Digital BW, The Print

Alessandro,

My personal film and developer choices are Ilford FP4+ and Kodak TMax 400 in
4x5, 120 and 35mm film. In 120 and 35mm I am also starting to consistently
use Ilford SFX.

The FP4+ is my primary 4x5 and 120 film. This works well for my in terms of
grain, resolution and film speed for most of my work which is done on a
tripod. For low light or hand held I switch to TMax400 and also find it
useful for heavy compression of -3 and -4 developments.

The SFX is a good all round film and lets me play with near infrared images.
Very nice grain structure.

I develop my film in a pyro developer of my own devising in a Jobo film
processor. The results with my developer are very similar to what you would
get using Gordon Hutchins PMK pyro developer.

Pyro developers not only produce neutral silver density but also produce a
yellow or yellow/green stain in proportion to the silver density. This gives
you high lights that are much more printable as they are not composed of
opaque particles. The stain has no grain and decreases the graininess of the
image which may or may not be desirable to you. The use of pyro as a
developing agent induces an edge effect increasing the sharpness of the
negative. A sort of chemical unsharp mask effect.

The stain from pyro development then makes RGB scanning a logical choice as
there is meaningfully different information on the three channels.
Especially the B channel. In theory you should be able to work on monochrome
images in RGB and have more digital information to send to the printer.

I tried Technical Pan years ago and while it is very high resolution, I did
not like the tonality of the film at all. Many different developers have
been used with this film. You should check out the Photographers Formulary

http://www.photoformulary.com/

Also if you are interested in very high resolution films the new Gigabit
film looks like it would be worth investigating.

http://www.gigabitfilm.de/html/english/toc.htm

There is an excellent article by Burkhardt Kiegeland in Photovision magazine
July/August 2001. The film is also available from Lotus View Camera:

www.lotusviewcamera.at

A note on using color film for B&W. Color films have three emulsions layered
on top of each other while a B&W film has a single layer. Because of this
B&W films tend to produce sharper, higher resolution negatives.

Martin Wesley




----- Original Message -----
From: "Alessandro Pardi" <alessandro.pardi@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 1:31 AM
Subject: [Digital BW] Film poll


> Hi list,
>
> I just purchased the October issue of Practical Photography (an english
> magazine, that I happened to find here in Italy), mainly because of a
> special edition about black and white (or "mono", as they call it). What
> most interested me was the section where they asked 6 pros what their
> favorite film/developer was, and why. This made me reconsider my current
> choice: I now shoot Kodak Supra 100 and then manipulate in Photoshop. This
> gives me the advantage of the three color channels to pick from, and a
> comparison I made with Ilford Pan F, a highly reputed film, as I gather,
> showed no lack of resolution or sharpness when scanned with my Nikon
LS-30.
> Now I'm (eagerly) waiting for a new scanner to be delivered, and I want to
> test again, to see if 4000dpi are enough to make differences visible.
> So, for those of you who haven't gone full digital (yet), what is your
> favorite B&W film/developer, with respect to scanning, and why?
>
> PS - I have a roll of Technical Pan waiting to be developed, so I'd
> especially like to know what developers rate best with this film (on the
PP
> poll the one photographer that used TechPan recommended Agfa Rodinal, to
> keep contrast low).
>
> Thanks all in advance,
> Alessandro Pardi
>
>
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