Digital BW, The Print

Jeff writes:

> My main point is this : The vast majority of users out
> there can not create 100% perfect scans due to either
> a lack of equipment or scanning experience.

Agreed.

> And jobbing out the scans is often not an option and also
> does not guarantee a perfect scan for a particular output.

Also agreed.  You can pay for your own scanner for the price of scanning
just one roll of film at a lab (if you want _good_ scans), and often the
person scanning it at the lab has scarcely any more experience than you do.

> Putting the fact of pure resolution aside, I think many
> photographers will get better prints from a good pro
> digital SLR (if the prints are kept small in size do to
> the relatively low resolution of most digital cameras)
> than they will from shooting film and scanning.

I agree.  The choice is complicated, though, by the extremely high cost of
digital equipment.  That will change someday, but today, it's a lot of money
for the relatively low image quality.

Also, getting more on topic, digicams are an especially poor choice for
black and white imaging, because they are all designed for color, and you
lose an enormous amount of information in your images when you are forced to
convert from an RGB image capture to a grayscale image.

> The exception is the photographer who has the time and
> money and expertise to really get in to truly hight
> end scanning.

All of this applies to printing as well.  Getting decent black and white
prints on your own is very time-consuming and expensive, no matter how you
do it.  Getting good prints cheaply isn't too inaccessible, but getting the
best prints--whether they are ink-jet or wet prints--is just as difficult as
scanning film.  This is no coincidence, because they are both analog
processes.  And they are not going to go away.