Digital BW, The Print

Ansel Adams was quoted as saying that Pre-Visualization in the Zone System 
was more important than the technical side of it. Minor White's Zone System book 
emphasized the same thing. He seem rather annoyed at the overemphasis of the 
technical side.

If you ever read anything by Phil Davis (had the privilege of going to his 
house once for a demo of his curve software/film tubes), you will understand 
that the Zone System was technically flawed.

Most of the time, one stop of luminance chage did NOT translate into 0.15 
density change in the film. The film was non-linear (at the ends anyhow) and the 
paper was a "wild" S curve. So, when married together, you could see the 
spaceds between zones was ALWAYS uneven, unlike the nice and neat Zone0-IX 
aritificial step wedges we have seen a million times in books.

Dealing with digital captuter (a linear process until we introduce the S 
curve), and "linearizing" inkjet output gives us tonal separation that wasn't 
possible (not easily anyhow) in a darkroom print. Even though matte papers have 1 
to 2 stops less "blackness" than their RC counterparts, VISUALLY they render 
far more tonal separation than was ever achieved in any darkroom print I have 
ever made or seen.

Claude


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]