[Leica] Digital darkroom - a quality equalizer?

["Jeffrey Fass" <happy.eyeball@verizon.net>]

Hi all,

Been taking pictures, scanning and printing a fair bit these days. My
experience is rooted in traditional wet process, however due to lack of
space I'm doing digital and fairly pleased so far. Scan with a Nikon
Coolscan III/Silverfast; Photoshop/Mac, Epson 1280 printer with CIS and
MIS-VM hextone inks. Workflow and results pretty satifying so far, though
there's certainly a ways to go.

I did some test scanning with Nikonscan vs. Silverfast; sharpening at
scantime vs. Photoshop; levels, curves, all sorts of stuff. Clearly, there's
a number of variables that affect the image from film to paper.

Keeping in mind that my scanner isn't the best, but certainly adequate, I'm
thinking that all these aspects of digital processing equalize some
qualitites of lenses and such. Certain things remain constant IMO (Bokeh for
one), but other things, the "Leica Glow," edge effects, etc. will likely be
affected by digital workflow manipulation. How is one to know just what's on
the negative? In the wet darkroom, the image was enlarged and printed
optically, so there are variables (paper, chemistry, enlarging lens,
glass/glassless carrier, and so on). Under an enlarger, you are *much*
closer to the original film.

So people say that with digital cameras quality is equalized to a degree,
the weakest link in the chain with low-pass filters, off-axis light
problems, algortithms, etc. Doesn't digital processing of film tend to do
the same damage?

Thoughts during a quiet morning.

Cheers, Jeffrey Fass

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