Without taking anything away from other printing techniques, which are still very good, I remain firmly of the idea that inkjet technology is the future of fine art printing, and possibly even of commercial printing eventually. The technology continues developing in leaps and bounds, and there is a great deal of investment being poured into research for inks, papers and printing technologies. Within a few years, we will all be doing our own printing at home. And the quality will be great.

Today, everything has changed. Commercial labs have taken over the photographic printing business. I am not surprised by this, of course. This is all about economies of scale, and the fact that the photographic process has become more commercial than artistic, and it is not worth while for some photographers to do their own printing. It doesn’t pay, so they don’t do it, and rightly so. When I began my adventure in photography, I used to find the cheapest option to produce my prints, I used to order them from the UK or print them locally. I obviously had my reasons, which essentially was the fact that I wasn’t selling anything, so my actions were somehow justified.

Next up came the first exhibition. I realised this was now a totally different ball game. When participating in an exhibition, one has to produce something that is sellable, and that others will view as being of high enouh quality to buy. I realised that attention to detail and perfection were of the essence, and I needed as much control as possible on the final product. The simple fact is that I never got it. I spent days at the printer’s to try and get results which were identical to what I had designed originally,  but that never came. Having no alternative, I produced the best possible results I could achieve, and stuck to them. Thankfully the result was still pleasing and the exhibition was a success.

It was then that I realised that commercial laboratories would never be able to give me the results I needed. By this I do not mean that commercial labs are crap, but simply that the machines they use have their limitations in terms of resolution, and especially in terms of tonality depth. I wasn’t worried much about colour prints, because they can be reproduced relatively faithfully, but black and white is next to impossible to reproduce to a level which could rival hand-printed black and white.

It is now clear to me how important it is to have full control of the process, and the reason is very simple. In today’s world, photography is made of digital files. Negatives and slides are slowly fading away (and those that remain, still get scanned anyway). The raw file is not really tangible, and is certainly not something that can be purchased (in the sense of a unique entity, such as a negative). In painting, sculpture, etc, what you work on is what the client purchases, and it stops there. In photography, you work on something intangible, and then can only sell the “reproduction” of that work, which is the print. Therefore, the client, or viewer, is really only concerned with the final, tangible, sellable product, which is the print. It simply makes no sense to have full control over the entire process from capture to edit, and then relinquish it during the final stage, at the point where the intangible becomes tangible. This is where inkjet technology comes into play.

Today’s darkrooms have been converted into lightrooms, and the printing methodology has changed completely. I had already seen some work produced using fine art inkjet printers during the time spent helping my uncle set up his exhibition, and the results were astounding. Unfortunately, I had a very hard time finding somewhere or someone able to produce fine art inkjet (or, as I’ve seen it being mentioned, “pigment on paper”) prints, so I had to dig into my not-so-deep pockets and get myself a printer. Again, this turned out to be an incredible headache, as I had suspected. Very few companies import large format fine art printers here in Malta, since nobody had ever purchased them. I was initially looking towards the HP Z-Series, which gained very positive reviews and were only recently put on the market. These were way too expensive, though, and I could not afford the cost. I immediately ruled out the Epson printers, which at the time could only house either matte or glossy black, and one needed to swap inks at great cost and wastage. This issue has now been resolved with the next generation of printers, and I have read very positive reviews from pros that use them.

Finally, I opted for the Canon iPF6100 which had received very good reviews, and comes with the best support out of any of its competitors, here in Malta. I’ve been printing work on the printer for quite some time now, and I can say that it is brilliant. It takes experimentation to get things right, particularly for black and white, however now that I got used to it, I can say that it produces incredible results, with fantastic tonalities and incredible detail. Mind you, it has got its defects which are sometimes irritating and fustrating, however its good points definitely outweigh its bad ones.

I finally feel in control of the artistic process. I have the advantage of being able to print on a variety of papers, including fibre-based photo paper, art paper, cotton-rag, etc. The best papermills, such as Hahnemuehle and Museo, all produce a range of papers for fine art printing. These papers can be quite expensive, but they produce stunning results, and incredible light-fastness, which according to research institutes, can surpass that of traditional prints.

