Back before digital printing, if you had a B&W negative that was too thin (i.e. underexposed or underdeveloped), it was difficult or impossible to make a beautiful print. But with digital printing, that is no longer the case.

It has been my experience that negatives that were challenging for me to print in the analog darkroom fall right into place in the digital darkroom. Scanning is much more tolerant of less-than-perfect negatives. That’s not an excuse to be sloppy. I still try to make the best negatives I can, but when faced with a problem negative, I have no problem using the tools at-hand.

Film scanners have a tremendous ability to pull detail out of even the thinnest shadows. In fact, our Tango Drum Scanner can even pull out detail from areas of the negative that look clear to the naked eye, which opens up a whole new realm of possibilities.

Editor's Note: "Thin" is the darkroom slang for areas of a negative that have very little detail--they look thin to the eye, and have very little density. This is in contrast to areas that are “thick," which means they have a lot of density.

Two of the places this can be used to great effect are in very underexposed and underdeveloped negatives. These negs can be scanned and “saved” because the scanner can usually pull out a full tonal range from these images. It also allows us to get detail in areas that previously would have been black and and void of detail, giving us a couple extra zones to play with.

An example of this can bee seen in a print that WCI Expert Printmaker David Imhoff recently made for Rick Tomlinson. As you can see by looking at Figure 1, the foreground areas of the negative are very thin, mostly rendering around Zone II and Zone II, with a lot of clear film at Zone 0. On the shaded area of the church, we have more Zone II areas, and a few Zone III areas.

Figure 1

Looking at the raw scan in Figure 2, we see what we’d expect, based on the negative: a very dark foreground with very little contrast or detail. By selectively lightening this area and adding contrast, a substantial amount of detail can be brought out, as shown in the final print (Figure 3).

The grave in the lower right hand corner is an excellent example of this. In the raw scan (Figure 4) it is very dark and void of detail. In fact, if you look at the negative, it looks almost clear in many areas. But in the final print, (Figure 5) David was able to bring out a substantial amount of detail and achieve a print that would have been nearly impossible in the darkroom.

A disclaimer for those who worry about histograms: To achieve these results, you do have to push the file around quite a bit. If you look at the file on the display, the foreground looks noisy and grainy, but this drops out on the print, and everything looks normal.

If you choose to look at the histogram, you will see some of the “dreaded and evil” combing, even though the print looks great. This print is a perfect example of why I totally disregard the histogram as a tool for printing. The histogram is an imperfect indicator of print quality. Judge the print, not the histogram, because no one will ever ask to see your histogram. Museums don’t hang histograms.

So, go dig through your archives, find some problem negs with thin shadows, and give them a second chance. You may be surprised at the results.