Digital BW, The Print

Hi Austin,

I admit to being both an old fart and a traditionalist and insist that if you describe something, such as the Zone System, it has specific meaning. Different isn't the same. Most of the manipulations that I have seen described in an attempt at getting a "scanable" negative simply don't fit the criterea, at least as I was taught them. Just for argument sake I would suggest that if people having problems with their negatives were to go through the exercise of determining their "personal" ASA and development time they would have far fewer problems. Learning a film-developer combination until one can predict just how it will act under varying circumstances is a side benefit. Constantly changing this or that in search of the grail simply doesn't work and ends up in utter confusion. I used Tri-X and HC110 almost exclusively for 35, 120 and 4X5 and never felt I could blame my negatives for bad shots.

I don't know what you mean by cram. If the negative has zones I through VIII then it contains (under normal circumstances) all of the printable information that has information in it other than pure white (using wet print criterea). Zone IX is usually specular reflections and the like. There are times when a scene requires N+ or N- development but I usually find it isn't worth the effort to try to squeeze a good image out of bad lighting but there certainly are exceptions. We wouldn't have Moonrise over Hernandez New Mexico if AA only took ideal shots. For that matter, I don't know how a roll film photographer successfully can develop for N+ or N- exposures if there are normal exposures on the same roll. No problem with a view camera but with a 35mm or 120??

No question that a good scanner can reach into shadows and via manipulation bring out something that may be concealed in the murk. That doesn't necessarily make for a better image.

End of rant

Roger

 
 -----Original Message-----
From: Austin Franklin [mailto:darkroom@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 4:47 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Digital BW] Film for scanning was Re: The State of PersonalScanner Technology


  Hi Roger,

  Why do you believe there aren't?  I always shoot using "the Zone System"
  (which means different things to different people) and compensation
  development (if it's needed)...but I specifically cram all the tonality from
  the scene into the film as best I can!

  Austin


  >
  > 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


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