RE: [Leica] Naive question re scanning

["Rodgers, David" <david.rodgers@xo.com>]

I think it's a shame to generalize and say that one type of output is either
lacking or is better than another. Scanning prints, scanning negatives,
scanning transparencies, and conventional printing from different media all
have strengths and weaknesses. 

Someone recently mentioned to me that scanning prints was bad because it
included one more process in the workflow. There was an assumed lost of
quality. Better to scan the original film, they said matter of factly. 

It reminded me of some remarkable b/w images that I saw years ago. They
stood out as some of the best I'd ever seen. Turns out the photographer shot
everything with MF. Then he retouched the negs. Then he printed them. Then
he retouched the prints. Then he photographed the prints using a 4x5 on
Polaroid pos/neg film. Then he retouched the negs again. Then he printed the
negs. Finally, he selectively toned the images. (This was all pre-digital).
I doubt if anyone could acheive the same results, mainly because of the
extreme amount of effort he put into every image.  

Further, the final prints gave no clue as to the workflow. At a gallery
showing people were asking the photographer lots of questions about things
such as lighting. But the most asked question was what type of film and
camera he used, like that was the key to the look he acheived. The resulting
images had a very unique tonality. Milky white skin tones. Nice middle
tones. Detail in the shadows and the highlights. It's almost as if he
expanded the gamma curves rather than contracted them with each generation
of printing. 

I see no difference between this and any combination of conventional
printing and digital means. They're all just tools. Some people are more
adept at using certain things than others. But there's tremendous untapped
potential in everything. Yet all too often we assume that potential isn't
there. 

Dave 

- -----Original Message-----
From: Mxsmanic [mailto:mxsmanic@hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 12:56 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] Naive question re scanning


Mark E Davison writes:

> After you scan the print, you can expand the
> dynamic range in photoshop to anything that you want.

No, you cannot.  You have only the range in the original print.  Spreading
it
out over a larger range of intensities changes nothing.

> There is certainly no reason to not use the
> entire dynamic range of the monitor.

Of course, but since the range of a print is so limited, it really doesn't
matter.  You don't have enough information to fill that range in the first
place.

> The fact that the optical density range of negatives
> is greater than the reflectance density range of
> prints is a bit of a red herring.

It's painfully obvious when you compare scans of prints with scans directly
from
film.

> The beautiful images on Ralph Gibson's website
> (www.ralphgibson.com) are all scans from prints.

They definitely look like scans from prints.