Digital BW, The Print

> I am just starting to try my hand at black and white digital imaging
> and am actually starting with a Holga and a pinhole camera using Kodak
> Tri-X. I recently purchased an Epson V700 scanner and Vuescan
> software. Looking around the internet, the general advice seemed to
> be to scan black and white negatives as if they were color images and
> then convert to grayscale afterwards. I do notice that Vuescan has a
> scan black and white negative as an option. Since this is Vuescan and
> not some prepackaged scanning software I was wondering how folks here
> recommend doing this with Vuescan (I realize this isn't a Vuescan
> forum but figure there are lots of people here using it with a lot of
> experience).
>
> ...is it best to scan as a color slide or a color negative
> and convert to grayscale or will the Vuescan scan as black and white
> negative give the best results (ie, has Vuescan taken all this into
> account and will setting the source as black and white negative give
> me the best results)?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Howard
>
Howard,

Really the only way to know is to try each way and compare results.  I 
scan with "make gray from green channel" because it gives the best 
results with my scanner.  You don't want to use a "color negative" 
setting, as this changes things to get rid of the orange mask of a color 
film, which regular bw films don't have.  I usually set the "color" 
settings to manual, and set the black and white clipping settings at 
"0".  Basically, you want a low contrast scan that includes as much info 
as possible.  Make sure that you set up viewscan show that clipped 
shadows and highlights get represented by colors (usually blue and 
green)  on the scan screen.

-Peter