Digital BW, The Print

>Certainly the film matters.  Slower film *tends* to be sharper and 
>finer grained (and those two aren't exactly the same thing, either), 
>though it isn't all the time.
>
>Color film (and the chromagenic B&W like Ilford XP2) has a very 
>different "grain" structure from old-type B&W film -- dye clouds 
>released *by* the grains, but not sharp edged.  And bigger than the 
>actual grain.  So you get a different look, which may work for some 
>pictures better than others.  I've seen a pair of 2x3 foot prints 
>made from 35mm XP2 that look *amazingly* clean and good and 
>grainless, even up close.  Sure worked for that image (a model with 
>nice skin).

Thanks David (Dyer-Bennett); I'll check out the Ilford XP2.


>Certainly camera shake can be an issue; studio flash or a tripod are 
>your friends for that.

I have a good but relatively heavy tripod and head I got for a few 
hundred dollars. I think I could get an appreciably lighter 
carbon-fiber tripod and better (ball) head for about a thousand. And 
then have a lot less excuse not to always take it. I'm agonizing 
about it. Sometimes I can substitute an image-stabilized lens for a 
tripod, but they're more expensive too. Plus I need one most for my 
short, wide-angle zoom, and Canon doesn't have one.


>I haven't experimented with different scanners on 35mm, but 
>everything I hear and see *strongly* suggests that 2700 DPI doesn't 
>get you everything there is to be got from a good slow film shot 
>carefully. So playing with scanning may well benefit you, but I 
>can't point to
>what I think is the limit.

I've heard from Aztec's Phil Lippincott on scan.com that it's at 
about 6000 spi for 35mm film. I settled for Polaroid's SS4000, which 
I think I could upgrade to the 4000 Plus for a little less than a 
thousand dollars. I'm not sure it's worth it. But to do better than 
that would I think cost at least another thousand. But maybe even 
that is worth it. Because it's certainly frustrating to suspect that 
you got more on the film than you can get out of it.


>I'd rank glass last, myself; but that's assuming you don't own any 
>real crap. [snip]

That surprises me. But no crap: I got mid-level/EF Canon lenses: EF 
28-135mm 1:3.5-5.6 IS (which I can usually use w/o a tripod _if_ I 
use 400 instead of 100 film), and EF 20-35mm 1:3.5-4.5 (which I can 
usually use w/o a tripod  _if_ I use 400 film _and_ forego some depth 
of field). Each of these was a few hundred dollars. For the short 
zoom, which is more important to me, there are "L" alternatives with 
f-stop ranges which start at 2.8 and other seemingly (but what do I 
know?) marginal advantages. For $1200 - $1500.


>A 7000 instead of a 1280 will just make the problem *worse*, won't 
>it? I mean, it'll print wider  :-) .

Yes, but, some say, also better. And again the difference - $500 vs 
$2500? - is maybe too much even if its prints are of better quality.

I guess I need to pursue these things individually to try to get a 
better fix on how much better the product at the next step up is.

jSam