Making a digital negative?

A good PRO Lab should be able to do it. I don't know about the format/price ratio though. I have friends who actually "printed" their 8x10 negatives on transparency paper using an Inkjet and then, contact printed those on regular photo-paper.

Once you scan the image you could experiment yourself, why not? IF it doesn't work go to the lab :)

I just found a book on printing one from an inkjet printer. Hopefully, this should work.

Digital offers a lot of corrections to problems that happen working with analog equipment, but still, nothing beats a silver gelatin print. Besides a fiber based one.

Michael Smith & Paula Chamlee have a wonderful site; and their forums are where digital negs are discussed. Also, Sandy King, of Pyrocat-HD fame, hangs out there.

Cheers!
Dan Schwartz
Cherry Hill, NJ
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FWIW One lady at our college makes the digital negs and then makes contact prints. She makes a custom curve for the neg but this takes about 5-10 test swatches, printed and run through the wet line before the final print.It's good we have the computers out side the dark room. The final prints look fantastic. mark

Let me suggest a few excellent resources for making digital negatives for contact printing. First, there is a good web site by Keith Schreiber on making digital negatives for Pt./Pd.. Go to http://jkschreiber.com/. Another good reference is Dan Burkholder?s book Making Digital Negatives for Contact Printing, and Dan also has a website, http://www.danburkholder.com/Pages/main_pages/page1_main.htm . You can find curves for certain printers and processes at both Keith?s and Dan?s site.

A more recent work on making digital negatives is Mark Nelson?s Precision Digital Negative. His method was described in a recent edition of Camera Arts and there is also an article on it in the just released 2nd edition of Dick Arentz?s book on Platinum and Palladium Printing. Mark has an address but I can not find it right now. However, his email is Ender100@aol.com.

I personally started out with Dan Burkholder?s book and later switched to Nelson?s PDN system because it provides a method by which a very precise curve can be developed for any printer and process.

Digital negatives offer a wonderful opportunity for photographers who want to stay in the traditional world of the wet-processed print, be is regular silver, AZO, or an alternative process such as carbon, kallitype or platinum or palladium, but would like to have the capability of carrying out all of the tonal corrections that are available for digital photographers printing on the inkjet.

Sandy King

Thanks to everyone for all the help. I ordered Dan Burkholder's Digital Negative book, and am saving to get an Epson 2200 printer.

I have my darkroom setup finally, but lacked solutions for many underexposed and damaged negatives from earlier days when I was sloppy. This offers a viable solution where previously there was none.

Dane Hansen.