Digital BW, The Print

I do alt printing on a professional basis, and scan both new negs as well as
hundred year old ones, some designed for bromide papers and some for
printing out processes such as platinum. In answer to your question, the
short version is that you want to limit development to a range that your
scanner can handle.

Negatives designed for POP processes are so much denser than modern film
that it is nearly impossible to buy film good for platinum nowadays.  Agfa
P330p was a great one, but that disappeared last year.  Kodalith is now used
in its place, but cannot compare.  Ordinary camera films can be specially
developed to reach for that kind of gamma but the result is, by comparison,
not very satisfactory.  These dense negatives are impossible to scan on
ordinary flatbeds, and so when the new Artixscan came out with a scan depth
of 4.8 I bought it at once, and this scanner can handle most of the densest
films.  If you are already making alt process negatives, this is the scanner
for you.  

If you are shooting ordinary camera film and simply want good negs for
scanning, I would recommend XTOL developer and real silver emulsion film,
for example the Tmax line by Kodak.  I hesitate to recommend the chromogenic
B&W films because they will fade long before your career is over, just like
most color film (except Kodachrome) unless you can afford refrigerated
storage for your processed negatives.  This is expensive, a suitable Kenmore
frost free refrigerator will cost about US$90 a year in electric bills.

I would recommend the Tmax over the old emulsions like Tri-X because of the
design of the gamma curve.  Tri-x was designed with a very long shoulder,
the purpose was because back in the 1950s most flash was bulb and could not
be controlled by amateurs.  Gross overexposure was common, so they used very
long slopes so that no matter how overexposed the film got there would be at
least some highlight separation in the neg that could be burned in.  With
the advent of TTL flash, overexposure due to flash was not an issue with
professionals anymore, so Tmax straightened out the shoulder and made the
highlight separation more linear.  This means more natural highlights.  If
you want to read the interview with the Kodak engineers who designed the
film, it was published in Darkroom Photography, July 1988 starting on pg. 42

Xtol is an extension of this philosophy, and is probably the biggest single
advance in B&W film in the 1990s.  I still use other developers for special
tasks, but it is no longer necessary to have a half dozen different kinds in
daily use. 

If you do not get satisfactory results, read about modifications to
development.  One treatment that I still have to do is for copy negatives,
where the result looks too flat.  This is because the shoulder of the gamma
curve is too flat (because the subject was too flat of course) and these
negatives can be toned in selenium, which puts a big lift only on the
extreme top of the curve.  Full instructions in Kodak's book "Copying &
Duplicating"(many editions) or in Ansel Adams series "The Negative" & "The
Print"(many editions)

One final note is grain, since this is a component of artistic expression in
fine art printing.  Starting with Tmax, film was coated under a magnetic
field to align the grain. The result as far as scanning goes depends largely
on your scanning technique and specific equipment.  If you are using a glass
carrier in a slide scanner, you may notice a big difference.  If you are
using open carriers to hold your film, the heat from the scanning bulb
usually causes enough motion of the film from heat expansion to render the
grain somewhat unsharp, but of course this is individual to each setup and
you will have to see for yourself.

Hope that helps.
Tom Robinson
>Subject: film processing

>I tried a couple of searches but I guess I didn't find the right key
>words. 

>I would like to ask about the processing of black and white film,
>for ultimately scanning and printing on an ink jet printer. I am
>curious as to what kinds of negatives produce the best results.
>Would a denser negative, like for platinum printing or a thinner
>negative be better for scanning? If this is not the right place for
>this kind of question, could some one please point me in the right
>dirction? I went to a general photo forum, and people thought that I
>was crazy for wanting to waste a fine negative on an ink jet printer.