Digital BW, The Print

Hi Tyler,

No I don't want to reargue the Margulis-Lindbloom argument.  What was 
important to me was simply that Margulis questioned the received wisdom 
that 16bit provided a descernible advantage to 8bit files.  His questioning 
provoked me to do some testing on my own images.  So I took a number of 
medium format film images that I knew would need some correction and 
scanned them at both 8bit and 16bit, did my corrections, cropped out smaller 
portions from files expanded to produce 32x40 prints and compared the 
prints.  I couldn't see any differences.  That coupled with the fact that the 
correcting I generally do is usually quite subtle and not particularly histogram 
busting, led me to think that scanning in 16bit was a waste of time and 
space.  However, I can certainly appreciate that other photographers might 
find real advantages to a 16bit work flow for their work.  Cheers,

Tom Andrews
http://www.wildlandart.com 

 
> As someone who works on other people's files on a regular basis I can
> vouch for the unquestioned advantage of hi bit for B&W.
> Currently I'm struggling with banding in gradated skies that have come
> in from someone who knows what they are doing, made otherwise good
> scans, but with an old Imacon that would not yeild 16 bit (could have
> been old software).
> I've seen it time and time again.
> I regularly rescan for people because of this, many pro scanning
> services will not offer 16 bit, nor understand why you want it.
> We're in a niche here.
> If you are fine with 8 bit files, keep working and be grateful. But if
> you keep going with this stuff over the years, particularly single
> channel B&W gray files with extremely accurate output systems, you
> will find the need to go to 16 bit.
> Who has time to argue with Margulis, he doesn't do what we do, and
> most of us who work with this stuff every day know he's wrong for our
> application of the technology.
> If you are interested in someone who knows what they are talking about
> and can counter him, go to Bruce Lindbloom's site.
> Tyler