Digital BW, The Print

Went to a local art fair where a photographer had some nice b&w fine 
art landscape prints for sale. He was making sure everyone knew they 
weren't digital prints, kind of like a guy telling a girl he met he's 
disease free. What's with this? Perhaps its some kind of collector 
thing; that is, with digital you can just push a button and out comes 
an exact duplicate. I got the feeling the comments had more to do 
with investment potential than asthetics. Still, not a valid reason 
to bash digital b&w.

In the next booth were some large color prints made from 4x5 
negatives. The negatives had been digitally scanned then digitally 
printed on a LaserLight printer. These images had been digitally 
manipulated (dodged, burned, levels tweaked, curves tweaked, color 
balanced and spotted) and they looked absolutely stunning! I've been 
doing this long enough to tell when digital tweaking has been done 
(actually, not all the time if done subtly enough), just like I can 
tell when dodging and burning has been done in a conventional print. 
I can't see that its been done but I know it had to have been done 
for technical reasons. But once again, the salesman in this case was 
telling everyone these weren't digital prints. I guess since the 
image came from a negative and was printed on photographic paper that 
the salesman felt the photographs had not been stricken by the 
digital curse. The good news is that I didn't say anything so 
everyone could enjoy the "non-digital" photos in peace. But still, in 
this case all the photographer would have to do is push a button and 
out comes and exact duplicate.

Perhaps that's the definition of a digital print: If you can push a 
button and out comes an exact duplicate, then the print is digital.