Digital BW, The Print

Hi Mike,

Thank you...

Have a look at DiXactol on this site: http://www.barrythornton.com I don't
remember the exact details, but it has the benefits of staining devs like
Pyro with rather balanced dev times such that you can develop different film
speeds and makes in one tank. Of course, there are exceptions! (No fast
film) I don't remember the technicalities of the design of the dev, but I'm
sure it's on the site.

On the scanning side... are you simply saying "if your negative size allows
it, scan at a lower resolution than 'maximum optical' to avoid scanning
grain"

Thanks,
Nij


> Truth No. 3
>
> Process your negatives in a staining Pyro developer. This is a
> religion and
> I fully understand that. BUT, you wanted the truth, so here it is. Process
> your negatives in PMK Pyro. The stain acts fills in between the grain
> proportionately, That is, more stain builds up in the areas where there is
> less silver and less stain in areas where there is more silver. And, most
> importantly the negatives will have very high accutance and will exhibit
> strong edge effects. You will see a fine black line along areas of tonal
> change. The negatives will glow and so will your prints.
> Especially so with
> low light situations, soft light, and fog!
>
> You may not agree, but hey the truth hurts!

>
> Truth No. 4
>
> No matter how good your service bureau tells you their new fangled Imacon
> is, insist on a drum scan. Insist on a flat scan, that is tell
> them you want
> absolutely NO ADJUSTMENTS. No USM, no contrast adjustments and no gamma
> adjustments. Ask them to scan your PMK Pyro negatives as RGB 48 bit files.
> Have them scan using a native optical resolution resolution of the drum
> scanners that is the smallest resolution that you can use. That
> is, scan at
> 300dpi at the image size rather than at 4000dpi at 1:1. The
> reason for this
> is simple, at the lower dpi settings the drum will not scan the grain. If
> you scan at the higher resolutions the drum scanner will adjust
> the aperture
> and will scan right down into the grain and your Tri-X scan will
> be the most
> georgeous example of TX grain you have ever seen.
>
> This applies to drum scanners omly and may not be applicable to CCD
> scanners.