Digital BW, The Print

Steve Gledhill wrote:

> 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.  

In theory it would also apply to CCD scanners. But I don't own the 
equipment to do the testing. Sorry.

> 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?

Almost certainly, scanner or not. Density effects many properties, 
including graininess and perceived sharpness. As density goes down, 
graininess decreases and sharpness increases a bit. This is one of the 
reasons that slide film is perceived to be less grainy and sharper than 
negative film -- slide film has its maximum density in the shadows where 
it's difficult to see the grain, while it has its minimum density in the 
highlights that appear almost grainless and very sharp.

It's easy to run the tests if you are developing your own negs. After I 
found my EI and normal development time per the zone system, I started 
decreasing my development time about 30 seconds per batch. When 
scanning, I kept records of the resulting Dmax from the various 
negatives. I would also use Photoshop to isolate a section so that I 
could print a square about 30cm per side that was a section of what 
would have been a full size print (about 10x enlargement - around 125 x 
100 cm). It's really hard to judge graininess and sharpness from 
Photoshop. I find that prints are must easier to evaluate.

I could see graininess decrease and sharpness increase (just a bit) in 
the prints. I could also see that tonality and tonal transitions were 
not effected, and that the overall contrast of the image in the image 
file went up (most likely as density decreased, Callier effect also 
decreased, just like in the darkroom).

I got down to the point where I was starting to have to do a bit more 
work in Photoshop - tonality was starting to compress. From there I 
increased development a bit. It worked out to about N-1.5 for me, and 
the lowered development time did cost me about 1/3 stop of EI.

> Steve Gledhill ----- http://www.virtuallygrey.co.uk/

I'm not saying that this is the answer to Life, the Universe, and 
Everything. That would be 42 ;-)

But it is sound theory, and I have verified it in practice. To become 
accepted theory, many people will have to verify it in practice. To be 
discreditied, many people will have to try it and find that they can not 
verify it in practice. So... take an chance and try it. Or not. Because 
YMMV.

Why guess when you can know?
--
Bruce Watson