New DIGITAL enlarger to revolutionize photo priting again

[Revolucion Artistico]

I just saw this http://de-vere.com/news-review.htm in the newest Freestyle catalog. It doesn't have a price, just a call for more info deal. This sounds amazing, even though I'm sure it's out of my price range. Anybody seen one of or heard anything about these.

Ryan

[Gid]

Thanks for the link - a very interesting read. I wonder how a print produced in this way would compare to an inkjet print or a traditional negative print. I imagine you could do traditional dodge & burn with a digital image - surreal:cool:

[Revolucion Artistico]

Just found an article that places price at approx. 18,000 GBP. WOW, I didn't know it would be THAT out of my price range!!! I still think it is incredible and I would probably buy this over a 30mp Hassy back even though this is ONLY 17.1mp if I had that kinda cash but could only choose one. I'm sure I could make do.

[Revolucion Artistico]

Thats whats amazing is that it is a traditional print just with a digital negative. With all the advancements in HD plazma TVs etc. I'm sure it is almost as good as a real negative.

[Revolucion Artistico]

Oh and to be able to use photoshop first on a negative and then have all of the control of a wet darkroom just blows my mind. Well, it's 3am in California, so I'm off to bed but I KNOW what I'll be dreaming of. :D

[drewbarb]

This technology has been around and under development (if you'll pardon the pun) for a few years. I remember seeing a set up and demo at a trade show in New York maybe four years ago. It has now advanced to the point of being advertised more widely. It works, and it works well. The prints I've seen look good. They look like traditional prints because they are. They betray no evidence whatsoever of their digital provenance. I'm not sure if this is the future of digital imaging, or if it's going to revolutionize digital printing all over again, but it's a really good application of technology, and certainly has it's place. As the above poster says, it's pretty cool to get to manipulate an image in PS and then make a wet print using traditional techniques and technology- the best of both worlds. Time will tell if it catches on or comes down in price to where any of us mere mortals will get to use one.

[oftheherd]

Any RFF'ers in or near enough to Brighton to stop in and report? I don't suppose many of us could afford it at current cost, but if good, it will be fun to watch and see if the price drops. Also, it might be worth while sending in the occassional photo we would like in large fiber based size.

[Revolucion Artistico]

I'm almost ready to sign away my life and first born son in tuition costs if I can find a photography college that has one of these to play with. I had heard of similar technology in development as well but had yet to see any finished product. This , to me at least, is almost as perfect of a merger of past and present technology possible today.

[Finder]

Not interested. I have two color enlargers and I am more interested in straight photography. Fixin stuff in photoshop loses some of the magic that drew me to photography in the first place.

This will be a boon for labs though. I am sure it will please some customers. Especially the folks who can't the image quite right or need very specific effects.

[mllanos1111]

I actually have two prints made on this enlarger and I received an honarble mention at the San Diego fair (or I still call it the Del Mar Fair)with one of them.
I was looking for a way to print some of my digital stuff on traditianal fiber based paper and I found a lab that has one of these enlargers. http://www.fiberbaseprints.com/
It looks wonderful and it was nice to get some of my photos printed the way I had imagined.

[Revolucion Artistico]

Well, it goes without saying that even if I bought one of these I would not get rid of my film enlarger, it would supplement it not replace it. Congrats on the prize at the fair mllanos, I'm glad to hear from someone who has had a print from one of these. It also sounds like the print quality, as well as your photographic abilities, are very good. Thanks for the link to the lab. Do you recall what you paid and what size enlargment was it?

[BillBingham2]

I think the key is finding a way to bring the price down. If it was just an application and an enlarger that might reduce the price quite a bit. It's a complete system that most people (non-professional) do not need.

What I would really like to see is a head that plugs into my Mac Mini and fits on to several different old enlargers (with some tweaking). Now that might be worth $2000 USD.

B2 (;->

[Revolucion Artistico]

I agree 100% with you Bill, I would probably even pay up to 5,000usd (with ALOT of saving up) for a set up like your talking about. To me if the M8 is worth 5,000 this would be as well.

