Almost printing time

Since the last post, I’ve wet-scanned 9 black and white film negatives on an Epson V750, spot cleaned and manipulated those images to my liking in Photoshop, and then printed 10 enlarged inkjet negatives on my 24” Epson 7600 printer. In each case I used the same gum script I developed last winter through summer using QTR software. 

I’m not the least bit color-blind but I visualize in black and white. Shades of grey. Of course, digital images can be made into black and whites at the click of a button, but black and white film also offers the joy of processing film and printing contact sheets. And for me that’s a deal breaker. I love the alchemy of photography.

But I’m no anti-digital camera purist either. I said I printed 10 enlarged inkjet negatives but only scanned 9 negatives. The 10^th negative started out as a digital image, made with a Canon 7D just a few weeks ago.

Foggy morning along the Potomac River in Washington DC, facing the 14th Street Bridge.

The digital original had a gummy look to it and I thought it would be fun to see what gum does to a black and white negative of that image. I printed it on 13"x19" Pictorico OHP.