Digital BW, The Print

Hear, hear! I shot almost nothing but Tri-X in the '70s and kept 
banging my head against the wall whenever I enlarged to 16x20. I was 
not into grain. What I really should have been using was an 8x10, which 
I eventually picked up. However, in hind sight, the grainy quality of 
those Tri-X images has turned out to be part of the charm. If you scan 
Tri-X and attempt to make it look like T-Max or better, you will need 
to enlarge those scans on screen and blur out every piece of grain 
manually...not recommended for the faint of heart. My film scanner has 
the ability to set a negative USM value (-60 out of ±255 is 
recommended) and also allows for defocusing the lens (it's an Imacon 
Flextight II) by a tiny amount, and between these two settings I can 
minimize the grain to some extent without losing sharpness discernably. 
There's even a proprietary noise option that tends to smooth out 
clumping in the grain if used properly. Then USM in Photoshop seems to 
take up the slack.

But in the long run, the question really is why? Grain is in our 
heritage, like monotypes, glass negatives, etc. Just because a great 
digital camera can be set to avoid generating noise does not mean that 
our B&W history should be re-written. I always shot my Tri-X at ASA200 
AND overdeveloped the film, after I realized the grain was truly a 
wondrous feature. One of the best rolls I ever shot was left in 
overheated developer by mistake, looked nearly solid black, made for 
very long exposure times under the enlarger, and produced some wedding 
shots that drove my brother in law nuts with delight! So I left the 
Plus-X for the 8x10, and got to have whichever effect I wanted without 
bruising my head anymore.

BTW, does anyone have a great method for scanning 8x10 negs on a 
flatbed? I use the Linotype-Hell Ultra Saphir 2 with Silverfast AI 6, 
but there seems to be a problem with horizontal banding (or even thin 
lines) when I try this (I'm at novice level with this software, to make 
things worse). My Imacon, unfortunately, goes up only to 4x5. I 
couldn't afford the big one that handles 8x10. For now, I have been 
sending out my 8x10s for drum scans, which is fine but expensive. Any 
advice...I think I saw some ideas about wet-mounting...would be 
appreciated. I am wondering if the banding is indicative of poor or out 
of adjustment mechanics in the transparency adapter because it never 
happens with reflective art.

;-)
Gary

> Message: 18
>    Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:14:40 -0700
>    From: "Mike Johnston" <wpajohnson@qwest.net>
> Subject: RE: Really Grainy Tri X scans
>
>
> You could treat the quality as a feature instead of a problem.
> Mike J.