Digital BW, The Print

"Yet, if you do a good scan and
set your black and white points well, you get a full range scan with
beautiful tonality from darkest shadows to brightest highlights. This
scan prints fairly easily on an inkjet printer, without blown out
highlights (which are virtually undefined in this workflow)."

Everything you say here makes sense. But I have a couple questions. What do
you mean by "set your black and white points well?"   I would have thought
that if the shadows are placed on Zone III in your example so that the
flower falls on Zone XI with normal development, then there wouldn't be much
choice in how you place the black and white points if the goal is to print
with texture/detail in both the shadows and the highlights. Second, what do
you mean when you say the highlights are "virtually undefined in this
workflow"? I thought the whole point of what you're saying here is that the
negative actually contains texture and detail in zones well above Zone VII
(which is correct, you can actually get up into Zones XIII or even XIV and
still see some tonal separation in the negative) and that textire and detail
can be brought out in the print without minus development when you scan and
print digitally. So why are the highlights "virtually undefined" in this
workflow?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hogarth Hughes" <hogarth@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 10:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: Tonal range recording



I've done some work in this area and have come to some unconventional
conclusions. I'm not saying I'm right. What I am saying is that this
works for me. You will all have to decide for yourselves.

I'm a 4x5 shooter. Currently I'm only shooting Tri-X for B&W. It
routinely handles 11 stops of subject brightness range (SBR), for
example, white flower in full sun, according to my Zone VI modified
Pentax digital spotmeter. It may well handle more, but I've never found
more in any of my landscape work.

The Zone System would have you pull that 11 stop range down to about 8
stops (N-3 or even N-4) to better match the dynamic range of silver
gelatin paper. What I have found is that with a hybrid workflow
(film-scan-inkjet), this is unnecessary. The hybrid workflow lets you
really simplify the Zone System.

Basically, you setup your EI and normal development time just like for
printing in the darkroom. Then, you expose for the shadows (set Zone III
for the darkest part you want to carry texture), and let the highlights
fall where they may. Every sheet of film gets "N" development.

You can do this because the scanner will fit whatever the film density
range is, into the scanner's digital range of 0-255 (8 bit), 0-4095 (12
bit), or 0-65535 (16 bit). This in turn, is an *exact* match to the printer.

For example, say your FB+Fog occurs at 0.12, and your normal Zone VIII
occurs at 1.3. You meter that scene with the white flower in full sun
and find you have a range of Zone I-XI. You take the shot, develop it
normally, and end up with a Dmax of 2.1 on the film. This negative is
virtually unprintable in the darkroom. Yet, if you do a good scan and
set your black and white points well, you get a full range scan with
beautiful tonality from darkest shadows to brightest highlights. This
scan prints fairly easily on an inkjet printer, without blown out
highlights (which are virtually undefined in this workflow).

Of course, there's always a catch. As you drive up density, you drive up
graininess. The highlights (that white flower) are going to be a little
more grainy than if you did an N-3 process. But since I'm shooting 4x5,
a little extra grain is pretty meaningless anyway.

Sounds too easy doesn't it? Well, I'm not asking you to believe it. You
can prove it to yourself. Shoot a scene twice, and give one negative N-3
and one negative N development. Scan them both and pull the files up
side-by-side in Photoshop. When I've done this test, I've found the
files to be virtually identical, except for the bit of extra graininess
in the highlights of the N negative. And that's not going to be
noticeable in a print smaller than about 40x50 inches for me (about 10x
enlargement). The real test is in the prints though, and I've never been
able to get anyone to tell me which print is which.

Sacrilege. I know. I've been told before. So... clearly, YMMV.
--
Hogarth Hughes


Pieris Berreitter wrote:

>
> Claude (and others),
>
> You mention you've seen Tmax density from 3 stops to 11 stops. I've
> seen this magical 11 stops (and more) elsewhere, and recall a comment
> saying something like "this is only useful in scientific
> applications".
>
> First, can this kind of range be obtained simply by asking a pro-lab
> to do pull-processing or is other trickery involved?
>
> Second, how useable is such a "high-latitude" negative for a hybrid
> process? In theory, one could scan this negative with a scanner
> capable of reading a Dmax of 3.2 (about max for Tmax according to the
> datasheet), apply curves to reduce range to about 5 stops (thereby
> boosting contrast), and print. Would I be able to match the results
> of this high-latitude negative to a "normal" negative of the same
> scene, assuming the scene does not exceed the latitude of the normal
> negative?
>
> Or (my suspicion), would the tonal range of the "high latitude"
> negative be so long as to make the scan aesthetically ugly (banding
> in dark regions)?
>
> This topic has always been interesting to me.
> -Pieris
>









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