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Rangefinder Magazine
June 2003

Insight/On the Cover by Bill Hurter

This month’s Rangefinder is dedicated to output—both traditional and digital. What better way to demonstrate the focus of this issue than to create our own somewhat bizarre in-house test of existing materials and techniques available for producing the highest quality output? When you look at this month’s cover, you are actually looking at a fourth-generation image. Read “On the Cover” below and you will see we scanned Jack Dykinga’s original 4x5 Velvia transparency then printed that scan on an Epson Stylus Pro 7600 printer, then rescanned the 16x20 print on a Fuji Film Crosfield Celsis 6250 drum scanner—one of the most exacting scanners in existence. The cover was then color-separated and printed from that final scan.

We know that nobody would logically go to this much trouble to create a cover image, yet there was something tantalizing about the experiment. Was it possible, using the finest tools available, to get a fourth-generation image to look like the original? Jack Dykinga had used the sharpest film and lenses and painstaking technique to create a one of a kind original. All other links in the imaging chain were, likewise, the best of the best, from printer to scanner. So, how did our little test turn out? No one here—the art director, editor, publisher or president—could tell the difference between the second and fourth generation images. In my close to 30 years in imaging, I would never have guessed this to be possible, proving that we are at a new zenith of imaging excellence.

Bill Hurter
Editor

PHOTOGRAPHER: Jack Dykinga, author of “Large Format Nature Photography” (Amphoto)
LOCATION: Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument, UT
CAMERA: Arca Swiss F-Line 4X5 view camera
LENS: Schneider 75mm lens
FILM: Fuji 4X5 Velvia, rated at E.I. 40
EXPOSURE: 4 seconds at f/45
COMMENTS: “This image was shot to help create the Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument (which President Clinton created in January, 1997) in the canyons of the Escalante in Utah.” The image appeared in Dykinga’s large format book, “Stone Canyons” (Harry N. Abrams).

Dykinga’s original transparency was drum-scanned by Publishers Press in Kentucky at 300 dpi. The original scan was then sent to contributor Claude Jodoin, who was in the process of reviewing the Epson Stylus Pro 7600 printer. Using Ultrachrome inks, Claude output a 16x20 print, which he returned to Publishers for rescanning. The print was rescanned and returned to us via Publisher’s FTP site at a whopping 100 percent at 450 dpi—a file size of a little over 450MB! Why would anyone undertake such a project? It started as a somewhat hair-brained idea, but we simply wanted to find out if we could maintain the unbelievable quality of the original transparency through several more generations and output the file as an inkjet print, having true high-definition output. The cover speaks for itself! We realize that not all images would produce the same results. However, in this case, the result is mind-boggling.

For more information on Jack Dykinga, see Lou Jacobs Jr.’s article, “A View Camera Pageant of Nature,” which begins on page 12. For more information on the Epson Stylus Pro 7600, see Jodoin’s article, which begins on page 28.