ctein used for my prints (a particularly beautiful paper, by the way—I think it looks as good as any light-sensitive paper I ever used in the darkroom).

I should have referred back to that original article myself. It appears my Kaiser pens were the "Kaiser-Schreiber film marking pen" recommended (but not endorsed, n.b.) by the Library of Congress Preservation Department that I referred to in that post. It also turned out that the "Hollinger non-fading black Pigma pen" that I got from Hollinger Metal Edge was the same pen. That pen now looks different: here it is from Hollinger. If you buy it from Amazon or B&H Photo you either have to buy a set of four colors or, if you want just the black color, a box of 40 pens.

Frank Petronio: "If it's an inkjet, I just add my name in small but contrasting type, a nice sans-serif like Frutiger Roman or Bold, over the image at whichever corner it is the least distracting. I adjust the translucency to be legible but quiet. Sacrilegious I know but it suits the medium and never smudges or gets cut off. For years I tried various pens and none of them were ideal."

Mike replies: That's too non-standard for the art world, but, interestingly, I used to do the same thing to add photographer's names to magazine covers. (Hey, a photo magazine should give the cover photographer credit on the cover itself, don't you think? It's what I thought, anyway.)

Announcement: Matrix Dump!

What this is about: Regular readers have followed the saga of Ctein's evolution into digital, along with the closing of his darkroom and our dye transfer "Big Print" sale, in which Ctein used up the last of his dye transfer materials for 160 last large prints, priced at $595...which by the way sold out in five hours and six minutes.

So: You might remember that in a column from August 2012, Ctein wondered what in the heck he should do with all his matrices. A "matrix" in this case is one of the three separations from which a dye transfer print is made. Once crafted, these can be reused, so a dye printer will keep old matrices on file for future printings. But now that his dye transfer paper is gone and his darkroom is dismantled, obviously Ctein has no further need for the matrices. But the matrices are interesting, and (now) are historical artifacts, and even have a certain beauty and photographic interest.

He has some 280 "Matrix Sets." Each set includes a work print with printing notations, along with an article explaining what those notations mean.

A "matrix set" is three separations and a full-sized test or guide print (plus an article explaining what everything is)

Long and short: in response to his query, enough people said "I'd buy a set, if they aren't too expensive" that he decided his first step would be to offer the sets here, for a nominal price. So those who want a set can have one.

(I already commandeered a set from my favorite print, plus I'm going to ask the Photography Curator at our local Museum if she'd like a couple of sets for the museum's collection, in which case I will spring for a couple more sets and donate them.)

This isn't a regular "TOP print sale," although some similar limitations will apply: the sale will last for only five days or until sets run out. Ctein's got some interesting plans to try to accommodate peoples' individual requests. I'll let him tell you about that next week.

He'll commence the offer in the context of his regular column next Wednesday (February 12th). So if you're interested, be on the alert and check back here then. The column is usually posted late in the morning.

Mike

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Small Format Professionalism

This week's column by Ctein

Once again, it's time for me to play a notional whack-a-mole. An idea pops up. I smack it down. It pops up again, I smack it down. Repeat ad nauseam.

One of those subterranean burrowers popped up repeatedly in the discussions around Mike's post "Connectedness" and the preceding "Great Cameras" posts. It's that small format digital cameras are not suited to really serious professional photography, certainly not the kind that results in portfolio prints. Oh yes, maybe screenshots. But the hard stuff? You need a big sensor for that!

Nonsense. Balderdash. Hogwash. Bunkum.

Why can't we stamp this one out? Honestly and truly, real-world results just don't support it. They haven't for years. Not even by highly demanding aesthetic standards.

Dodging the red herring that pops up alongside this mole, I'm not saying bigger can't be better. 8x10-inch sheet film was better than 35mm. How many professionals found it necessary to go to that large? Damn few. You may be one of them. Fine. This isn't for you. It's talking about what, in general and on average, a discerning practitioner needs.

Two specifics drove me to engage the furry varmint again. The first was the notion that the Sony RX10 20-MP camera (right) with a 9x13mm sensor (that's 1:2.7 of 35mm size) wouldn't be capable of serious work, especially if one needed prints of "large" size.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by large. Unless you're talking bigger than 20x 24", I have real doubts that this camera won't satisfy. If you're talking a mere 17x22", I'm certain it'll perform. I've gone there with older, lesser cameras, and it hasn't even been all that hard.

Currently I'm working in the Micro 4/3 camp. Remember that $19.95 print that Mike and I offered a year back? That was made with an old model Olympus, the one with the original 12-megapixel sensor. It's 13x17mm (1:2 of 35mm size), not hugely bigger than the Sony RX10's. Definitely not enough to make a big difference in image quality, especially not with four years' worth of improved sensor technology backing it up. (And while I'm whacking moles, a reminder that most dimensions of image quality scale with linear dimension, not sensor area. Also addressed in previous columns. You can look it up.)