Today, most fine art photographers have moved into pigment-on-paper prints, since the technology has advanced enough to be able to compete with the results obtained through traditional darkroom printing. It is a natural match for the photographic artist working in the digital age, and it is well worth the trouble and cost it entails. I know I will never look back, because now I can stand firm by my work and say “I have produced these, from start to finish”.

In any case, when looking for flexibility, you inevitably compromise, and that usually comes in the form of less maximum aperture and some more distortion. Today’s zooms rarely compromise on image quality and sharpness, and I am very careful which lenses I choose. It takes me weeks or months of research and reading reviews to decide on whether I will buy a lens or not. Until now I’m quite happy with my choices, although I must say that my 18-35 Nikkor ultra wide does have some very uncomfortable distortions which would make anyone swear in Photoshop. Thank heavens for DxO Optics, a brilliant piece of software which does miracles to correct distortion – so that’s one less headache. Just be careful that your lens and body combination are actually supported, since they can sometimes be limited, especially for newer cameras.

This brings me to my choice of camera body. Just in case it is not clear yet, I’m a Nikon guy. My dad was always a Nikon fan, and that’s permeated through to the next generation. I must admit that Canon has had the leading edge for most of the past decade when it comes to digital camera bodies. I wasn’t involved in the DSLR market until a few years ago, but it was clear that Canon’s sensor technology was more advanced. I still think that Nikon always had (and still has) and edge when it comes to usability and user friendliness of its equipment, apart from a generally better rendition of images with higher noise levels, but these are all subjective, and I am sure most Canon users will disagree with me.

Things inevitably change, and the turning point came towards the end of 2007, by the name of D3. The technological leap Nikon took with the D3 was astounding, and it left its competitors biting dust. The D3 was also the first full-frame (by digital-speak, that is, meaning 35-mm film equivalent) camera which was launched, and it rocked big time. The great news came for me in the form of the D700. A D3 with some cut corners, a smaller body, but the same great performance. It didn’t come cheap, but its high ISO performance was perfect for what I needed. True, I would never get the shallow depth of field of an f2.8 lens, but what the heck, they don’t call them compromises for nothing!

I had high expectations of the D700, and I can tell you I was not disappointed at all. This camera is a jewel of technology. ISO performance is fantastic, handling is great, and the new 3D tracking system works like a charm. When deciding whether to go for the D700, I was also considering the D300. There is a notable price difference, so I needed to decide whether the extra money would be well spent. There are a number of key points which made me choose the D700 over the D300. These might not apply to everyone, but essentially, there are a couple of items which had me hooked. Apart from the couple of stops of extra ISO performance, which is a big selling point for me, there the 14-bit performance. I tend to do some serious post processing to some of my work, and therefore I need all the flexibility I can get, with as little loss of detail as possible. The D300 does support 14-bit Raw recording, however the whole thing slows down when switching to 14-bit. Essentially, you get less frames per second, and I knew I’d be shooting 14-bit 95% of the time, so that was a big disadvantage.

The D700 (as the D300) also has got a new feature which goes by the name of Active D-Lighting. It is essentially a dynamic range modifier which uses the advantages gained by 14-bit recording to preserve highlights. The main advantage of 14-bit recording is that you gain more detail in the shadow areas, which would otherwise tend to be very noisy when boosted in post processing. This allows editors to lower the exposure, preserving blown highlights, while retaining detail in the shadow area without experiencing those ugly blotches of noise which sometimes appear when applying fill light. The Active D-Lighting does exactly this, and is mainly used when recording JPG images (since you can do the process manually when recording RAW). The newly added Auto setting (which was not present in the D3, and is still not present in the D3x), will detect the contrast of a scene and automatically lower the exposure to preserve the highlights, while boosting the shadows. This would obviously require the camera to shoot continuously in 14-bit mode, even though JPG will eventually be recorded in 8-bits. This would have meant that the D300 would always be running in “slow mode”, which was a deal breaker for me. Luckily the D700 does not suffer from this, which is why I have one in my bag today.

Overall, my experience to date with the D700 is that it is a great camera with little to fault, and I am entirely happy with my decision. I have used it with a variety of lenses, and they all perform brilliantly with it. I’ve used it for fine art, landscapes, architecture, journalism and sports, and it has performed excellently in every occasion.