Pushing the values in Black and White film

[Mike McCarty]

It is my understanding that you have much greater latitude regarding values during the processing of B&W film than with color. Is it just that the chemistry of the B&W film is such that it can capture more value information? Also, Marvin M. mentioned a "zone" method of processing, I wonder if I could get someone (maybe Marvin?) to elaborate on this?

As a not too seprate issue, I have been questioning the usefulness of B&W film lately. It seems that unless you process in your own dark room, the labs willing to do this sort of work on a timely basis is dwindling. Even though the lab I use will process the B&W film, they use their regular color machine to do the prints. I think that most people these days are bringing their color images into photoshop and converting them to gray scale. Is it true that computer manipulation has surpased dark room creativity? Or, are they searching for information that does not exist on the color film?