Digital BW, The Print

Jerry,

> Austin, film can not record 15 stops of information without much
> overexposure and underdevelopment.

Irrespective, it CAN do it.

> Digital can record as much as film.

No, physically not possible.

> Of course you have to
> use all kinds of adjustments in photoshop to pull out the data, but it
> IS there.

It has nothing to do with Photoshop at all, that's the part I simply don't
understand you bringing up.  The data you get from the camera is already
setpointed, and as such, there is nothing "hidden" that would require
Photoshop to "pull out".

> I do this every day Austin, and

I don't really know what "this" is...

> I'm telling you my digital prints are better than my darkroom prints,

I believe that is true, but you are drawing an erroneous conclusion based on
an irrelevant or flawed comparison.

> or
> your darkroom prints, or anyone elses
> darkroom prints, assuming the same image is used for both.

How can you use the same image, if one is digital capture and one is film?

> More shadow
> detail is easy to capture in digital. Just
> take 2 images  of the same subject, expose one for shadows, one for
> highlights, and run an action that combines the
> best of both. I do it on  every photo I shoot, if it needs it.

Oh, and why can't that be done with film?  Why is it more difficult with
film?  That claim makes no sense.

> There is no arguing with you as you
> always have a technical reason for why something can't be done as well
> digitally as well as film.

Well, that's not true.  It depends on what you mean by "digitally".  Do you
mean digital image capture, or does scanning film as well mean "digitally"
to you?

> All I can say is I have
> 40 years experience with darkroom printing and 15 years with digital
> printing, and can make better prints from any
> source digitally than I can in the darkroom. Millions of people all over
> the world can, Austin, I don't know why you can't.

Jerry, as usual, you are putting words in my mouth.  I've not ONCE argued
that digital printing isn't better than darkroom printing.  It's that you
lump film and darkroom printing in one category, and digital image capture
and digital printing in another, then claim victory...but the funny thing is
I've never argued about that.  I argue only about scanned film vs digital
image capture, period.  You, for some reason, won't talk about that flow,
which is %99.99999999 of what people in this mailing list do!  They scan
film, and print it digitally.  This IS a "Digital B&W" mailing list, and as
such, EVERYONE here has some aspect of digital in their workflow.

Argh.

Austin