Digital BW, The Print

djon43 wrote:
> 
> 
> Lew, I'vealways been happiest with "flat" negs...wanted longest
> possible scale and smallest possible maximum specular highlights.
> I've not sought grain but have avoided solvent developers (ie with
> sodium sulfite). Rodinal does that trick nicely, as did Neofin Blau
> and Neofin Rot and FG7 without sulfite.

To chip in my 2 cents, I concur with the others on this.

I used to print with a condensor enlarger, so most of my existing
negs are developed -10% from "normal"; these negs typically scan
very easily for me, especially in the Nikon LS-9000 I now use.\
Developing to lower contrast makes me less sensitive to grain,
and I don't go out of my way to reduce in processing.  In fact,
I use Xtol 1+1 with TMX and TMY and quite like the results.

Like Peter mentioned, dense highlights tend to be more difficult
to deal with than somewhat thinner shadows, so it's probably
better to expose somewhat less than for printing on silver paper.
I expose TMY at EI320 and TMX at EI80.

In fact, I ran a simple exposure test earlier this year,
shooting the same scene at EI 400, 320, 250 and 200 on TMY
and processing -10% of the Kodak suggested time.  Each neg
scanned easily and yielded perceptually the same shadow
detail, even at EI400.  I still expose at EI 320, though.

> I think a scanner is a closer approximation of condenser than
> diffusion enlarger.

I think it depends on the scanner - an Epson flat-bed strikes
me as a bit more like a diffusion enlarger, while the LS-9000
is clearly like a condensor enlarger and I always use multiple-
pass scanning with it (2x or 4x), which seems to do a good job of
reproducing the character of the film grain (desired) without
exagerating it (undesired).

> "Snappy" negs can be a problem for scanning if there are big very
> dense areas. Scanners aren't aspatient as enlargers :-)

True; this is where the variable analog gain of the LS-9000
has really come in handy with grossly-over-exposed negs, pretty
much amazingly every time I've resorted to it.

Dana