Digital BW, The Print

I have been reading several Yahoo Groups for a couple of years while
trying to determine how best to incorporate the digital world. I have
now completed a transformation from "All Wet" to
"Film/Scanner/DigitalPrint" and thought I would share some of my
thoughts with others. Please forgive the length of my post. My
interest is making large BW landscape prints. I have always focused on
producing the highest quality prints possible and have given little
thought to production time or convenience (an advantage of NOT doing
photography for a living!). 

My first decision was to keep shooting 4x5 film rather than moving to
digital acquisition. My reasons are (a) film can easily store the
large amount of data I need for large prints, (b) I need the swings &
tilts of a view camera for focus/perspective control, (c) I can
continue to use my four razor-sharp Schneider 4x5 lenses and (d) BW
films allow easy control of contrast through development (especially
T-Max). 

My second decision was to switch from wet darkroom printing to digital
printing. I purchased a Howtek 6500 drum scanner to make the important
film-to-digital transition because of a drum scanner's superior
performance. I am quite satisfied with the scanner.  

Next, I purchased a 44inch Z3100 inkjet printer. I loaded paper and
made a print quickly which looked great. I purchased a Datacolor
Spyder3 Elite to calibrate my computer monitor and get excellent
agreement with the Z3100 calibration (i.e. the first test print is
very close to the computer display). I have often read that the first
test print is the last test print for many digital printers but I have
found that subtle changes (which can be powerful) require 2-4 prints
before I conclude that I have gotten all there is from an image. I'm
not saying there is a problem with the equipment but I'm saying that
an image on a large piece of paper is a little different than the same
image on a relatively small computer display (24 inch diagonal). At
any rate, 2-4 test prints is quite a savings compared to darkroom
printing. I have found the Z3100's ability to tone highlights,
midtones and shadows INDEPENDENTLY to be especially useful for
developing a sense of depth in images. 

For image editing, I purchased a computer with Windows 64-bit Vista, a
pretty fast quad-core processor, 8 Gb of RAM, and three hard drives
(not in a RAID array). If I were to buy another computer now, I'd
purchase 16 Gb of RAM since my raw scanned image files are about 1 Gb
and easily exceed 12 Gb in Photoshop after adding a few layers. One of
my hard drives is an internal 64 Gb solid-state thumb-type drive that
functions as an extremely fast scratch disk for PhotoShop. I am very
satisfied with this arrangement and don't think that a RAID array
would provide much added benefit to me. My arrangement kept the
computer price below $3,500 (without a monitor). I also should note
that I purchased the new 64-bit version of Photoshop as soon as it was
available and found that it runs MUCH faster than the older 32-bit
version. To put in simple terms, the Healing Tool on a 1-2 Gb image
file required about 3 seconds (count 'one thousand one, one thousand
two, one thousand three') to complete one of my typical actions with
32-bit PS on my 64-bit Vista computer but requires only about 1 second
(count 'one thousand one') with 64-bit PS on the same 64-bit computer.
That is fast enough to keep up with my thinking so additional speed is
not needed by me. Personally, I believe that a 64-bit operating system
and 64-bit Photoshop is a winning combination.    

I would like to give my impression about wet darkroom prints versus
inkjet prints. I have printed thirty 4x5 negatives both in the
darkroom and with the Z3100. I would have to say that in 29 cases, I
achieved a MUCH stronger print digitally than in the darkroom and I
obtained digital prints MUCH faster. My digital prints generally seem
to have more three-dimensional depth than my darkroom prints. I
believe this is due largely to the opportunity to make considerably
more changes to the digital file and the ability to achieve complex
toning schemes. In the darkroom, I always felt like I was indeed
"painting with light" but I'd have to say that this painting seems to
be more tangible and concrete when I can make a nearly endless number
of changes with Photoshop and undo them at will if I desire. 

I have learned a great deal from members of this and other Yahoo
Groups. I would like to thank you for that. I could not have made the
transformation from all wet darkroom to Film/Scanner/DigitalPrinting
without reading the thoughts of several group members. Maybe I can
contribute in the future as I learn to master digital techniques more.
Thanks.