Digital BW, The Print

Well here's the rub: assume he's right: you can get 50 shades of gray 
out of 35mm as easily as 8x10-is anyone going to claim they produce 
equal results? Even if he is right technically, there's a continuity to 
the negative that is broken up into 256 shades by digitizing, and all 
the rest of the nuances are simply tossed, much like JPG compression. 
We then turn around and try to re-create all that info by other means. 
Mind you, I think we are doing remarkably well, I'm just looking for 
the next major step up.

Steve Karafyllakis


> According to Fred Picker in one of his darkroom videos, a maximum of 
about 
> 50 distinct shades of gray can be printed on silver based 
photographic paper 
> in a tradional darkroom. Now Fred wasn't always the most reliable 
source of 
> information and I have no idea how he did the test to make this 
> determination (he did say he had tested, he just didn't way how). But 
> assuming he's right on this one, if the great darkroom printers could 
make 
> the prints they made with 50 or so shades of gray to work with, 
what's the 
> problem with 256?