Digital BW, The Print

Vic, I feel your pain.   Nobody has lined up the prospects, put each through 
its paces, and written intelligibly about the results.   And the 
manufacturers' statistics are worthless.

I shoot entirely in black and white.   I shoot Bergger 200 in 5x7 sheets, and 
Tri-X 320 in 4x5 sheets.   I halve the EI for both, and develop both in 
Rodinal 1:25 solutions using JOBO tanks, and am happy with the results.   Before 
moving entirely into LF, I shot a zillion rolls of TX in 120 size, also 
processed in Rodinal.

I used to scan everything with an Epson 3200 flatbed.   When I moved up to 
5x7 a couple of months ago, I upgraded to a 4990.   I drive both with the Epson 
software, which is actually quite good once you figure out where everything 
is.   Frankly, I see no visible difference in performance between the 3200 and 
the 4990.   The 4990 has a much larger transparency scan size, which is why I 
upgraded; but I have seen no improvement to image quality with the newer 
machine.   Alas.

My more controversial observation is that, if you are printing with an inkjet 
at sizes below 13x19, I doubt that you will see any difference between prints 
from scans of roll film and 4x5 sheets.   Disheartening, but true in my 
experience.   Indeed, I am returning to the darkroom and contact-printing my 4x5 
and 5x7 negatives, because contact prints reveal the negative in a way that the 
scanner and inkjet do not.

If you would like to see scans of 4x5 and 120 roll film images in Bergger and 
Tri-X from the 3200 and 4990, and nudity does not offend, visit my site at 
www.mcnew.net.   I scan the entire negative, so the size and type of each film 
used is obvious from the image. 

Good luck to you.

Sanders McNew
www.mcnew.net


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