Digital BW, The Print

Howard's original question had nothing to do with staining developers.

**I've sent a note to Sandy King, asking his thoughts. 

Howard, Want to make your own developers? I'd thought your question
was more photographically oriented than boy-chemist oriented :-)  

http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/PCat/pcat.html

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/sc_prod.php?cat_id=&pid=1000000387

"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)? "




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Ernst Dinkla
<E.Dinkla@...> wrote:
>
> Paul Grant wrote:
> > I for one can tell you that it does make a difference in Staining
developers
> > to scan in RGB mode. There is a visiable difference and it can be
easily
> > seen when printing in the darkroom.  That is the point of using a
staining
> > developer.  Separately it is my understanding the the majority of
scanners
> > all scan in RGB and the scanner software whether it is Vuesan,Epson or
> > Silverfast just convert the RGB image to greyscale in software.  
Frankly I
> > would rather take charge of that conversion myself and do it in
Photoshop
> > with whatever method I chose.
> 
> Two scanners I have the Nikon LS8000 and the Epson V700 can 
> only scan in RGB hardware wise whether the software is set 
> on greyscale or color.  Vuescan will emphasise the green 
> channel but still pick up part of the other channels in the 
> conversion to greyscale if I recall some messages by Ed.
> 
> My old Agfa  Horizon Plus A3 has a monochrome sensor that 
> needs 3 passes for color and isn't very good for that work 
> anymore but it has a one pass Greyscale setting where the 
> color filter is replaced by a ND filter that works very 
> good, 1200 PPI only but up to A3 if needed. I use it mainly 
> for old graphic films.
> 
> Related to that, we see all kinds of B&W conversions of 
> color devices: printers that are changed to quad inksets, 
> cameras that are stripped of their Bayer filters, but no 
> scanners that have their sensor filters removed for B&W 
> scanning. Could be impossible if the filter is within the 
> glass of the linear sensor strips. But if possible one could 
> even partition the 3 sensors with 2 grades of ND filters and 
> one without to increase the dynamic range. RGB filters have 
> different density levels but not as ideal as it could be.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Met vriendelijke groeten,  Ernst
> 
> 
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