Digital BW, The Print

Mark,

Point well taken on the topic since shooting straight digital is a 
different matter.

When I shoot 4x5 is it very common for me to bracket but I bracket 
film development rather than exposure. Depending upon the scene I 
might shot a sheet for N and N+1, or N-1 and N, or N, N-1 and N-2. 
When I am shooting medium format I have almost always bracketed 
exposures.

I have yet to carry any of this into the digital side though. I just 
got the SprintScan 120 back from the repair shop and as a test 
scanned a trio of bracketed negatives of a very high contrast scene. 
I will take a shot at cutting the shadows from the +1 exposure and 
pasting them into the -1 exposure.

From your post it sounds like you are doing this without at tripod? 
How far off can you be and still manage to pull the two parts of the 
negatives together?

Thanks,
Martin

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Mark Tucker" <mark@m...> 
wrote:
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Martin Wesley" 
> <mwesley250@e...> wrote:
> Seems so obvious but old 
> > habits die hard.
> > Martin
> 
> I think for me, a more apt title to this thread would be "Shooting 
> for Scanning". I notice these big differences more in relation to 
> contrast and tonal range, more than anything else. I was 
> shooting today in this tiny English church; very very dark wood, 
> and no interior lights; only windows. Above where the 
> preacher-guy stands was this gorgeous stained glass, backlit 
> from the sun, window. My first "old" thought was, "OK, I've got to 
> pick one OR the other: the interior wood, or the detail in the 
> glass. If I pick the wood, the glass will be fried".
> 
> But now, I just shoot two (or three) brackets, with the camera 
> basically in the same place. I scan the base image (the interior 
> of the church), and the scan the thinner neg of the properly 
> exposed stained glass, and then just strip the glass into the 
> church layer. 
> 
> All of a sudden, now, when you work this way, you can have film 
> that renders almost infinite range of zones. Rather than the old 
> way, of having to cut a mask by hand and burn in that stained 
> glass forever. And even then, it never looks really right; always 
> that fogged/burned-in-forever look in the highlights.
> 
> I do this all the time now with skies: I shoot a frame for the 
> grass/buildings/whatever, and then another frame about a stop 
> or two darker of the sky, and then easily pop them together, as 
> long as the camera's basically in the same place.
> 
> -MTucker