Digital BW, The Print

Hi Eric and Dana-

I found Eric's comments curious- which is to say, not to conform with my
experience. I can't help but believe that the problem is the quality (or
lack of it) of the scan.

Of course, as Dana points out, this is also a matter of personal taste, but
Eric, I'd be interested to hear more about what you didn't like about the
scanned images.

Finally, wet-mounted drum scans do get rid of (almost all) the dust, and the
little scratches too. Then you just have to hope that you took a good
shot!   ;^)

Bill

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Dana H. Myers <dana.myers@...> wrote:

>   Eric Neilsen wrote:
>
> > Paul, I don't think that scanning B&W film is a very good way to get
> "that
> > B&W grain look" as the scanning process nearly made me lose my lunch the
> > first few years I had a scan made of B&W films.
>
> How are you scanning B&W? My experience is different. I found
> that, once I started scanning at a reasonable resolution (4000 dpi
> in a Nikon LS9000), I'm quite happy with the results with a broad
> range of film but it pays to optimize a bit, really not that different
> than optimizing for condensor vs. diffusion enlarger.
>
> Scanners will favor a somewhat thinner neg in my experience; about
> a one-stop pull is good, and this also reduces the impact of the
> real problem, which is Callier effect (dense, grainy negs are the
> worst for that).
>
> > It is just not the same
> > thing. If scanners could reproduce the grain of B&W they could get rid of
> > dust too,
>
> I don't follow this at all - that doesn't seem to make sense.
>
> > but the way the light get turned into pixels, just leaves this
> > darkroom printer cold.
>
> I'm sure it's a matter of personal taste as well, but I've seen
> far too many outstanding prints made from scanned B&W negs to indict
> the process in general. Like any process, there's a learning curve
> that rewards the diligent.
>
> Dana
>  
>



-- 
Regards,

Bill Morse
Wm. Morse Editions

http://www.MorseEditions.com/


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