Digital BW, The Print

Clayton writes:

> It's a subject that has concerned me for a
> long time, as I've hinted at in past posts
> about my fear of losing the look and feel
> of particular films.

I worry about it, too.  There is a very widespread but mistaken belief that
the images produced by any B&W film can be duplicated by some magic
manipulation of a color image in Photoshop.  That just isn't possible.  In
fact, you cannot even duplicate the images produced by a different color
film or a different electronic sensor in Photoshop.  This is just one of the
many misunderstandings that seem to plaque digital photographers, who
typically know something about photography but nothing about information
theory, even though information theory now intrudes so ubiquitously into
digital photography that it cannot be ignored.

> The few images I worked up were sharp, well
> rendered, and made prints that were basically
> "good" in many ways, yet failed to fully satisfy
> by not "pressing my button" in the way my scans
> of Tri-X negs have.

The converted B&W images will never exactly match Tri-X or any other B&W
film.

> I'm not giving up hope for an all-digital workflow.

Imaging workflows are never all-digital; that's another widespread
misconception of photographers.  The image-capture phase is always analog,
and so is the printing or display phase.  Only the part in between can be
digitized.  If you take photographs with a so-called "digital" camera, you
are not capturing images digitally; you are capturing images with an analog
electronic sensor, the signals from which are then sampled to produce
digital output.  Likewise, when you print on an ink-jet printer (or display
on a monitor, or print on any other device), you are converting digital data
back to analog signals.

The ultimate results of any imaging workflow will always be a function of
the quality of the analog components of the system at each end.  Most of the
alleged quality of digital photography comes not from the fact that digital
cameras produce digital output, but from the fact that they use electronic
sensors that have a number of inherent advantages over film.

A corollary of this is that no digital system can ever exceed the quality of
the best analog system--because any system that interacts with the real
world must contain at least a few analog components at the interface points.

> Perhaps better cameras, software, and my own
> improving skills will make it possible
> someday.

No, it will never be possible, as it is a restriction imposed by information
theory; like the obstacle of diffraction limits in lenses, it cannot be
surmounted.

> In the meantime I'll save my shekels and shoot film.  6x7
> Tri-X negs made with Pentax 67 lenses are hard to beat.

I like Tri-X better in MF, because it has the same great look in the way it
handles light, but it shows much less grain.  Also, the MF flavor of Tri-X
has a bit more shadow detail.