Digital BW, The Print

This is obviously a personal call...I think that if a person can't get
the full impact of a photo *at or beyond* arm's length, like on a
wall, he fools himself, exaggerates its merit by being forcing himself
and others to attend closely to mini prints. 

I've shot a lot of 6X9...narcissist shooting that format sometimes
contact print to force viewers to peer closely, creating an illusion 
of value that way (same photogs who used gold toner :-)  

My favorite developers are Rodinal and Neofin. I prefer fast film
because I like to hand hold in low light. But scanners can't produce
that grain as prettily as enlargers did without absurd workarounds.
I'm beginning to enjoy gaussian blur's control...I don't like digital
grain, just like I didn't like the grain softening and diffusion done
by photogs who didn't really like their 35mm format...personal taste.

IMO we should give scanning and digital printing respect in the
process, just like we do to negatives.

To respect negative grain with traditional photo enlargement you HAD
to use the best lenses and you HAD to use a condenser enlarger. I
don't think digital respect allows yearning for the grain seen in
optical prints. 

Everything is a version of something else. Is the photo an image or is
it only one particular technical reflection of the negative? 

To each his own.


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Ken Carney"
<kcarney1@c...> wrote:
> I have a number of 35mm TriX negs like that.  I just settled on
leaving them
> as is and reducing the print size to, say, 5x7 or 6x9, instead of heroic
> efforts to reduce the grain. 
> 
>