Digital BW, The Print

David, thank you so much for your input. This is the kind of 
information I have been looking all over for, as I am on the brink 
of buying the 5400 for B&W negatives. Perhaps you could elaborate a 
little on your workflow (or is it posted on Shutterbug web site?). 
Thanks again ...

Ed Metz
www.hwy90.com

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "David B. 
Brooks" <fotografx@m...> wrote:
> Robert,
> 
> The extra 1400dpi for one does result in smoother, better 
tonality. And as I
> mentioned regarding grain, the Minolta minimizes apparent 
graininess very
> considerably. Most of the problems a lot of people have scanning 
silver
> based B&W film comes from the fact the ramping algorithms in the 
driver
> software for B&W film are not well developed ­ most of the R&D
by 
scanner
> companies has been applied to scanning color positives. My 
solution is to
> scan silver-based black and white as a positive in 48-bit RAW 
files, which I
> then correct in several steps before and after inverting from a 
negative
> image to a positive. This technique I wrote up as a how-to in 
Shutterbug
> magazine about 3 years ago.
> 
> I recently did a couple of hundred 17x22 prints testing the Epson 
Pro 4000,
> and many of them were 35mm images scanned with the Minolta 5400 
with the
> image size printed set at 15x20 inches. When I did all my printing 
in a wet
> darkroom I seldom printed 35mm larger than 11x14. Now some of 
those same
> images look even better, larger, after scanning and printing 
digitally.
> 
> Regards, David B. Brooks
> Shutterbug Magazine
> E-mail: fotografx@m...
> 
>