Digital BW, The Print

pr_roark wrote:
>   
>> pr_roark wrote:
>>     
>>> ... in the real world of 
>>> reflections and less than ideal display, good matte papers will 
>>> often if not usually appear to have deeper blacks than the 
>>> glossy ones.
>>>       
>
> Bruce Watson <bwyg@...> wrote:
>
>   
>> ... your "real world" doesn't match mine. 
>>     
>
> Probably not, but I think mine is rather typical of many homes and 
> offices.
>   
Well good. We both think that we are right. What a surprise ;-)

For me what a mediocre black means is that the print has no solid bottom 
end. Like a brass band without a tuba. Like Duke Ellington without Jimmy 
Blanton. Without a solid black, there's no bedrock upon which to build a 
solid image structure.

The images I find work best with pigments on matte are the images that 
rely on 3/4 tones and up to make their statements. Thankfully, that's 
the vast majority of images. Where they fail to convince though, isn't 
the wide expanses of blacks for me. It's the small instances of black -- 
like the cracks in the rocks. Stuff that needs to be significantly 
darker than what's near it. When we compress the shadows to get the 3/4 
tones right (as we have to because of the lack of tonal scale *below* 
the 3/4 tones), we loose that spacing between the last detail of the 
shadows and a real black.

In Zone System terms, what we have below our last shadow detail in Zone 
III is the dark featureless grays of Zone II. What's missing is Zone I. 
Black. That's what pigment on matte doesn't have. Yet (there's always hope).

Just like that Ellington / Mills jazz standard: It Don't Mean a Thing 
(If It Ain't Got That Swing). Some images just need that black if their 
are going to come alive -- if they are going to swing. They can't do it 
without a solid black. Sad but true.
--
Bruce Watson