[mllanos1111]

Thank you! I dont remember exactly the price but the print was an 8x10 and it was in the neighborhood of $25.00 give or take a couple dollars.
The picture was an abstract, I'll try and post it, but I've never posted on here.
It looked wonderful on fiber paper.


Well, it goes without saying that even if I bought one of these I would not get rid of my film enlarger, it would supplement it not replace it. Congrats on the prize at the fair mllanos, I'm glad to hear from someone who has had a print from one of these. It also sounds like the print quality, as well as your photographic abilities, are very good. Thanks for the link to the lab. Do you recall what you paid and what size enlargment was it?

[Harry Lime]

I wonder if a dot pattern will show up on close inspection.
Basically this is a high resolution LCD video projector built into an enlarger.

[Tuolumne]

How is this any different from the machines that today take a digital file and "print" it onto traditional light sensitive photo paper of the sort that companies like Mpix use?

/T

[vincentbenoit]

"digital tinkering to an analogue machine"... says it all.

Vincent

[sepiareverb]

Not anything I'd play with, but if it keeps silver paper going for another few years I'm all for it.

[Doug]

This is how my local professional labs have been printing for some years. Even if you bring in a negative, they scan it and then print with their digital enlarger onto regular C print process.

What is more relevant to this discussion, I suspect, and pretty exciting, is that this technology may be filtering down to the level of affordability for individual ownership, say a pro photog who wants to do his own lab work.

[andrew moxom]

What Doug said, Basically this is very similar to The Fuji Frontier system many mini labs have right now for color work. The De Vere version is a very similar set up. Scan a neg, and project the image with laser light onto regular B+W paper, or use conventional negs.

[pellothed1]

Actually this type of a system isn't very similar to Fuji Frontier systems or any of the other digital mini-labs. Those that use lasers have three lasers, one each for Cyan, Magenta and Yellow that basically write on the paper. They determine print size by paper size, where there is a maximum print width as the print "heads" don't move in or out, there is no projection happening. The printers that use LCD panels work best when they are used as contact printers, where the paper and the panel actually touch like making contact prints with a negative, again the problem being that the largest print size is determined by the size of the panel and the bigger the panel the greater the expense. There are also printers like the Chromira that use LEDs to print the image, similar to the laser technology, the paper is moved in front of the LEDs which expose the paper.

The problem with a digital enlarger in this sense is projecting those individual "pixels" through a lens where distortion is always present. I have worked with (attention to with, not for) the company that held the original patents on this technology, amazingly out of a little town called Cushing, Oklahoma. The company was ESECO-Speedmaster, the enlarger was called the ESECO Digimatic. The technology itself has been around for about ten years. Had it worked completely and wholely, it would have been far more advanced as it would have allowed printing seamlessly on very long rolls of paper using their auto-advance easels and what not. The machine itself was based on a 10x10" head on an 8 or 10 foot column, it was monstorous to say the least. To go along with it, they had created a vacuum "baseboard" for it that was also massive, I believe it could handle up to 40x60" single sheets, holding them so that they couldn't move because the exposure times could be very long, as much as 5 minutes. The problem with this thing is that if the print moves, you don't get a little blur, you get all sorts of wierd color streeks and stuff.

take a look at this: http://www.benboardman.com.au/bb/eseco/digimati.htm
and this: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=10&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=5,844,663&OS=5,844,663&RS=5,844,663

I use to have several really incredible prints off this machine, really incredible when you didn't know what to look for. The problem was that at the edge of the prints, the printing pixels never lined up properly due to projection. So the colors didn't look quite right, sometimes this required a loupe to see. This company spent a lot of time and resources trying to get this right and never did and after seeing it in use and having to limitations explained by their engineers, I'd really have to see proof positive in person that another company was able to make it work. There have been other companies in the past that have developed similar products, I believe Colex may have been one, all with the same limitations from what I understand. It's been several years now that I've been in contact with people "in the know" so I don't claim to be an expert on the subject. It's quite interesting anyway, and if it really works, it would be killer. The problem is that it would be resolution limited, just like all digital products, the larger you go, the more pixelation your going to see.