Digital BW, The Print

Bruce,
Does your 'thinner negs' experience for scanning only apply to drum 
scanners or does it apply for all scanners?  From what you say I guess 
it does, but can you clarify please.  I scan 5x4 100Tmax on a 4870 
flatbed and don't have anything to compare it with.  I could (and 
probably will) run some tests to try thinner negatives but as far as I 
can tell my scanning is giving me good scanning material.  But, I must 
say my negs are in general rather beefy.  My scanner has never failed to 
scan any of the dense neg highlights that I occasionally get but from 
what you say, maybe thinner would be sharper?
Steve Gledhill ----- http://www.virtuallygrey.co.uk/


hogarth@... wrote:

> djon43 wrote:
>
> >
> > I don't think scanners want "thin" negs
>
> Ah, but they do. I'm a drum scanner operator. I've run a long series of
> tests with my own work using 5x4 Tri-X. Optimum for my scanner turns out
> to be what you might call an N-1.5 negative.
>
> There are a number of reasons for this. Not least is the collimated
> light and the resulting Callier effect. If you can get the amount of
> silver down, you decrease light scatter. That, by itself, argues for
> less density (thinner negs).
>
> > , and it's certainly not right
> > to say enlargers prefered dense negs. The use of "dense" and "thin"
> > suggests earlier negs were never optimal for the darkroom .
>
> They weren't really. That was why guys like Adams worked so hard on
> tools like the Zone System - to bring negatives closer to optimal for
> darkroom printing with the fixed paper grades of the day.
>
> >
> > Exposing/processing B&W film with basic N/N+/N- controls, one can
> > almost always print "properly" on one standard grade of one's standard
> > paper, and of course those negs scan well.
>
> They do in deed scan well. If they were a bit thinner, they would scan
> even better however.
>
> >
> > For me, darkroom practice didn't imply accident or exploration.
> > Scanning facilitates lots of new interpretations of images, but
> > because of early exposure to basics of Zone System (I never got deep
> > with it) my negs have almost always enlarged the way I intended, had
> > the tonal scale I needed, were rarely challenges in the darkroom.
> >
> > John Kelly
>
> You should have no difficulty scanning these negs.
>
> I've always said that if you are going to use the negs for both darkroom
> and scanning, optimize for the darkroom only. But if you are only going
> to scan (that would be me) optimize for scanning which, for me and my
> drum scanner, turns out to be a bit thinner than for darkroom work.
> --
> Bruce Watson


		
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