Okay, so some of you are going to say, "Well, yes but it does have a bigger sensor, and besides it has much fewer pixels so they're much bigger, hence they're much better." Which is not necessarily true. All pixels are not created equal; four years makes a big difference in the technology. Look at the image quality improvement between the old generation Olympus and the current OM-D series. A third more pixels in the same space, with massively better image quality all around. But, still, I get your objection. So let's wind back another generation, to a smaller format than the Sony RX10 has.

Before the Olympus Pen, I was using an all-in-one Fuji S100fs 11-MP camera, which had a 6.5x9 mm sensor (that's 1:4 of 35mm size). That is, only two thirds the size of the one in the Sony RX10, with just about the same pixel size. Now we're talking technology five years old, at least. I will certainly give Fuji credit for making really good hardware, but I'd be awfully surprised if Sony hasn't managed to equal it five years later.

Fig. 1. Photo by Ctein. From a Fuji S100fs, with teeny 1/4X-scale sensor. It prints just fine with a 15x20" image area.

Just how good was the Fuji? Good enough that a lot of the 17x22" prints I offer for sale on my website came from that camera (figure 1). In fact, before the Bay Bridge photo turned up, Mike and I had been discussing about offering one like this as an example for the small-camera/big-print sale.

Yes, you had to use the camera carefully to get that level of quality out of it, and it wouldn't provide it at high ISOs. How much care? Less than I needed to get the same quality out of 35mm film in large prints, that's for sure! And, oh yeah, that teeny-sensor, five-year-old camera had better noise vs. ISO characteristics than 35mm film, too.

I'm not saying my Olympus OM-D E-M5 ain't better. It's so massively better. But the Fuji was good enough, and there's no possible way that the Sony isn't a lot better than good enough.

Let's continue to climb down the ladder. How about them camera phones, folks? Two data points for your enjoyment. The first was a 20x24" print I made for Mike Johnston from a Nokia 40-megapixel cellphone camera. It looked fabulous! The only visible deficiency was just a bit of banding in the skies, a consequence of having only 8-bit JPEGs to work with and mapping from RGB into the printer's CMYK color space. In most photographs, you'd have never seen it. I could have massaged it away, but that wasn't the point the exercise. We just wanted a peek at the quality.

Fig. 2. Photo by Pete Su (a.k.a. psu). Made with an iPhone, processed entirely in camera, and uploaded to Flickr. It prints as an excellent 10x13-inch image. Might even be able to go larger, but I'm picky.

The second is the photograph that reader psu posted to Flickr from his iPhone and linked to in the comments to the Connectedness column (figure 2). Just to confirm my intuition, I downloaded the full-resolution version and printed it out, 10x13" image area—close to what Peter Turnley calls "European collector size." Just as I expected, it looked really, really good. I'd feel uncomfortable taking it bigger than that, but I am really fussy.

As a reality check, I showed it to Paula with no explanation and asked her what she thought of it.

She said, "It's a nice enough photograph. Doesn't knock my socks off but it's entirely okay." So I asked her what she thought of the technical quality, and she said, "Oh, that's fine. It's got nice detail, even in the background. And the tones look good."

Then I told her it was from a cellphone and her eyes got big, and she said, "Oh, REALLY!"

Okay, I'm done.

Until the damned mole pokes its head up again. I'm hanging on to the mallet.

Ctein

Ctein's column pops up on Wednesdays on TOP.

©2014 by Ctein, all rights reserved

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About Printers

This week's column by Ctein

Once again I make promises on which I don't deliver. The follow-up to "Complexity and Convergence" that I promised is put off several weeks. Why? Because Mike raised much more interesting and fascinating topics for me to discuss with last weekend's column "Connectedness." I think I'll be dealing with them for several weeks.

I'm going to start with a comment that Patrick Dodds made. He complained that printers are "...expensive, difficult to use and unreliable," and "are in their own way as responsible for the decline of the print as the Internet."

Well, I kind of took umbrage at that. I mean, yes I am expensive (and I deserve it) and there's no question I can be difficult. But I'm entirely reliable. I couldn't have made a living as a custom printer if I weren't. Calumny, vile calumny I say.

Wait. You mean he's talking about the machines?

Oh, that's very different...never mind. (Thank you, Emily Litella.)

All right, jokes aside, I've an underlying point there. In many of my columns, I've made exactly the same complaints about inkjet printers and printing software. But I believe Patrick's conclusion from that is wrong, and that has to do with people.

In the total demographic space that contains all (human) printers, I think that Patrick and I occupy very thin slices. Yes, I could print much faster and more cheaply in the darkroom, but I'm not your average printer. Four decades of printing personally and professionally, plus being one of the best printers alive, made me incredibly efficient in the darkroom. Add to that the commercial angle, which meant I was buying supplies in bulk at dealer prices (30–50% of what the hoi polloi had to pay), and, yeah, digital printing has proven much more time-consuming and expensive for me.

