Digital BW, The Print

On 13/10/2009 Lew wrote:
> That's what I looking for, a quick look at my stuff, 1 roll at a time 
> & 
> then follow up with wet darkroom work and/or a 'serious' scan.

As I mentioned, I use an ancient Umax Powerlook 2 modified to accept the 
glass half of a Paterson 35mm contact-printing frame (retired from 
darkroom use). The mod is simple : use computer motherboard standoffs to 
raise the film hood glass a few mm to accomodate the Paterson glass sheet. 
That gets 6strips of 6 frames into the 10x8" scanning area.

The scanner cost 70GBP off eBay a few years ago with a film hood + another 
spare. There are probably other similar from Microtek, Agfa etc - old 
scanners that were costly studio workhorses 10 years ago.

Scans are not wonderful at only 1200ppi, but perfectly good for onscreen 
viewing at decent magnification or printing the sheet at A3+. Much more 
usable than wet contacts and much cheaper and faster to do.

I use Vuescan, scan at 16bit and then tweak levels of any hard-to-view 
frames to normalise exposure differences. Works with BW & colour neg.
-- 
Regards

Tony Sleep
http://tonysleep.co.uk