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Re: Digital Negatives with enough Tones for Pt/Pd
Wayde Allen wrote:
> ...
> An analogy would be to consider two sticks of different length. The
> length of the sticks would be analogous to the dynamic range. In either
> case you can divide the sticks into 256 sections (8 bit sampling) or
> 65,536 sections (16 bit sampling). More bit depth just means that you
> get a finer scale. The dynamic range tells you the length of the scale.
> Bit depth and dynamic range are NOT dependent on each other.
Oh, but dynamic range and bit depth ARE dependent on each other. Note
that I said "practical purpose".
To follow your analogy: one wishes to keep the number of stick sections
per length close to equal because to have less sections per length would
produce an unacceptable level of posterization (not enough sections per
length). Now, as a result, in order to get a greater dynamic range one
must increase the bit depth, else they end up with too few sections per
length.
Yes even a 1-bit image can have the largest dynamic range (pure black to
pure white), but it is useless for producing a typical Pt/Pd print.
--
Jeffrey D. Mathias
http://home.att.net/~jeffrey.d.mathias/