Quote Originally Posted by Ronnoco
Black and white relies on the considerable range of tones from rich black to bright white with minimal loss of detail from darkest shadow to brightest highlight. Ansel Adam's work depended on excellent technique on top of considerable detailed work dodging and burning in the darkroom to get the absolute technical best out of the film. Most, if not almost all, of today's photographers do not have the attention to detail or the time to come anywhere close to that level of perfection. I have not seen anything even close here in black and white and that is understandable.

It becomes even more complicated if you are shooting digital by the way, because digital does not handle black and white as good as film.

Ronnoco
I have to agree with you here Ronnoco,,,digital does not handle B/W particularily well..Here is my theory on why not..

A perfectly exposed perfectly developed B/W negative has a brightness range of around 5 stops from the deepest blacks to the crispest whites with a miriad of grey tones in between...To get the best possible print to duplicate all these tones one must print the negative on a topshelf fibre based paper such as Ilford Gallery,,,resin coated papers are good but will never reproduce all these tones..Probably the best B/W film on the market is Kodak TriX 400..If handled with respect it has an incredably long tonal range,,,Ilford PanF 50 comes a close second..

Even your high DSLR camera will only handle a brightness range of 3 stops at the most before you lose shadow detail and the highlights blow out,,similar to transparency films like Kodak Ektachrome or Fujichrome..What happens when you shoot B/W in digital or convert to Greyscale in Photoshop the midtones get compressed...This phenomenom is also indicative when a B/W film is pushed processed...You lose the mid tonal range where by the tones which are similar in tonality blend together as one tone..Increasing the contrast although giving you darker blacks and whiter whites will only exasterbate your problems,,you lose even more mid tones...hence as you put it a poor image...

To understand the relationship between exposure and development (also digital post processing) one must shoot and develop one's own B/W negatives and print your own prints...To gain the perfect result one must first have the perfectly exposed negative...In digital terms one must first start with a perfectly exposed image....Photoshop although will (or could) make a better image out of a good one but never out of a poor one..

Jurgen