Digital BW, The Print

Even though I'm not using the same scanner, I'll jump in with my experiences.

I have a Polaroid SprintScan 120. I use Lasersoft Silverfast Ai 5.5 
software to do my scans. For negative film, I use the NegaFix settings in 
Silverfast. I recently scanned a wide range of black-and-white, including 
the C-41 films (XP2 Super, Portra BW, and T400CN) to see what works best 
for me. I preferred the non-C-41 films, specifically Ilford 100 Delta and 
Ilford HP5+. The odd thing is the NegaFix setting that provided me the best 
base scans was for Kodak TMax 100 film. Go figure.

TMax 100 looked good, too, but I preferred 100 Delta over it. The C-41 
films seemed flat by comparison. For the C-41 bunch, I got the best scans 
from Portra BW, with T400CN a close second.

My experiences have all been with 120 film.

Another option is to shoot color film and convert to black-and-white in 
Photoshop. I've just started experimenting with this so I don't have 
recommendations for or against.

Jeff Greer

At 01:42 AM 05/16/2002 +0000, you wrote:
>Hello all,
>     Does anyone have experiences good or bad with particular black
>and white films.  I shoot 35mm and have been using Kodak's C-41
>chromogenic BW film and my Canon 4000 dpi scanner.  I recently
>purchased tanks, chemistry and equipment to begin developing true BW
>film (Kodak or Ilford).  I was hoping to improve the contrast and
>quality of my images.  Of course, after my purchase, I have now read
>that the C-41 BW film perhaps scans better than true BW film.  Any
>advice would be appreciated as I have not used any of my new
>equipment or many rolls of film.  Thank you in advance.
>                                 Scott Michener
>
>
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