Digital BW, The Print

Martin,
 
thank you for your very detailed answer. There's a lot of information and
food for thought, here, especially this pyro developer and Gigabit film I
never heard about. I have finally found a B&W lab I can trust, so I'll ask
them about this.
Just out of curiosity, what is your scanner and how large can you print with
35mm FP4+ and (especially) TMax400? I'm thinking about 13x19, and am afraid
that grain may be an issue with but the slowest film.
About the sharpness of color and B&W film, this is exactly what I expected
to see in my PanF vs. Supra test (I shot exactly the same scene, with a
sharp prime lens), but apparently my 2700dpi scanner isn't enough. Let's
wait for the Canon FS4000 and see...
 
Thanks again,
Alessandro Pardi

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Wesley [mailto:mwesley250@earthlink.net]
Sent: martedì 23 ottobre 2001 23.02
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Film poll


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/ <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
<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





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]