Digital BW, The Print

I've been scanning b/w negatives for some years with various scanners 
and for the last few with a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro. This has 
covered a pretty wide range of films and developers as I've been working 
with images from around 30 years. I've not had great problems with any 
of them, although I have found Vuescan to generally be better than the 
Minolta software. I've also normally used the Scanhancer plastic 
diffuser in recent years. So it might be worth trying Vuescan with other 
scanners.

My favourite black and white film for scanning is actually Ilford XP2, 
but were I to be wanting to use conventional silver negative films I'd 
be strongly tempted to look at reversal processing, possibly with the 
use of a sulphide developer to give a silver sulphide image which should 
be considerably more stable than a silver one. I'd also look for a film 
with a polyester rather than a triacetate base if longevity was important.

I'd be unhappy about having to send film to Denver for processing, and 
would prefer a process that I could buy and do myself, or published 
formulae that could be used. I have used some of the older reversal 
processes but only to create slides for lectures, which was considerably 
cheaper than using Scala and avoided the colours added to b/w by most 
colour transparency film.

Regards

Peter

Peter Marshall
petermarshall@...     +44 (0)1784 456474
31 Budebury Rd, STAINES, Middx, TW18 2AZ, UK
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Michael Vendrell wrote:
> Paul,Ginny, et al: I'm planning on giving the dr5
> reversal processing a try for some selected B&W films
> as well.  There's a rather extensive list of films
> with their characteristics on his site which makes for
> impressive reading but I don't as yet have direct
> experience - anyone?  I know it has been discussed
> before, but does anyone have further thoughts about
> scanning B&W film positives vs negatives in a scanner
> such as the Nikon 9000?
>
> --- Paul Roark <paul.roark@...> wrote:
>
>   
>>>  ... XTOL produces a less 'dramatic' image than
>>>       
>> HC-110, 
>>     
>>> but lends an almost luminous quality...with
>>>       
>> be
>