Recent posts here discuss the hand prints, the longevity of digital prints, and the Nikon D800 ‘scan’ method. In the war of digital vs hand prints I’m afraid to say I’m going to side with digital at this point, for this particular print. Above is a photo of the massive digital print (nearly 1200x800mm) compared to the biggest hand print (darkroom) that I could make. The amount of sharpness form the Nikon D800 + 45mm TS macro + ANR glass + iPad ‘scan’ is just incredible. It blitzes the hand print.
While my brother James Bennett, Aaron Bellette (a good friend who lectures full time in photography while currently working on his photography doctorate) and I made the digital prints, we also printed a Frontier scan of a different photo. Awful. Fuji Frontier scans cannot be printed large if this test was indicative. Inspecting it at 100% in Photoshop reveals it was a technically decent scan, but perhaps it was scanned with a 2500 rather than 3000. I’m hoping that it wasn’t made by the Frontier 3000, and that if it was it would have been much better! For me at the moment, for large prints I would only trust the Noritsu or D800.
Between making these prints different sizes and having different printers with different levels of experience as it looks, I agree the digital print looks better. However with a simple contrast adjustment on the enlarger I think the wet print could’ve looked considerably better, also it could’ve been printed on fogged/old paper. I’ve also noticed these images are flipped from each other, so I’m guessing either one of these were printed backwards in the enlarger or scanned wrong. Personally I don’t think I can take this comparison seriously.
Hey James thanks for your thoughts – some further information for you – the wet print was operated by an expert with more knowledge than me (40 years of experience teaching teachers at tertiary and school level). He did all the contrast adjustments possible, he used fresh developer and fresh paper. The paper was resin coated and I know a lot of people swear by fibre-based instead. The digital was flipped – I prefer the image that way – but the wet print (hand print) was made correctly.