Digital BW, The Print

> Why can't you use ICE with a BW neg?

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is how I understand it to
work:

The use of ICE involves a separate infrared scan. The base and dye clouds in
colour film (and chromogenic B&W) pass infrared light, dust particles block
it. ICE uses the difference between the infrared scan and the colour scan to
automatically "spot" out the dust particles and surface defects. With colour
films this works very well; the images are free of dust and often show a
subtle smoothness from the removal of surface defects. Previous versions of
ICE softened the images slightly, but with the 8000 there's no loss of
sharpness.

Conventional B&W film is to varying degrees opaque under the infrared scan,
and ICE'd B&W negs tend to turn out very contrasty, almost like lith film.