Digital BW, The Print

But while the top half of the bucket contains the same amount of water as
the bottom half, it represents only 1 unit of dynamic range (linear device).
If you keep halving the amount of water left and thereby measuring off 1
unit of exposure or dynamic range each time, the amount of water available
to that "zone" is a lot less.  At some point the amount of water per
exposure zone is so little it is unusable and at some point falls below a
sample unit.  So the size of your sample (minimum measurement) is important.
There is no doubt we would rather have a bigger, fuller bucket to begin
with.  But there is benefit to being able to sample or measure off the
bucket in smaller units because at the end of the day we drink the water
(manipulate images) in these units.

> From: dfaprinting <dfaprinting@...>

> 
> You could also sample the bucket like you had 2 buckets worth of
> water (but still really only have the one bucket). This makes it look
> like you have 2 buckets, so the sales people can say that you are
> sampling in two buckets worth of water. The bucket size did not
> change, but you left enough room for 2 buckets worth, even though you
> can never achieve that much water. Now if you sample with a cup, you
> have room to get twice the number of cups from the bucket, but of
> course you can't because you still only have the one bucket. So what
> do you do with the extra cups... They come out empty in this case.
> You can either take out empty cups at the beginning, or take out
> empty cups at the end, but you will only ever take out as many full
> cups as the (single) bucket can hold.
> 
> (of course you could fill those empty cups with error correcting cups
> if you want to)