Digital BW, The Print

Dave writes:

> The thread sure seemed to take a don't use
> digital for bw direction.

That is my current recommendation, for what it's worth.

The advantage of digital is speed and convenience.  Image quality is an
advantage of film.  If you want the best image quality, you must still shoot
film.

This is even more true for black and white, simply because there are no
black and white digital cameras.  You can shoot B&W directly with film, but
not with a digicam.  And a great deal of the flexibility of B&W is lost if
the original capture is not B&W, for reasons I've already explained many
times.

> But I believe the initial question was whether
> to try digital for BW.

My answer would be no, if quality is the predominant issue, or yes, if speed
and convenience are the predominant issues.

Budget also comes into play, because shooting digital requires a huge
investment in equipment up front, which can only be amortized (in comparison
to film) by shooting thousands of photographs.  Since so much B&W
photography is art photography, a photographer is less likely to blow
through thousands of exposures than he might be with, say, photojournalism.