Help... Process camera vs imagesetter

[Repro_Pro]

Even when all other technical aspects are optimized, process camera negs are typically intentionally over-exposed, just to minimize pinholes.
Shooting to keep the very fine lines and/or the quality of tiny type lettering, requires slight under exposure, resulting in time consuming, careful spotting.
Unless Clean Room conditions are installed...
Image setter negs are usually very clean and rarely require spotting, even in normal office surroundings.

 

[gordo]

Even when all other technical aspects are optimized, process camera negs are typically intentionally over-exposed, just to minimize pinholes.
Shooting to keep the very fine lines and/or the quality of tiny type lettering, requires slight under exposure, resulting in time consuming, careful spotting.
Unless Clean Room conditions are installed...
Image setter negs are usually very clean and rarely require spotting, even in normal office surroundings.

Totally agree. And that's why you need all that stuff with camera-back negs. Plus you usually just use enough film to image what you need - quite different from imaging film off an imagesetter (I used to have an Agfa Selectset 7000 in my imagestter days long after shooting camera-back film).

 

[Danny Whitehead]

This is quite nostalgic, because it’s exactly what I used to do every day at a tiny advertising agency back in 1992, at the age of 17. We almost exclusively did black & white press ads for car dealerships. We’d create all the text and vector elements on the Macs, print them out at 400% on a 300dpi LaserWriter, halftone elements with dots the size of golf balls, manually cut and paste them together on an artboard, shoot it back down to 25% on the ‘PMT camera’ to create a bromide that went to the newspaper.

It didn’t produce the same clarity as a 1200dpi imagesetter.

 

[Repro_Pro]

Nostalgia is certainly triggered here too.
Ahh, those "Good Old Days"...

I have personally owned or operated all kinds of Vertical, Horizontal, Low-bed, Overhead, Darkroom, Two-room and Daylight Process Cameras.
Went from LITH Tray Processing (mixing chemical powders, creating a developer that survived only 20 minutes in an open tray), to LITH Developing Machines with auto replenishment coming from Three tanks, and up to Modern Rapid-Access processing.
We shone all kinds of lights onto Reflection or Transparent/translucent originals, drawn, painted, pasted or printed, as well as photo-prints, negatives and slides, Line, Color or Gray-scale.
We used all kinds of light-sensitive materials: films, papers or canvas, using Blue-sensitive, Ortho, Panchromatic, UV or X-Ray sensitive Negative acting or Reversal (AutoPositive) materials in the darkroom and outside, under Green, Red, Brown, Orange or Yellow safe-lights.
We used Tri-Color, Narrow-Band and Polarizing filters.
We also produced huge blow-ups on all kinds of materials for offset printing, silk-screen printing, etching onto metals as well as for exhibition.
Now we use digital cameras or scanners, digital film image-setters and plate-setters and ink-jet plotters.
All that variety of technologies in such a relatively short time span.

I wonder if we really enjoyed the OLD era - '70 to mid '90 - at the time all that much. I suspect that nowadays we somehow remember fondly the age we were in at that time.
WOW, getting philosophical makes me feel archaic!

 

[dabob]

Nostalgia is certainly triggered here too.
Ahh, those "Good Old Days"...

I have personally owned or operated all kinds of Vertical, Horizontal, Low-bed, Overhead, Darkroom, Two-room and Daylight Process Cameras.
Went from LITH Tray Processing (mixing chemical powders, creating a developer that survived only 20 minutes in an open tray), to LITH Developing Machines with auto replenishment coming from Three tanks, and up to Modern Rapid-Access processing.
We shone all kinds of lights onto Reflection or Transparent/translucent originals, drawn, painted, pasted or printed, as well as photo-prints, negatives and slides, Line, Color or Gray-scale.
We used all kinds of light-sensitive materials: films, papers or canvas, using Blue-sensitive, Ortho, Panchromatic, UV or X-Ray sensitive Negative acting or Reversal (AutoPositive) materials in the darkroom and outside, under Green, Red, Brown, Orange or Yellow safe-lights.
We used Tri-Color, Narrow-Band and Polarizing filters.
We also produced huge blow-ups on all kinds of materials for offset printing, silk-screen printing, etching onto metals as well as for exhibition.
Now we use digital cameras or scanners, digital film image-setters and plate-setters and ink-jet plotters.
All that variety of technologies in such a relatively short time span.

I wonder if we really enjoyed the OLD era - '70 to mid '90 - at the time all that much. I suspect that nowadays we somehow remember fondly the age we were in at that time.
WOW, getting philosophical makes me feel archaic!

I too spent a number of years behind the frosted glass and at the contact frame . . . and yes I remember it fondly but I also appreciated it at the time . . . nice cool darkroom, a fairly easy pace (controlled by development time and drawdown time), and the ability to say don't bother me I've got film out. . . Loved it then . . Love remembering it now.

 

[realmstar]

Can a camera make a crisp negative with lines as fine as 0.1pt if we take a picture of it at 400%? Black and white picture of course?

 

[realmstar]

I have seen magazines printed in the late 70's with fine lines in advertisements printed at even 0.08pt so if they were printing that then a camera must be able to produce it because imagesetters were not around then. So maybe a camera can reproduce anything it sees as good as its printed. As in your negative is only as good as your copy. So if you have a black and white image printed out at 400% in black ink with an epson printer on on white photo paper at max resolution so your image is crisp the camera surely should reproduce the same quality negative. How else have I seen fine lines at 0.08pt printed in magazines in the 70's? Some ads are printed bad and some are crisp and perfect. It must all depend on how good the original is...

