Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message -----
From: "Todd Flashner" <tflash@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2002 11:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Visual Response, Silver and Inkjet Prints


> Very interesting post Martin, you raise a good issue!
>
> Two questions:
>
> If you used a contrast grade of silver paper that didn't expand your
> negative as much, such that your density range was the same for the silver
> print and the inkjet print, would they appear to have the same "dynamic
> range"? (He he he, what do you think of my new lingo?)

Well as you change contrast grades with silver paper, either graded paper or
polycontrast with filters, you don't change the value of the min and max
Density/Reflectance of the print, you just make the midtones in the negative
spread out over a larger portion of the density range but then the highlight
and shadow details get more compressed into smaller ranges at each end of
the scale.

You could of course exposure your silver print so that you did not have any
grays darker than a density of 1.7 to match the density range of an inkjet
print. Or better yet make a silver print on matte paper which has a maximum
density and surface texture similar to inkjet. So I guess that silver has
the potential to imitate inkjet but not the other way around. A lot of the
very old silver prints I have seen in fact look more like inkjet prints than
modern silver prints. So to answer your question is would seem that silver
can achieve the same "dynamic range" of an inkjet print.
>
> How much, or little, do you think non-linearity plays a role?

Hard to say. If you are shooting film you already have a toe in your data in
the shadows but the rest of the range is very straight. Modern films don't
seem to have a toe in the highlights. A digital camera may not have a toe at
either end, I don't know.

> Since silver
> papers have more toe and shoulder than inkjet papers there is the chance
> that in all but the most astutely handled silver prints you will get
> compression at one or both ends of the scale.

That is why you usually try to get you Zone III and Zone VII values to fall
at the ends of the linear portion of the paper. Beyond that I usually
handled this with burning and dodging with different contrast filers in key
areas. What is more interesting is that to achieve the look I want in an
inkjet print I am almost always adding a toe and a curve if they aren't
there! Just doesn't look right to me personally without them. This is an
artistic issue and not a technical one though. Seem like a nice toe into the
highlights give more details there while a more linear approach in the
shadows in nice. This is all really smooth with PS.

 (On a system level the same
> could of course be true with inkjets, but with the pretty good workflows
> available to most of us on this list we mostly *assume* a certain
linearity
> will be present in our inkjet output.)

Yes it is hopefully there if we want it. It is much easier to start
manipulating from a straight line.

Martin
>
> > In the long running ,and often dense, discussion of which media has more
> > tones, silver or inkjet (which lead to the dynamic range thread), I have
done
> > a lot of thinking and have a hypothesis for the difference people see.
> >
(snip earlier)