Digital BW, The Print

I've always done this. I've been experimenting a bit lately. If a 
scanner is in the loop and it is a 16 bit scanner, I have been making 
sure zone 3 has good detail and have been developing a "bit soft" to 
make sure I have good highlights. By using 16 bits in the scaning 
process you have sufficient dynamic range to expand the highlights once 
in the computer. This seems to give very nice highlight detail and 
minimizies the chance of blowing out a the highlights in the development 
process.

Any thoughts or feedback?

Truman

Roger L Sopher wrote:

> Ain't there any zonies left out there? I was taught to set the asa 
> (for use in an individual camera) of a B&W film to the value that 
> produces a densitiy of 0.08 to 0.1 above film base & fog. Then to set 
> the development time to that which will produce a zone VIII print 
> value from a zone VIII placement. This approach usually produces very 
> printable negatives except when conditions require N+ or N- 
> development (not too common an occurence in my limited experience).
>
> Roger 
>