Digital BW, The Print

Hello Michael,

>I agree with those who feel this is ON topic and is of
>interest to me.  I did in fact receive new knowledge
>and inspiration from this thread...I don't write and request the 
>subject be banned or make prayers to God to somehow edit these 
>out before they hit my in-box...

>As others have said before,  I believe our hearts and
>minds in this forum are large enough to accommodate
>practically all that has to do with making beautiful
>(to us)  B&W prints where the final or penultimate (as
>in digital negatives) output is digital.

Thanks for your (as usual) well thought out and well expressed reply.
If you were to somehow go back and read all the things I've posted
here on the subject of OT threads you would find that I have often
defended the idea that occasional OT threads are welcome, as you are
doing now, and that they broaden and enrich the normal fare.  However,
digi vs film and camera brand/lens debates also have a history here of
getting out of hand and dragging on for days and days and days to the
point of driving away people, especially newcomers, who come looking
for help with printing only to find yet another forum that resembles
dpreview and countless others.  One of the reasons this forum has
remained so popular is _because_ it remains focused on topic, and it's
not uncommon to get the occasional post thanking us for being that way.

Best I can tell, there is a general agreement that these OT threads
are OK as long as we all use self-restraint and don't let them get out
of hand.  The question of course is when is that point reached.  This
thread has dominated the forum for four days now and is beginning to
get tiresome.  I kept hoping someone else would say something, but it
shows no signs of letting up.

The forum moderators want this to be a self-policing forum so that
they don't have to be enforcers all the time, so they usually come in
and say something only as a last resort.  The term self-policing
implies that now and then someone has to speak up and be the bad guy
and give us a reminder.  My post was an attempt to do just that in
what I hoped was a light and humorous manner (and I apologize if it
offended anyone, perhaps it was not a good choice).

I value your input on this because it defends the subject in an
eloquent way, which is also needed, and it is another of your many
valuable contributions.  In a broader view I see this as an
opportunity to bring this subject to the front again, as it seems to
need periodically, because surely there are many new readers who
haven't seen it articulated before.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm