Digital BW, The Print

> i'm thinking about getting into digital  B&W printing, and i can't
> seem to find any serious comparisons of print quality between
> traditonal wet darkrooms and the digital alternative.  I'm aware of
> all the benefits that computer photo editing offers, but is the final
> print truly compareable in terms of contrast, sharpness, grain,
> shadow detait, etc.?  any thoughts anyone?
>
> thanks,
>
> torrey

Hi Torrey,

As far as image quality (not print quality), digital wins hands down for two
reasons.  One is the ability to get the entire tonal range on the film on
the print...where with chemical darkroom, you end up sacrificing one end or
the other without a lot of work.  The other is the ability digital has to
adjust tonal curves...with ease.  Chemical darkroom has no equivalent,
really, well, kind of sort of but not really.

As far as I am concerned, digital has better tonality as well as equal, if
not better, image detail.  I have compared 24 x 24 chemical prints (I'm
talking B&W here, not color) with my digital prints of the same
negative...and I must say, the digital prints show detail that the chemical
prints don't.  I used Schneider Componon-S lenses and Oriental papers...and
Dektol developer...so I was certainly printing on the high end of the
chemical printing scale.

Digital printing is also far far more repeatable.  If you make one print,
you can make 100 that are pretty much exactly the same.

The only downside is that chemical prints have a darker black (higher dMax)
than digital prints.  If you compare them side by side, that will show.  If
you were to simply go from one room to another, with identical prints on the
wall of each room, one chemical, one digital, you would hardly notice the
"dark" difference.

I gave up my chemical darkroom to go to a scanner/digital printing method,
and I have not regretted it one bit.  No more messy chemicals and clean-up
for prints!  Certainly for film processing, I still do it...but it's a lot
less messy than printing.

Regards,

Austin