Originally posted by g026r Completely blew the exposure here. Forgot that I had changed the shutter speed shortly before, and as such didn't meter before shooting. Still, it was saveable.
I don't know if you've ever made your own BW wet prints. But you basically have graded or multigrade papers where if your frame was over or under exposed you could print it on a different grade paper to help increase/decrease the contrast. A grade 5 paper, for example, would be used for a much underexposed frame. But you'd lose tonal scale as a consequence.
But today with a figital workflow, I feel, a good scanner can pick up an underexposed negative pretty good and in the graphics editor you have much finer control of your contrast curve to better get some of that tonal scale defined. This all happens automagically when you have labs scans done.
My long-winded point is camera exposure on BW film is very forgiving and you often only need to be close rather this precise 1/3rd stop control you need with either positive color film or digital. It's like putting on a golf green with a 1-foot diameter cup. Its much easier to hit. With BW film (both conventional and figital work flow) you have an easy 1 stop tolerance on exposure and more with a figital work flow, IMHO.