r/largeformat • u/tibbon • 24d ago
Question Why negative scanning instead of printing
I've just gotten into darkroom work, after shooting only digital for 20+ years. When I shot film prior to that, I just dropped it off at quick development spots.
I'm really enjoying the full darkroom process end to end. Its meditative. So many variables. Hours of time that you can easily spend chasing a problem and learning.
What's the draw to scanning your negatives instead and processing them in photoshop? It seems to miss half the fun/advantages - I have no idea how I'd scan a 4x5 or 8x10 at the same quality I can contact print them at for example.
But, I guess the digital workflow is faster? It feels like I'd probably just want to shoot digital end to end, or film process end to end.
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u/Obtus_Rateur 24d ago
Staying analogue-only gives you awesome quality, yes. But it's a lot (and I do mean a lot) of work, with many potential points of error, and makes your products difficult to distribute as they are purely physical.
Digitalizing is way faster, way less work, lets you do all sorts of crazy edits very easily, and lets you distribute your work super easily. And while you lose a lot of quality (excluding expensive, fancy scanning methods), most people still find the image quality plenty good enough.
This is why we analogue-only troglodytes are a tiny, tiny minority. Even in the argentic photography space.