Digital BW, The Print

I've been an avid amateur photographer for 16 years, and I have a 
darkroom full of professional grade equipment, including 4x5 and 8x10 
color enlargers.  For the last 10 years, my main camera was a 4x5 view 
camera. I enlarged these negatives using high quality lenses on an 
aligned enlarger using a glass carrier to 8x10 and 11x14.  In addition, 
I have a print collection of over 100 prints, which includes some by 
very fine photographers: Les McLean, Wynn Bullock, Ralph Lambrecht.... 
So I do think that I have some idea of what a quality traditional silver 
print looks like.  A few years ago, I bought to Fuji medium format 
rangefinders to use on a trip.  Using Ilford XP2 Super, I got 
outstanding results, and I had a lot of fun.

 About this time I bought a 2 mp Canon digital point and shoot, mainly 
to take picture for Ebay.  While not a fan of the shutter lag, I could 
make better 4x6" prints using this camera than I could with my trusty 
Nikon FM2 with Nikon prime lenses.  Despite this success, I was 
convinced that a D70 or digital Rebel would not give me the quality that 
I wanted.  This was unfortunate in that a job change had given me 
significantly less time in the darkroom.  I'm a slow printer, and I 
using bleaching and toning on fiber-based silver gelatin paper, which is 
time consuming to process. And I simply didn't have the time (and still 
don't) to spend a whole day in the darkroom making a group prints from 
one negative. This sucks, as I enjoy the darkroom process immensely.

 As a result, when the D200 came out, I bought one.  I figured that if 
it really didn't work out, I could sell it for not that big of a loss.  
Well, since I bought it, I haven't used anything else.  Reading various 
websites, and with some experience scanning negatives, my calculations 
indicated that I'd only be able to get decent 8x10s. These calculations 
were wrong.  Way wrong.  With careful use, I can get 12x18 inch prints 
that are better than anything I could get with medium format and smaller 
film cameras.  To be honest, the best 12x18 prints from the Dslr don't 
give up anything to the 11x14 inch optical prints from 4x5. (TMX 
developed in Xtol 1+2). Even better, my photography has gotten much 
better, as I carry my D200 with most of the time, and taking shots with 
it takes significantly less time than using my Sinar P. It's true that 
at some point, enlargement (optical or digital) from 4x5 film should out 
pace the quality from my 10 mp dslr, but with my 13x19" printer, I don't 
see it. I do miss the focal plane and perspective control of the view 
camera, but that's about it.  There are lots of hurdles with digital 
photography, from blown highlights to clogged nozzles, but there are 
hurdles no matter what you do.  When I could only print with Mis inks in 
a C86 or R220, I wouldn't have been happy. I had tons of clogged 
nozzles, and the prints were just OK. With my R2400 and Epson premium 
semi-matte, premium semi-gloss and silver rag papers, I'm much happier. 
Good luck and have fun! (I'll be happy to send you a raw file from my d200.)