Digital BW, The 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.

Well, I can't do anything about the loss of doing color & bw from a 
single frame, but I very much have customized my development process for 
scanning.  There is a right exposure (or, rather, EI) for scanning - for 
me it's actually about 1/3 stop faster than when I was using a 
densitometer in class, ZS-style.  I still meter my shadows.

Develop to get the scan histogram stretched out as far as possible 
without pushing my zone VII-equivalent off the end.  I have found that 
getting a full tonal range across the entire historgram is far better 
than having it compressed and then stretching it back out in PS.

So I go for the thinnest neg in the shadows as possible with detail, but 
I go for just enough density to get the highlights right.  Any more 
density and it's tough to scan.  That's conventional wisdom, I guess.  I 
just like hearign myself talk :-).

Back to the original question...I actually like grain, so I use a lot of 
acutance developers.  But if you want smoothness, I'd recommend Efke 25 
or 50.  And there's nothing wrong with TMX, though I generally find that 
it needs a bit more acutance to really look right.  It tends to look 
soft without it.  There's a good thread at 
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00ETnv

allan

-- 
http://allan.kaiyen.com
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