Digital BW, The Print

Steve Gledhill wrote:
> Bruce,
>
> I'm a 5x4 B&W photographer.  Many of my more recent images are created in extremes of subject brightness.  And I want detail all the way from the deepest shadows to the brightest highlights.  I use 100Tmax and the new 400Tmax and with these films and my processing and scanning workflow I can capture on film and record in a TIFF file a 17 to 18 stop subject brightness range from a single exposure (as long as I judge my exposure correctly). This extreme is not a common occurrence but it does illustrate just what an amazing medium is B&W film.  Can colour film do that for me?  
Probably not. The most I've ever pushed color negative film was to make 
a photograph in bright mid-day sun in June (I'm in the northern 
hemisphere), of a white flower in the sun. And I wanted to pull good 
detail on the dark green leaves in the shadows. Metered about 11 stops 
black to white, about 9 stops of texture and detail. The film 
(160PortraVC one generation down from current) did fine. It held up nice 
and linear without color shifting in the highlights which would have 
been very easy to see (the white flower petals would have made it 
impossible to miss).

But I suspect that at some point it's going to start color shifting in 
interesting ways. You'll have to experiment and find out.
> Certainly digital sensors can't.  I pose the question because I suspect it cannot come near that, and for me and my particular requirements that is a critical question.  I'm not interested (in my core photographic activities) in what I could do with multiple exposures and HDR and all that faffing about.
>
> For me, your comment about more data in colour capture (undeniable I
> suppose) presupposes that you are less interested in the extremes of shadow and highlight detail than me.  So my question is posed to find out if I could get even more if I used colour film.
>   
I don't think that was me. If it was me I'd be saying something along 
the lines of more data isn't necessarily more information, a favorite 
point of mine ;-)
> OK - I could test to find out for myself, perhaps I should.  The trouble is, I have total personal control over my B&W processing but I'd have to farm out the colour processing and from my limited experience, that's a road I'd not want to travel.
>
> Steve Gledhill
>   
You'd have to do the testing for yourself to learn if it meets your 
personal requirements. No one else can answer that question for you. 
OTOH, you don't have to do any testing at all -- you could just keep 
shooting with TMY-2, enjoy what may be the highest performing B&W film 
ever commercially produced, and spend your time making your art instead 
of running tests.

Wish I could make myself follow my own advice!
--
Bruce Watson