Digital BW, The Print

> anyone using quadtone prints as contact sheets?  The biggest proplem
 > I'm having with my MIS-VM/1160 setup is getting my blacks... seems
 > like a contact sheet and proper exposure would get that out of a
 > quadtone print... anyone doing this?

Yes, I use my Epson 1280 with MIS-VM for all of my B&W contact sheets 
these days.  With my Epson 2450 scanner I can scan 3 strips of 6 (35 mm) 
negs or uncut slides in one shot.  I lay them up, hit "scan" on Silverfast 
(at 720 dpi), go start dinner or whatever... come back in fifteen or 
twenty minutes, lay up the next three strips and repeat.  When it's done, 
I have two big images in Photoshop, I run a recorded action to cut out all 
of the space between the strips and paste them together into one file.  I 
can then save the 30-some megabyte file.

At this point, I can be in a hurry and print them out at 720 dpi (a 
standard 8" x 9" contact sheet) with some USM'ing, or I can let PS resize 
upward a bit before USM'ing and printing.  The latter option may sound 
odd, but I find that if I eat up all the paper I can (620 dpi gives me a 
10.5" wide sheet), the slightly bigger images are much easier to proof. 
That 15% may not sound like much, but it works for me.  YMMV.

The system is so low-effort and effective (and darkroom-setup-saving... a 
premium at my new house) that I'm going to start using it for color 
contact sheets.  I've done a similar contact sheet scan for both color 
negatives and color transparencies, and it just as easy with the exception 
of having to take one minute to set the color balance properly.

As for getting the blacks right, I don't have a problem with it. 
Silverfast's pre-scan of the first lay-up lets clearly see where my black 
and white points are.  It takes me all of ten or fifteen seconds to drag 
the black and white point sliders to the right points before I hit "scan." 
  I leave it alone (i.e., use the same settings) for the second set of strips.

Best of luck.
-- 
Jon Dubovsky