Digital BW, The Print

An excellent thread.

As with many things in the post-digital world - the answer is not simple.  I say this because I have recently achieved better results scanning my 4x5 and 5x7 film that was developed N+11/2 than the "N" negatives.  What was better about these scans?  They had better close value tonal separation right out of the scanner.  The key point here is that the negatives were exposed and developed to a proper N+ such that the highlights were not blocked, only the local contrast throughout the negative's tonal range was changed which made it easier for the scanner to capture in the image file.

As in most things, you need to test for yourself.  With large negatives, the grain "seen" by the scanner is different than smaller negatives.  Additionally, post-scanning workflow is the largest driver of image quality in my experience.

I agree with another poster that with large format negatives, expose and develop for your chemical process first, as it is more difficult to change for image output later.  Scanning is so malleable that you can tune your results for digital processing and output with more flexibility.

Best of luck in your work!

Regards,

George

On Jun 4, 2011, at 8:03 AM, James Irelan wrote:

> I've been out of it for a while, developing guitars, but I remember that scanners vastly prefer underdeveloped film to dense film. I've been amazed at getting totally useable images from negs that would have been worthless in an enlarger. These were accidents- I'm not advocating deliberate underdevelopment to the extent of the negs I'm talking about, but I am saying that I've seen negs closer to normal that the enlarger would have loved that were too dense in the highs for the scanner, and, unlike with the enlarger: nothing you can do about it. So, if I go back to shooting new film to be scanned, I'd approach an N minus scheme. Not to the accident level, but definitely less than normal for an enlarger.
> 
> James
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> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On Jun 2, 2011, at 7:50 PM, Walker Blackwell <forums@...> wrote:
> 
> > I develop TMX 100 at N - .5 with 120 film and N - 1 with 4/5. (it depends on lens and camera etc). TMX film has low fog and very articulated shadow detail even at low densities.
> > 
> > I use Tmax RS developer as 1-shot. This seems to work very well for scanning as positive and inverting later. Minimal curve adjustments needed.
> > 
> > I also use Lightroom for the first inversion and tonal shifts. It works very well indeed.
> > 
> > All the best,
> > Walker
> > 
> > 
> 
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