Yahoo Groups archive

Digital BW, The Print

Index last updated: 2026-04-28 22:56 UTC

Message

Re: [Digital BW] Optimizing B&W film development for both digital and traditional darkroom

2005-06-20 by Stephen Petegorsky

Peter - Not to be difficult, but I think the answer to your question will
have a lot to do with both the enlarger that  you're using for wet printing
and the scanner you're using.

A negative that prints easily with a condenser enlarger will not print the
same way with a cold-light head.  By the same token, different scanners have
different light sources that may make for a scan with more or less contrast
to begin with.  

Since you have less control in the darkroom, my suggestion would be to make
negatives whose exposure and development allow you to make wet prints on a
2.5 or 3 paper grade, and then adjust your scanning to best capture the
range of tones.

What's tricky is that underexposure is what easily kills negatives for wet
printing, and overexposure or overdevelopment can make a negative very hard
to scan.

Attachments

Move to quarantaine

This moves the raw source file on disk only. The archive index is not changed automatically, so you still need to run a manual refresh afterward.