Digital BW, The Print

Mark Hahn writes:

> What????  You are talking apples and oranges here... and scanning 
> silver based film also has its down side as well.

Apples and oranges indeed ... RGB is the apple, B&W is the orange.  They
don't mix.

I'm surprised that, on a group dedicated to black and white photography,
conversions from RGB are considered so acceptable.  The results are
always inferior to true B&W.  They may still look okay, but they aren't
B&W, any more than converting only the red channel of RGB is infrared,
or converting only the blue channel is UV.

A true B&W digital camera (one without a Bayer filter) would produce
very nice results indeed, but nobody is marketing one right now.  That
leaves only film for black and white image capture.  So if you want true
B&W, you must shoot film.