Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/03/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On 3/25/02 dorysrus@mindspring.com wrote: >Austin, please explain. It was my understanding that "ink jet" prints did >not have as high a d-max as wet. Assuming paper base white is the same then >the digital output should be less than wet. no! no! no! no! hop over to digitalbwtheprint on yahoo groups RIGHT NOW don't go there, Austin! trying to short circuit a long and heated discussion accurately and fairly: Austin makes an interesting and possibly useful distinction between the Dmax of a printing system and its dynamic range. Without arguing the validity or otherwise of this POV, it is possible for a system to have a higher range but a lower dynamic range. Dynamic range takes into account the noise floor of the system. An example of this would be a very loud but very poor PA address system which is extremely noisy. Although its top volume ('range') measured in db might be much higher than a small but very accurate domestic high fi, its 'dynamic range' (which takes into account the noise produced by the system) would be considerably lower. This reflects our common-sense expectation that you would hear the music better on the hi fi than on the PA. Louder isn't necessarily better. The difference between wet printing and inkjet printing is much more subtle but it has to do with the ability of the system to accurately represent tonalities throughout the entire range of the image. Because inkjet prints can potentially hold more detail in the shadows and highlights than a wet print, it is arguable that they have a higher dynamic range. (However if you are really going to get into information theory IMO you have to take into account the detail the system is capable of representing, where wet printing still has the edge, plus as you say in Dmax). Bringing this discussion back to reality there was a *very* interesting post on the DigitalBW forum recently from someone who had been to inspect some Weston prints to compare them to quad inkjet prints. He came back with some very interesting observations: namely that once behind glass it was almost impossible to tell what the medium was; that the brilliance of the highlights relied on heavy bleaching; and that the only real visual advantage of the wet prints was seen in contact prints of 8x10 negatives where they could represent much higher frequency detail than any current inkjet system. Personally I sometimes think that we have a mental ideal of wet prints with which we compare our mental idea of inkjet prints. It is sometimes a bit of a shock to see some physical examples. For example, a few months ago I went round to a friend's house where there were some John Sexton large format prints. I was astonished to realise that the print quality he had achieved was well within the capability of my piezo system. They were great prints but, aesthetics aside, I could have made them on my 1160. People occasionally bring up the idea of a print exchange. I think something that might genuinely be useful would be a inkjet/wet print exchange. Might as well throw in a digicam v. film camera comparison as well. - -- John Brownlow http://www.pinkheadedbug.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html