Digital BW, The Print

>...  The 17 stops are handled by the film and the way I 
> process it prior it to going anywhere near a scanner.  
> The scanner simply deals with scanning of a piece of film ...

I've tested up to 14 stops even with my Technical Pan film -- the 
scene had 14 stops and one scan got it all.  On the other hand, the 
quality of the information might be higher if more than one exposure 
is used.  The very high densities on the film are not very conducive 
to quality either on the film or through the scan.

I think the range that one can capture on film and then scan is not 
necessarily limited by the Tiff file bit depth.  However, again, the 
quality of the information may be compromised, but with the thousands 
of steps we have with 16 bit files, there will be some separation of 
the values.

With sheet film or when hand holding it's probably not practical, but 
with roll film and on a tripod I routinely take a couple shots even 
when one might capture the extremes.  Two frames will simply do so 
with more quality.

Then again, I think the limited dynamic range that digital can 
capture directly is as serious a problem as the limited number of 
pixels.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com