Digital BW, The Print

Bill Morse wrote:

>You can\ufffdt \ufffdreduce\ufffd what\ufffds not there...  ;^)
>
>Obviously, too much blur will reduce detail.
>
>Two different things may be happening in renditions from optical (read wet)
>enlargements. I\ufffdve seen enough large prints where the grain is not resolved,
>or is resolved differently across the print, to realize that many darkroom
>prints simply were not completely in focus, or were out of alignment.
>Sometimes the out-or \ufffdfocus was intentional, sometimes not. Secondly, a
>diffuse light source would always minimize the grain (and gave rise to the
>same sorts of discussions as this one re- sharpness vs. smoothness).
>
>Bill
>
>  
>
Whether one can actually resolve the grain on any scanner is one thing. 
The other thing is that like in enlargers the chance that it isn't done 
equal over the total scanned area makes any further editing in PS etc 
problematic. The difference becomes much more visible in sharpening and 
to a lesser degree in blurring, on resolved grain or unresolved grain.
It is often hard to describe the advantages of wet mounting and show 
that in samples. The thing I like most about it is the uniform sharpness 
over the entire scan. Just wet mounting may not do the trick but 
tweaking the film carrier to get the right focus everywhere is quite 
easy to accomplish.
That still will not guarantee that the grain is resolved. For that you 
need a good scanner and have it run at its highest sampling resolution.

Ernst.