From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 03/10/01-01:47:06 AM Z
On Fri, 9 Mar 2001, George Huczek wrote:
> Surprisingly, the eye is very good at being able to discriminate between
> slight differences in density. Very affordable, and a wee bit more reliable
> than holding the negative up to a light bulb.
>
The human eye is so good at discriminating density that early
densitometers operated by having humans matc tones.
But as for human eye JUDGING density of a negative as good as or better
than densitometer -- EXCUSE ME ! Not in my experience. Read Arnheim on
subject of simultaneous contrast, for instance. Many a negative is
EXTREMELY deceptive, because of its range or BF or whatever. I don't
densitometer negs all the time, too much trouble and a big pain now with
large negs, but it is a marvelous and irreplaceable benchmark, ESPECIALLY
for trouble shooting. It's also marvelous and irreplaceable when making
negatives.
Now maybe some other folks have a much keener eye than I do, in fact I
hope they do... And of course as Randall says, ANY negative can be
printed, someones one that's sort of out of gamut, as it were, to stunning
effect. But... well, if you LIKE making test prints, be my guest. But with
a controlled negative and sample 21-steps you don't have to.
So there !
Judy
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