Having looked at a lot of darkroom-made prints in my time, though, I know I'm the exception. Most darkroom printers were lousy printers; most of what they produced was mediocre at best. Furthermore, almost all of them were very inefficient, compared to me. They'd use several times as much paper and time to get a good print, and they were paying more for their supplies to begin with.

Consequently, my experience doesn't have much to do with the big picture. I think that for the vast majority of human would-be-printers, inkjet printers have made their lives a lot easier and their printing a lot less frustrating. So many things could and did go wrong in the darkroom. Mostly human rather than machine error, but it was costly and annoying nonetheless. I see a lot more well-made prints today than I ever did in the darkroom era.

Even for me, digital printing frequently makes my life a lot easier and printing more convenient. Factoring in the setup and tear-down times, if I just want to make one or two prints I'm saving time and money doing it on the computer compared to doing it in the darkroom.

Photograph by David Dyer-Bennet. This photograph was a lot of work to print well the first time, but really easy to reprint later, even with changes.
Thank you, digital.

A recent example: Mike wanted to see a proof print of the photograph above that I printed for TOP reader and dear friend David Dyer-Bennet some six years ago. It wasn't much work for me to find the file and run off a print. When I looked at the print, it seemed a little dull and dark to me. I don't know if that's a difference between printers and profiles then and now, or if it's just my taste. Whatever, I twiddled with the curves a bit in Photoshop and made the print a bit brighter and more contrasty. It took a few minutes. Then I kicked it a bit further with some Shadow/Highlight adjustment and a further curves tweak. Another few minutes. While the three prints were being printed, I worked on email (I always have email to deal with).

Actual time I spent? Maybe 45 minutes, max. For the occasional printer, which most people are, digital is such a big win.

Beyond that, I don't even know if prints are on the decline. Oh yes, as a percentage of total photographs they are, but the number of photographs made has been growing at an incredible rate. Most people, of course, don't make their own prints. They never have, and they never will. I've written about that; it's just fine.

In absolutely numbers, prints may still be on the increase. Unfortunately I don't have current numbers to confirm or refute that, but two years ago it was true that "photofinishing," which is almost entirely a hard-copy business, had been steadily increasing since the turn-of-the-century. Surprised the hell out of me, but them's the facts. Maybe it has started to decline since, but you'll have to show me the numbers.

Might I guess that printing is becoming of ever-diminishing relative importance in photography? Yeah, I would guess that. (Do I know that I'm right? Nope.) Is it diminishing in absolute sense? I definitely don't know that. Personally I doubt it, although Patrick might very well be right. I'm pretty sure, though, if it is it's not the fault of the (machine) printers.

Ctein

Custom printer Ctein opines here on TOP every Wednesday...reliably! (If exceptions occur, it's virtually always Yr. Hmbl. Ed.'s fault, not the columnist's.)

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Featured Comments from:

Andrew Molitor: "Yes, it strikes me that printing isn't really shrinking, photography is biggening. And broadening. In 1970 we made and used pictures in, basically, one way. We exposed some film, and had a print made. Or a slide. Then we looked at that permanent physical object, from time to time. Nowadays we still do that, but add photobooks to the hardcopy universe. We also use digital picture frames, which occupy some middle ground. The largest use cases are purely digital and essentially ephemeral. To be sure, googbooklickr saves our pictures forever, nominally, but by presenting them most recent first they render our pictures ephemeral for more practical purposes. There are probably a dozen other ways we use pictures that I haven't thought of that are basically new."

bencr: "I consider myself an occasional printer. I print on my Epson 3800, usually 12x16 or 13x19, and I really enjoy the results and could wallpaper my house with my photos (I try to keep the ones on the wall to a manageable number, and rotate them). A print is a wonderful object in itself and I love to hold and look at them. However, as we get higher density displays, capable of wider colour gamut, that we can put in our pocket, carry in a bag, or put on our wall, I think that prints will eventually be relegated to a very small niche. I know many people today still get 4x6 prints of their vacations, or prints of their families for the wall (which I presume amounts for the bulk of photofinishing done today). But I also know a lot of people who don't bother anymore—keeping the photos on their cell phones, in the cloud, or in a slideshow in a digital frame. I believe there will come a time when the quality of digital displays will become 'good enough' and 'cheap enough' that the majority of photos that are printed today won't be printed anymore."

NancyP: "Well, B&W darkroom work was comprehensible enough, even if my technique was rather primitive (multicontrast paper, dodge/burn were about it for me). Color printing, at least in the early 1970s, was a fiasco for me, what with the loose acetate filters tripled in number, the difficulty in keeping on temperature, and so on. It turned out to be very expensive for an amateur to print in color. The beauty of digital is that the amateur printer can now make excellent color prints with fine control, and the only temperature one worries about is color temperature."