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[drmabus]

I'm on this site because I read Mastering Digital Black and White and think that it is an outstanding book. My hope is that someone with deep B&W experience will respond to my question.

My situation is that I am doing a series of images using infrared film that I have reverse processed into B&W transparencies. I know that the normal processing output of B&W film is a negative. However, as I'm scanning the work myself, I wanted to work with transparencies. The lab for this service is dr5 in Denver, CO. So far I have been very pleased with the results. However, the other day on one of the online forums that I belong to, someone commented that he did not think that this process produced the all of the tones that are available. Specifically, he said that the dr5 process didn't seem to produce the full range of tonal values in the shadow areas. I can't see what he is talking about but he has been printing professionally for about 35 or 40 years and he might see things that are not apparent to me.

My question is, does anyone who has used this, or other reverse processes, have any insight into whether this is true? That is, does B&W negative film that has been reverse processed retain the full range of values that the film is capable of producing or does it lose something in the translation?

Harold Jackson