Digital BW, The Print

Steve,

Surely someone has written book on this but perhaps not and you have an
opportunity. Some thoughts to start with.

A negative exposed and developed for darkroom printing will probably be very
usable in a digital process.

In conventional photography you are mapping real world light levels to film
densities to paper densities. In a digital workflow you are mapping real
world light levels to film densities to  Or with direct digital capture,
real world light levels to numerical values in a file to print densities.

Scanners seem to be amazing at pulling usable detail off of unbelievably
thin negs and rather poor at punching through dense highlights. This
suggests that the ideal negative for scanning may be in the direction of N-1
or N-0.5 development with a bit more exposure.

You need to calibrate your system to find out what is the maximum film
density the scanner can read through to set Zone VIII and then minimum
density where it can render acceptable detail for Zone II or III. In terms
of your digital file these would then be at values of 99% and 1%
respectively so that you still have some slack.

Given a perfect neg and a perfect scan with a good printer profile the print
should be a snap. Right?<G>

Martin Wesley

http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html



----- Original Message -----
From: "steve1t" <stephentucker@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 7:07 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Scanned negatives and the Zone System


I've decided to dig out the old 4x5 Benderview and try
b&w film > scan > inkjet output.  However, I immediately
hit a snag.  How do I calibrate "personal film speed",
"standard print time", and "N, N+1, N-1, development"
for a negative to be scanned for digital output?  BTW, my
personal preferences are Ilford FP4+ developed in D-76,
D-76 1:1, or D-23.

My initial questions/thoughts are:

A - How can I carry out Zone system calibration digitally?  Or .
. .

B - Should I carry out all negative and proofing procedures
normally in the "wet" darkroom and then scan the resulting
negatives for digital output?  Or . . .

C - Do a classic "ring-a-round" for various lighting
conditions
and analyze the histograms for the best digital output?

Option "C" sounds intriguing, has anybody tried this?  ALL
opinions on these or other options are most welcome.

Thanks,
Steve T.




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