Hi, I've been doing kids b/w photog for four years with a great 35mm camera. I have only gone as large as a 16/20 print. Can I go larger? Will my print then be too grainey? Do I need a medium format camera for this? The larger format cams seem so expensive. Is grainy always a bad thing? Joni Danson

-- Joni Danson (dansonfamily@home.com), October 08, 1999

Answers

Hi Joni,

It all depends & mostly on your darkroom set-up. I have printed 35 mm negatives large, over six feet. It depends a bit how & where you are going to look at them.

My negatives were from Tri-X and Neopan 1600, and at least I thought they looked pretty good.

If you go to my web page, you can take a look at one of those images.

http://ChristianHarkness.tripod.com

chris

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), October 08, 1999.

You can go to any size. Whether you like the result is rather subjective. If the viewing distance increases with the print size, then there is no problem.

Grain depends on the film as well as the enlargement factor. Are you shooting Delta 100 or Delta 3200? There is a huge difference.

Is grain always bad? It depends. Sometimes, I find it positively good. The question is, do YOU find grain always bad?

Large format cameras are cheap. Well, you can probably buy a 5x4, with lens, for the price of three or four Yashica T4s, with vastly superior quality. But not so convenient for photographing children.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), October 08, 1999.

Doesn't she have to be able to aim her enlarger horizontally in order to get that kind of enlargement? She will have to have more distance from enlarger head to paper than the head to baseboard will allow, right?

-- Jay Arraich (jay@arraich.com), October 09, 1999.

I would like to know the answer to this last question also. I know some people mount their enlargers on the wall, but it still seems like you would have to have a pretty awesome lens(on the enlarger) to get the clarity the negative had in the first place to come up or out (whatever) Also if you used an even slower speed film like 25 or 60, wouldn't that help also? As long as you weren't trying to shoot groups of children or really candid shots? I know they don't hold still long.

-- martha goldsmith (oscar@unidial.com), October 10, 1999.

It depends on the enlarger. If it is in place, you can easily rack it all the way up to see how large it will go. The largest I have done recently was 16x20 inches, from a Delta 3200 negative. I didn't like the result much, but the client loved it.

My enlarger is bolted to the wall. If I removed the baseboard (which is merely slotted into the wall with shelf brackets) I could do something rather huge, about 40x60 inches or something.

Yes, you certainly need a decent lens for this sort of thing. More importantly, you need a rock-solid enlarger, and excellent alignment.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), October 10, 1999.

Another way to deal with the enlarger to paper distance is an enlarging table. In its simplest form, it is a series of groves that hold a shelf under the enlarger. They can be built or you can get one from Omega for $1600.

-- Gene Crumpler, NC, USA (nikonguy@worldnet.at.net), October 11, 1999.

To make the over six-foot prints I talked about above, I tilted the enlarger (a Beseler 23 C) to project on a wall. If you can do with 'smaller' prints, unscrewing the enlarger, turning it around & projecting it onto the floor works fine. As long as you put a heavy weight on the base-board to counter-balance the enlarger.

If you are going to do this kind of thing often, the enlarging table mentioned above, is a great way to go.

chris

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), October 11, 1999.

Grainy is not a bad thing as Alan G. stated, some photogs shoot for big grain and sometimes I do too. You can use a fine grain film like apx 25 or tech-pan but you'd have to have some pretty powerful studio strobes, or take them in bright sun. Or you could move up in formats. Alan is right about the benefits of 4x5 and while it is a production to shoot portraits with these and nearly impossible to shoot kids playing, unless you can heft a 4x press camera, but your prints at 20x24 will be razor sharp with tri-x. You could find a medium format tlr (yashica 124g or mamiya c330) for about the same cost as a cheap 4x5($250 u.s.) and you'd still get very sharp prints at 16x20 and the tlr will be much easier to carry. I've been testing 3200 delta 120 at high mags and from 6x9 negs I've printed them up to 120" by 144" with grain about the size of this (O)! Now get up and move away from your computer screen until you can barely see the (O) and you will have the proper viewing distance for that print/grain size.

After using medium and large format cameras for a while my tolerance for large grain sunk for all but a few prints and now I have a hard time printing tri-x above a 5"x7" from 35mm negs.

Moving up in formats will mean your darkroom will have to be modified. You may need another enlarger, you will definitely need some high quality glass for it but if 16x20's are about as big as you'll print you won't have to get a specialized lens like the rodagon-g.

p.s. Poor photog needs to inherit a 8x10 horizontal enlarger and a vacuum wall, if you don't need yours anymore please mail them to me....e-mail all offers of bequeathments to linhof6@hotmail.com and thank you for supporting the photographic-arts!

-- trib (linhof6@hotmail.com), October 11, 1999.