Digital BW, The Print

I just got a Nikon V following some misadventures with two Minolta
5400II scanners...all from Amazon.com, the only way to fly :-)

The Nikon was obviously packaged a lot better, which might explain why
neither Minolta even functioned correctly.

The Nikon weighs a ton Vs the Minolta: ventillated metal body, bulky
plastic castings, internal transformer. Film is pulled in with a
tractor system rather than being held in a negative carrier. I'm still
a total rookie with this scanner...using the Nikon application with
all the bells/whistles checked as default at 4000ppi it takes about
ten minutes to scan 4 frames of B&W into TIFF (NOT into Photoshop).

Nikon software gets criticized a lot online, as does the Minolta, but
both are fine operationally (even the Minolta, before it died). I'll
go back and see if my Vuescan has advantages after I master Nikon's
app. I didn't find any advantage to Vuescan Pro with my Epson 3200
flatbed but maybe I gave up too quickly.

My first film was from 1969, HP3 Ilford processed with FG7, no
sulfite, rated 1200. I never printed it traditionally over 9"
previously so never saw the grain before.

First frame was a polar bear rug (white..what else?) against elaborate
gilt furniture and a very dark rug. Not a great photo but amusing.

With Ice the scan was fairly clean...on this 36 year-old negative, Ice
did everything but about 10 min of cleanup. The scanner obviously dug
all the way into the shadows.

I first printed straight, no tweaking, using Epson's driver to A4 full
format (great for 35mm) Enhanced Matte using OEM pigs and my standard
EEM settings. I didn't fiddle with contrast because I wanted to see
default results.

The result was super-sharp, of course, with the greenish tint we
expect...a little muddy, blacks and whites vaguely OK...like typical
crappy press kit photos but for the tint. I could improve it by
tweaking magenta, but why bother?

Using QTRgui I made two prints, a 75% cool and a 75% warm after USM
via Photoshop. Both look good in a wide variety of light,
deep-detailed blacks and specular-only highlights. No nasty tint since
this was QTRgui driven. These prints would be deliverable. I like to
think one looks like Portriga Rapid and the other like Brovira, but
that's not quite true :-)

I'll be happier when I see this on 12X18 Entrada Natural, but I want
to learn more before I waste the pigment and paper. No problems at
all. The prints match the monitor adequately. I'm eager to learn some
of the scanner's subtleties.