 

[gordo]

I have seen magazines printed in the late 70's with fine lines in advertisements printed at even 0.08pt so if they were printing that then a camera must be able to produce it because imagesetters were not around then. So maybe a camera can reproduce anything it sees as good as its printed.[SNIP].

Just for the record, they were doing that in at least the 1890s. Heck, they were even doing commercial continuous tone lithography in using 8 color process back in the early 1900s. Stuff that even most of the printers today balk at.

 

[Slammer]

Once upon a time in the days of the Proset 9800, I was on assignment in Armenia to install such a machine in the church printingshop, they were using a camera from 1888, the same year my great grandmother was born and Jack the Ripper was painting the city of London red.
They also had a Klimsch two-room camera that had been delivered 20 years ago and never installed, it was still boxed.
By the way does anybody remember working with Caliumhexacyanidoferrat or Blutlaugensalz as we called it?

 

[dabob]

With all these questions about cameras the thing most commenters have missed is the person operating it. . . . there are some rifles that can hit a target at 3000 yards, but very few people can make it perform like that . .. I think its kinda the same thing with cameras . . . . .

 

[Repro_Pro]

Using a process camera to reproduce fine Positive Black lines shouldn't be too problematic to reproduce by themselves, but when you'll have them mixes with White (Negative) lines on the same artwork - then you will a real challenge!

 

[realmstar]

Using a process camera to reproduce fine Positive Black lines shouldn't be too problematic to reproduce by themselves, but when you'll have them mixes with White (Negative) lines on the same artwork - then you will a real challenge!

Can you please explain what your saying? Are you saying you can make positive film out of a positive picture no problem but its hard to make a negative film out of a positive picture? Sorry I did not at all understand what you were saying?

 

[Repro_Pro]

Sometimes an artwork is composed of fine details in both positive AND negative, (negative as in "reversed" text).
When you reproduce tiny letters - the tiny White spaces between letters and small white areas inside letters will "behave as negative".
You need to find a very delicate balance between exposing the two ends - exposing for Negative OR Positive image, meaning that you have to sacrifice the quality at either end, or settle for an average, losing a little at both ends.
This refers to really fine details.
BTW, most cameras' film output can be easily recognized, it suffers from letter corners that get "rounded" (those that originally were "square") etc.
Just take an X10 magnifier.

All that will not be an issue with an image setter!

 

[realmstar]

Sometimes an artwork is composed of fine details in both positive AND negative, (negative as in "reversed" text).
When you reproduce tiny letters - the tiny White spaces between letters and small white areas inside letters will "behave as negative".
You need to find a very delicate balance between exposing the two ends - exposing for Negative OR Positive image, meaning that you have to sacrifice the quality at either end, or settle for an average, losing a little at both ends.
This refers to really fine details.
BTW, most cameras' film output can be easily recognized, it suffers from letter corners that get "rounded" (those that originally were "square") etc.
Just take an X10 magnifier.

All that will not be an issue with an image setter!

Even if its printed out big, sharp and flawless at 24x24" (400%) then reduced to 6x6" (100%) by the camera it would still lose detail? Making a negative or a positive film from the copy? I gather whether you make a negative or a positive piece of film that wouldn't change things either?

 

[Repro_Pro]

Starting from negative or positive artwork should make very little difference to the quality you get.
Shooting with transmitted light instead of reflected light will certainly produce much better results (higher contrast, resolving finer details etc.).
For example, before computer generated the designs, most artwork for electronic PCBs was drawn (mainly with opaque adhesive tapes and Letraset transfer-type) onto translucent Mylar - and shot with transmitted-light, usually reduced to 50% their original size for the final, production ready film masters.
Reduction of more than 50% were rarely required, except for extreme requirements such as etching glass masters.
I am not quite clear on what you are aiming for, please describe the kind of jobs as well as the printing process you are interested in, so we can all be more specific in answering.

 

[realmstar]

Vector drawings of architect houses. There is a lot of fine lines and details. For offset printing. I meant also if there is a difference if you use negative film or positive film to image from your copy. Or if the quality will still come out the same.

 

[realmstar]

Oh and the Biggest question was which would be better or would they be the same? A process camera from the 90's or an agfa 1000 at max resolution which I think is 3200dpi? Or would they be the same?

 

[Repro_Pro]

Assuming you get vector files to star with, then for the required jobs an image-setter wins hands down!
At 2400 dpi you will achieve higher quality than anything you can hope for from a standard process camera.
BTW, architects' drawings are usually big, enlarged ones may become too big for a camera.
We used to do quit a lot of this kind of jobs on a large Klimsch two room camera, we had to shoot them in sections and join the reduced size film negs afterwards.

 

[dabob]

I gotta agree wit Repro Pro . . we've been using an imagesetter since 92 - so in 24 years I have only run across 1 instance that the imagesetter didn't accurately reproduce the art . . . but in this case the customer took an Illy file and shrunk it to like 5 - 10% of its original size . . . he had 1/2 pt rules in the file . . . so what would that be? 1/2 pt at 5% would be .05 points = .0007 and that is pretty much unprintable - we could see it with a microscope on the film but it just didn't make it to the plate or the paper.

 

[realmstar]

Agfa 1000 were made in the early 90's. I did not think being made so early they could do such fine quality as .08pt lines.