Digital BW, The Print

That's basically the way I worked when I was printing silver prints. And 
it works quite well. But given the extra control one has when the image 
is in the digital form, it makes me wonder if compressing the negative a 
bit, scanning and processing in 16 bits would not give better results. I 
don't know yet. When I finally get off my duff and get a printer, I can 
test this a little better.

Truman

Roger L Sopher wrote:

> Hi Truman,
>
> To be honest, I have done all of my B&W film calibration work via a 
> wet darkroom and a borrowed densitometer. I have gone on the 
> assumption that a good printable negative will also scan well. As long 
> as I do my part and develop absolutely consistently then the negatives 
> are generally predictable (not always good images and worth printing, 
> however). I usually place the highlight I can't do without on Zone 
> VIII (with a spot meter) and let the other stuff fall where it may. 
> Anything beyond zone VIII is usually a specular highlight of some sort 
> with no useful information to be had from it.
>
> Roger