Digital BW, The Print

In a message dated 5/9/02 6:03:11 PM, tprevatt@... writes:

>Many years ago I saw an exhibit in Baltimore called "Florida Condo." The
>
>photographer was clearly putting across the message of the deplorable 
>way we as a culture treat the eldest in our society (at least at that 
>time). Key to conveying this message was the grain of the images. 
>Technically he used 35mm,  with under exposure and over development with
>
>concentrated HC110 to maximize the grain and retained the grain by 
>printing on a high gloss finish paper with a condenser enlarger head. .
>
>The exhibit was quite good. My question is how faitfully would inkjet 
>printing display this grain - that was a key to the photographs?

The inkjet is less of an issue than the scanner... people often feel they are 
"scanning down to the grain" when in fact they are seeing the first 
artifacting caused by grain interference, and a lot of that is noise, with a 
"grainy" texture. For an image of the type you are looking for, any form of 
grain, simulated grain (from a Photoshop filter) or noise from the grain (in 
a medium rez scan) might do the trick... or you might want to be picky and 
scan at very high rez to be sure you are capturing the film grain accurately. 

Then the only printing issue is the resolution you are printing this grain 
at; if its so fine the inkjet can't do it justice, its probably to fine to be 
meaningful to the image at reasonable viewing distances. Of course this would 
be an instance where you would want to use very high rez files to the 
printer. Not the typical 240 dpi, but 360 or more... even 720 dpi at final 
print size, since you are not printing smooth grays, but something more like 
a bit mapped black and white.

C. David Tobie
Design Cooperative
CDTobie@...