Digital BW, The Print

Back in the 80's I used to love Tech pan.  Then technidol became
scarce and pricy, so I stopped.  What dev do you use?  

I was doing a comparrison to see which film I liked best.  645 capture
up to 14X20 output. I shot about every B&W film from Kodak(except TP),
Ilford, Agfa, & Fuji, plus some color neg, and trans, and dig to see
which I liked best.  (My motto is "Testing proves that testing works")
 I expected to see a bit of grain from the TX etc. but not from the
Acros and the Pan F.   The color neg that I converted seemed to do a
bit better.  The trans did wonderful on grain -- suckie on sharpness
and local contrast. Didn't try scala. Actually, the best of the film
capture was the XP-2. As a film guy I shouldn't bring up what the
digital capture (10D) looked like.

I have not tried GEM or NEATIMAGE, but have tried NoiseNinja, and its
affectiveness on film capture was iffy.  I'll try again.

Thanks,
db




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Roark"
<paul.roark@v...> wrote:
> Doug,
> 
> >...I've found that when I go from scanned B&W originals, I
> >get substantially more grain than I'm used to in wet printing.  ...
> 
> That was one of my early impressions also.  Coming from the
darkroom, I'd
> settled on Tmax 100 developed to maximize sharpness (at the cost of more
> grain).  However, with digital, I've had to go the opposite
direction.  The
> "Unsharp mask" tool makes sharpness (relative local contrast) easy, but
> getting rid of the grain seems much harder.  So, I switched from
Tmax and my
> sharpening development routine to Tech Pan to get the best grain,
even if
> the sharpness is not as good as my old Tmax.
> 
> Many say it is the scanners that do this.  So, I took an enlarged
test chart
> and matched the local contrast with a scanned test chart.  The relative
> grain was the same.  The main difference I saw was that the enlarged
test
> chart was simply soft compared to what I was able to do with Photoshop. 
> 
> My conclusion is that, while there are differences in spectral v.
diffusion
> light sources in the various enlargers and scanners, the main
differences
> are that the lenses are very effective at softening grain, and unsharp
> masking is magic that allows us to make much sharper images than was
easily
> possible in the enlarger days.  This sharpness, however, includes
the grain.
> 
> I use the GEM system and have Neat as well to control the grain. 
Both are
> quite effective.
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com