Digital BW, The Print

Martin,

That resolving power test is sobering, although I don't feel I lose 
that much, as I get very sharp grain in 16x20 prints off of 4x5, so I 
can't be losing too much.  Much has to do with the lens and light 
source of course.  But scans will be sharper.

Negs are on true B&W, probably Techpan or TMax, I hear. While you could 
always output to transparency stock for your pyro, you might have some 
difficulty with sharpness if that's critical since transparency stock 
is quite thick compared to B&W. Color neg is another possibility.

Phil
http://philbard.com

> This gets more interesting all the time. I just might have to chase 
> the spiders out of my enlarger.
> 
> I am not surprised that the scan is sharper than the silver print. 
> There was a recent letter in a photo magazine (that I can dig out if 
> you are interested) regarding the resolving power of silver paper. 
> Contact printing a test target the author achieved 80+ lines per mm. 
> When he put the target in his enlarger and did a 1-to-1 print the 
> resolution dropped to 20.
> 
> As you say the real deciding point will be if the dynamic range is 
> preserved. Pushing up paper grade to save a soft neg is rarely 
> satisfying.
> 
> Are the negatives output onto a true B&W emulsion or do they use the 
> color transparency material?
> 
> I develop in pyro, either PMK or my own formula. It would be 
> interesting to scan in RGB and preserve the pyro stain in Photoshop 
> (need to think about how to do that) and output the negative image to 
> color transparency material keeping the yellow/green negative stain 
> to print with.
> 
> Lots to think about.