Digital BW, The Print

Hi Kevin,

> Traditional compensating development techniques for negatives are not
> required to produce a good print when the negative is going to be
> scanned and not printed traditionally.  It is, in most circumstances,
> not material to the success of the print whether you use 'normal' or
> compensated development (N+ or N-).

And...for the record, before reviewing your "experiment" ;-)  I disagree
with that.

Here is my take on it:

For N+ exposure/development, with N+ exposure you will get all the RANGE of
information on the film and could adjust it with setpoints to basically
"match" the N+ development, but because it's contained within a narrower
range on the film, it's compressed.  Therefore, if you did N+ development
that would spread out the image data, you would give your self more data
separation, and therefore "better/more" data when scanning.

But...for N- exposure/development.  With N- exposure, you are compressing
the range that exceeds the films capacity (with normal exposure) onto the
films capacity.  If you develop it normally, you will lose the
highlights...as they simply won't be developed.  If you did N- development,
that would bring out the highlights on the film, therefore giving you a
wider range of original image tonality.

Now, I'll have to review your "experiment" and see where it doesn't fit with
the above ;-)

Regards,

Austin