Digital BW, The Print

Josh,

I work with almost identical hardware and subjects. In my case landscape and nature close-ups are printed from Kodak Portra 160 films (NC or VC) with a Pentax 67, scanned with a Minolta SM Pro, worked in Photoshop 6 and printed via either Epson 2200 with MIS 7600 inks (color or QTR B&Ws) or an 1160 with MIS FS-N quadtones.

I decided on Portra when a friend was setting up his scanning workflow and did some film tests to see what film gave him good scans. What impressed me was his test of film contrast range: he got 13 stops of contrast range with at least some detail from the Portra! Having been a transparency shooter for almost all of my previous years, working with 5 or 6 usable stops of contrast range, I felt like my landscape world had suddenly doubled opportunities for shooting. All of a sudden I was out shooting at mid-day, in full sun with dark rocks in shade and glaring wet sand in the same frame. A very liberating experience and I'd never go back.

I've also shot some B&W negatives (Tmax 100) and I found them harder to scan (dark dark areas of film are denser than color negs and that's hard to read with my scanner, so you lose detail in the highlights of a print). Maybe custom exposed and developed B&W tailored to your hardware/workflow would be as good or better, but then you won't have the option of making both B&W and color from the same frame.

Frank

______________________________________________________________
   From: "joshscapes" <joshrandall@...>
Subject: film for medium format scanning

Hello all,

I am a b&w landscape photographer who works with a Pentax 67.  I 
have been using Tmax 100 film in 120 size ever since I got into 
scanning my negatives.  I have gotten pretty good results, but am 
eager to try something else to see if I personally like the look 
better than TMax.  My question is this:

In your opinion, what is the best film to use in a medium format 
camera that is going to be scanned, worked in Photoshop CS, and then 
printed with MIS inks on an Epson 2200 printer?

Please answer with whatever you think.  I am open to all ideas about 
using any type of film (traditional, C-41 b&w, color transparency, 
color neg..ect). Being a landscape photographer, I obviously want a 
film that give superb contrast, detail, and sharpness.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions:

Always grateful for your knowledge.

Josh
www.joshscapes.com