Digital BW, The Print

My personal experience, for what it's worth (one and a half year of 
digital B&W printing), is that (with a well calibrated system and 
paper that I'm familiar with) I can get close enough for a good print 
of a "normal" image. But if "good" is not good enough or with an 
image that is very demanding for either very dark or very light tones 
I need some (2-6) iterations to get it right. At certain moments I 
think I face the limit that in the end a monitor is a light emitting 
image, while a photo is light reflecting.

Joost

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Louis de Stoutz 
<loudest@...> wrote:
>
> Hi folks!
> 
> This is a follow-up question to my monitor question (thanks for the 
> first replies):
> 
> When I am in the darkroom, I print many test-strips to get what I 
want.
> Is this being done in digital B&W too? Saving ink and paper (and 
time) 
> certainly prevents from printing too many full test-pictures. Or 
does 
> WYSIWYG with a reasonable monitor get you close enough to the final 
print?
> 
> (You may guess my a priori "conclusion": maybe its no use to get 
the 
> absolutely best monitor, since one has to do test prints anyway...)
> 
> And by the way, a huge "Thank You" to all the very experienced B&W 
> workers amongst you for your fantastic contributions!
> 
> Louis
>