Digital BW, The Print

Nicholas Hartmann wrote:

> <snip>
> I take pictures with a 35mm camera on Kodak TMax 400 film, developed in
> TMax developer. For a number of years I printed on both Agfa Multicontrast
> 8x10 RC paper (prints to give away and for my own file collection) and
> Ilford MG Fiber (for my "portfolio"). I have never sold a print as such,
> and have seldom been paid for a picture: I do this for my own reasons and
> to create pictures to give to other people.
>
> <snip>`. I have therefore ended up with the following digital
> equipment set: a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II (2820 ppi), Photoshop 6.0 on
> an iMac, and an Epson 1160 printer. The scanner produces excellent results:
> I can see the grain of my negatives (which I like a lot; see below), and
> that grain is pin-sharp corner to corner. The printer appears sturdy and
> reliable. I have a lot to learn about Photoshop, but already I can
> manipulate images to create a more balanced print than I ever learned to
> make under the enlarger.
>
> What I have not ended up with, to my surprise, is _any_ of the quadtone B&W
> inksets. Having tried the Epson OEM color inks (weird color casts), PiezoBW
> (too brown, too much nozzle clogging, too expensive), and the MIS
> variable-tone inkset (best of the bunch), I found that I simply do not like
> the grainless "large-format" look that quadtones produce on paper. My
> pictures are often about expressions and gestures and fleeting events, and
> seldom depend on sheer technical excellence for their impact; I like 35mm
> for that reason, and I like the way a good lens retains its sharpness down
> into the film's visible grain.
>
> <snip>Are there any other 35mm photographers out there who feel as I do? or is
> everyone else happy with, and striving to achieve, that smooth big-negative
> look? Am I alone in my deplorable practice of just using the black
> cartridge?

Dear Nicholas,
I think what you are experiencing is a fault in the original scan that you are doing, not the inks.  I suspect
that you are not sharpening your scans via 'unsharp mask' in Photoshop.  All scans really need sharpening to
achieve the same clarity that the original has.

Let me be clear...I'm not talking about the plain old 'sharpening' filter in Photoshop, I'm talking of the
'unsharp mask' filter (an oxymoron), in which levels need to be set manually.  Also, the higher the original
bit level of your scanner, the less sharpening it needs.

This subject is nicely covered in the book, 'Real World Scanning and Halftones'.  But basically, one sets the
sharpening dependent on the final dpi you are using.  And.....this is very important....sharpening is really
the last thing you do to the image.  All image sizing, tonal adjustments, layers etc., should be done *before*
sharpening.  The only thing you might need to do, post sharpening, is 'spotting.  Sometimes the sharpening
makes dust, that wasn't visible before, appear.

When we need to send a scan to a magazine we always send it 2 ways...'Sharpened' and not.   That way, if the
magazine wants to do any adjustments, they can sharpen after those adjustments are made....It should be the
last thing that happens.

Another oddity of this field is viewing the images on one's monitor.  Due to the different resolutions of
monitors vs. actual output, lots of times, when you view the sharpened image on the screen, it looks
absolutely terrible, but it outputs fine.  I also suspect that this is partially what you are seeing (the
electronic 'noise') on your monitor when you say that the 'grain' looks great on your monitor, but that the
color inkjet outputs of your b&w images is 'grainless'.

By way of example:  We, in general, sharpen our 300 dpi scans to 200% amount, then 1.5 radius, and threshold
to 3 or 4 (3 being more than 4).

Try it, see if it makes a difference in your output.

Harvey Ferdschneider
partner, SKID Photography, NYC


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