This is a continuation of a series of posts on making film negatives from digital files. (The previous post is here... ) The purpose is to allow me to print the images in my darkroom. In summary, so far, the experience has been quite good.
My next print from film made from digital images uses the film made by Bayeaux in London. This was made on Kodak LVT equipment at RES40 or 40 dots per mm or 1016 dpi. I combined two images on a 4x5 image per their instructions. They returned 3 copies on an 8x10 sheet of film. No matter, I cut one copy away and loaded it into my 4x5 enlarger and started the process of making test prints. The negative is actually two images with a 65:24 aspect ratio.
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| Image for Bayeaux Version |
I started at f22 as with the previous image and confirmed my suspicion that this negative was denser than the previous image and ended up at f16.
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| Soft Filter Test (#00) |
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| Hard Filter Test (#5) |
My first stab after basic test strips was soft filter at 11 seconds and a hard filter test strip. The soft filter needs to be exposed longer.
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| Soft Filter 11 seconds hard filter test strip |
With respect to the digital aspect of the negative I cannot see any pixels or digital artifacts. The grain focus on the easel again shows only grain. A close examination of the test print does not show any digital artifacts as well. This is a 5x enlargement. The resolution again is 1016 dpi compared to the Gammatech 3590 dpi on the prior post. My fear that the Bayeaux resolution would not be enough does not seem to be reasonable for a 4x5 negative. With a smaller negative at the same resolution, however, the result would not likely be as good as the same size print from a 35mm negative would be a 20x enlargement.
There is a graininess with these images but this is due to the settings on the Fuji GFXs ii camera. I enabled a 'grain effect' called 'small' and 'strong'. This is on top of a Fuji Acros film simulation. It is most apparent in the shadows and gives the image its gritty look. It is pretty convincing on the print but complicates any analysis of image resolution vs film grain.
I made a series of prints as I crept closer to a print I liked. I started with f16 #5 11 seconds as this gave me just a hint of the deepest blacks without adding much tone to the highlights in the leaves. I tried #00 at 22 seconds but went to 32 seconds, 38 seconds, and finally 45 seconds (these are 1/4 stop increments). The last two were the best.
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| Scan034_stitch f16 #5 11 sec #00 22 sec |
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| Scan036_stitch f16 #5 11 sec #00 32 sec |
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| Scan038_stitch f16 #5 11 sec #00 38 sec |
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| Scan032_stitch f16 #5 11 sec #00 45 sec |
If I compare the scanned print with the original digital image that the film was made from you can see this below. The upper half is the original digital image. The print is pretty faithful. I do see some softness, but the grain comes through though it too is softened. The softness may be related to the resolution the negative was exposed at. I have the same negative in a higher resolution Gammatech version that I may compare later.
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| Comparison with original file (top) and print (bottom) |
I
took the second image from the Bayeaux negative and
made another print. I started by taking light meter measurements of
highlights and shadows on the easel from the first print and used these
compared to the same measurements on the new image. I used these to
derive some guesses about the exposure for each filter. I came pretty
close and got where I wanted in three prints.
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Sand Creek Reflections
f22 #5 13" #00 54" |
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