Against my better judgement, I am going to respond by pointing out that your
rsponse to my post only serves to rekindle the discussion on the list but
via a backdoor. While your comments may or may not have merit, I believe
you should submit and discuss the with others off this list until such time
as either a consensus is reached concerning their merit and substance or the
idea has been fleshed out and shows signs of leading to a conclusion among
those who are interested in the topic and it coceptual and technical aspects
before offerring it piblically to the list where it will only start up more
confusing and pointless debate.
It is obvious to me that there may not be any universal concensus among
users on the term and their meanings and applications to different contexts;
but that appears not to have stopped everyone from projecting localized
truths, concepts, conceptual meanings, and applications to an universal
staus claiming rightness and truth on their side based on local usage.
Thus, the disacussion from my point of view is pointless at all levels and
stages on this particlar list and any othe general list.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
> [mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Roy Harrington
> Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 12:53 PM
> To: laurie@advancenet.net
> Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Dynamic range
>
>
> Laurie Solomon wrote:
> > As interesting as this discussion may be and as important
> as it might be, I
> > suggest that you two carry on this discussion as you
> propose in point (1) or
> > otherwise via private emails until you either come to some
> common ground or
> > to some conclusions. At that point, it might be
> appropriate to let the list
> > know what conclusions the two fo you mutually agree on and
> have come to
> > accept. I see little point in bickering among yourselves
> any more in
> > public. The other alternative of course is to move it to
> > if there are more
> than just the two
> > of you that are interested in the topic since that is were
> those who are
> > interested in the topic and the debate can partake of the
> discussion without
> > bothering everyone else with the trivia of the intramural
> back and forths.
> > If Austin does not want to join that list or does not want
> to continue the
> > debate with you in private, I suggest that you just forget
> about including
> > him in the discussions and just preach to the choir who are
> willing to got
> > to that list or carry on the discussion in private.
>
> Hi Laurie,
>
> I share your feeling of frustration and exhaustion of all the arguing
> about this point. This argument about dynamic range has gone
> on and on
> on many different groups and many different times -- it's truly mind
> boggling. The technical descriptions of what's what seem to
> have fallen
> on deaf ears. Much as I believe that Julian's post is the
> most accurate
> and thorough description of the situation, it seems to be fruitless in
> terms of convincing anyone.
>
> So, rather than continuing that trend, I'd like to appeal to what many
> if not most people are familiar with and do every day. That
> is, scanning
> film, manipulating with Photoshop, and printing images.
>
> Consider the current state-of-the-art scanning and printing that we
> are all involved with. The current crop of high quality pro/consumer
> scanners are all about 14-bit depth. That gives 16384 potential
> gray levels. The demand is obviously there for this bit depth
> capability. However, virtually everyone who wants the high bit
> scanners is perfectly content with printing using only 8 bit
> files -- i.e. 256 levels. Going further, the printers themselves
> don't print 256 levels. Some of the best results these days
> are quadtone
> inkjets. That's 4 levels of gray ink plus of course the white of the
> paper i.e. 5 levels total. Each dot on the paper can be one of 5
> possible gray values. So, we have images going from 16384 levels
> to 256 levels to 5 levels -- and we're all pretty happy with the
> results. So I ask you and anyone else is "number of levels" much
> good at characterizing what's happened to the image on the way
> from film to paper?
>
> Now if Dynamic Range were "number of levels" we'd have the
> situation that
> we're all spending big bucks for high dynamic range scanners
> and then on the
> way to printing, first throwing away more that 98% of the
> dynamic range
> in Photoshop and then throwing about another 98% of the dynamic range
> in the printer. That's throwing away a total of 99.97% from film to
> paper. Obviously absurd. Or was it that right at the end the dynamic
> range mysteriously came back? Are we all nuts wasting our money?
> Is dynamic range just a worthless measurement? What happened
> to the dynamic
> range during all that?
>
> This may not look like a proof of anything but ought to be a
> reason to spend
> some more time thinking about it. The only correct answer to all the
> questions above is that dynamic range isn't defined as number
> of levels.
>
> Please, think about it.
>
> Roy
>
> Roy Harrington
> roy@harrington.com
> Black & White Photography Gallery
>
>
>
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