I thought you'd know :-) B&W is *all* about light and shade. There's a great deal of post-exposure manipulation done to create the perfect print; either in the development stage, or in printing. Digital doesn't give you any options at development time - everything is done by manipulating the response curves. If you're trying to pull detail out of the shadows you'll find that the linear response of a digital sensor means you get quantization effects rather than a smooth range of grey tones.
You get the same efffect with colour images, of course, but if there's significant chroma detail the eye will often ignore the intensity artifacts (just as JPEG artifacts that are very apparent in smoothly-shaded areas are hard to spot in areas where image detail is changing rapidly and unpredictably). Shel Belinkoff mused: > > Why is that? (esp for B&W) > > being a B&W shooter, that sort of thing really is of interest. > > Shel > > > > [Original Message] > > From: John Francis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > There are still a few situations where 12 bits > > isn't enough (especially if you want B&W images). > >
