Digital BW, The Print

Frank, in my opinion, it's largely irrelevant IF you're shooting RAW. You
can correct a RAW image in post-processing to get just about any result you
want, and duplicating the conditions that would result in the same
parameters every time is almost impossible. Even shooting with all manual
parameters you'd need to take into account ISO, color balance, exposure and
any other custom tweaks that your camera allows. Many many more variables
than film. 

That said, it is useful to know how your cameras and lenses react to light
and how the sensors record it. Shooting a target under controlled conditions
and opening it in Adobe Camera Raw won't tell you what you need to know
unless your monitor is calibrated. (You don't say whether you have a
calibrated workflow.) If you do, then you can inspect the RAW file and
compare it to the target under carefully controlled lighting conditions and
adjust ACR to suit (the calibration tab ys under Advanced).

There are many things that get in the way of an absolute linear match
between camera and printed image, which is why I say it's largely
irrelevant. If it looks good when printed, then maybe it's ok for you and
your viewers. If it's way off, then something needs to change. The beauty of
the digital workflow is that the camera exposure is less important than it
was in the days of Kodachrome. It's still important, but easier to fix when
necessary.

And as far as matching camera to printer, it depends on the paper, the ink,
the ICC profiles and the printer. If you use more than a couple of these
variables, you may find that you're testing more than shooting. Again,
printing a reference target to your printers will help, but if the acquired
values in the camera target are off, then you need to decide if you want to
tweak the printer to match those values or if you want to match the correct
values, which you'd need to get via densitometer reading off of a standard
target, not one that you'd shot under variable conditions. If you have the
tools to measure this, by all means go for it! From my perspective, it's
much easier to edit the camera file look how I want it to look by having the
monitor and printer remain constant via profiling and paper. Which renders
profiling the camera redundant.

Jim


On 1/19/06 2:51 PM, "DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com"
<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> Subject: Matching Camera to Printer?
> 
> 
> One process I did with my film cameras was to match my cameras (and films)
> to my printing.  This meant knowing the times to produce absolute black with
> a clear negative, then with a full-zoned subject.  This took into account
> variables of camera, film, development time, enlarger, paper, etc.
> 
> My questions is, once I get my Epson 220 set up and printing steps
> correctly, should I then control for the digital camera variable? It seems
> that cameras might meter differently, creating a need for some modifications
> on the printer.
> 
> If so, I could shoot an image of a target that included absolute black, pure
> white (doing a white balance on it, of course), and some mid grays,
> including an 18% card.  Then, upon printing the image, I could tell if the
> printer was matching what the camera recorded.
> 
> Crazy? Sane? Irrelevant?
> 
> Frank Vincent