[Leica] re: Resurgence of B&W

["Michael Darnton" <mdarnton@hotmail.com>]

I'm finding this whole topic entertaining, because three months ago I had 
the sudden realization why I hadn't taken anything but vacation pix since I 
quit $$$ photography 20 years ago. The problem was the very unsatisfying 
combination of slr cameras and the darkroom. So I gave away the darkroom, 
put the slrs in mothballs, bought an M4-2 and a bunch of lenses and have 
been having a great time--with inkjet printing.

The precipitating events were two: on the camera side, borrowing my wife's 
Oly Stylus VF camera; on the darkroom issue, going to a museum exhibition 
where the best prints on the walls were B&W, from inkjet printers. Smart 
Blur and Unsharp Mask are fun toys (which I rarely use), but the real tool 
of photoshop is Curves. The learning curve is steep. I started with color, 
printing on a Fujix printer, and there's simply NO way to equal those 
results with color in the darkroom if you understand and properly use 
curves, and with color, some of the specific color tools. Once I got the 
color thing straightened out, moving back to B&W I found that my whole 
approach to printing is different, and for me, at least, the results were 
several orders of magnitude better than anything I'd ever been able to do in 
B&W (and I WAS a good B&W printer, long ago). At this point, inkjets lack 
only sharpness at the level of observation that no one but photogeeks 
notices (most of the people who look at my pictures will never pull out a 
loupe to check the structure of the image :-), but I'm sure that's going to 
happen soon enough.

Silver's not dead, but silver paper may be.

- --Michael Darnton



Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 11:25:49 -0700
From: Mark Rabiner <mark@rabiner.cncoffice.com>
Subject: Re: [Leica]  Resurgence of B&W

"B. D. Colen" wrote:
>
>Mark - Oh, stuff that stuff!! You can get dark stuff, good stuff, real
>stuff, from scanned B&W negs....;-)
>
>B. D.
>
Take a neg that you have had too much fun with with Photoshop and the
epsons and
bring it down to that dark dank toxic-waste ridden boring darkroom and
force
yourself to mix up the trays and knock out a print. Done that lately? It
has
ALWAYS been a more satisfying experience with hard copy results to prove
it
despite lack of UnsharpMask and Smart Blur. Maybe you have been printing
RC?
Fiber fights for YOU!!!
Ilford Multigrade FB Warm rules!!!
Mark Rabiner


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