Digital BW, The Print

We live and learn.
I rented time and the scans are ok, but not great.
I'll do better next time now that I'm more familiar with the interface and will be less panicked about maximizing my rental time at the lab. I could use a little more clarification from users please:

Re: USM at -120
I had the usm palette boxes all set to 0 (one of the usm settings, I forget which, kept defaulting to 1) and indeed the grain is pronounced in some negs.
Is -120 a general consensus done by empirical testing, or a rcommendation by flexcolor ?

Using photokit after - do you change mode to rgb> select Capture sharpeer>35 fast negative (as appropriate) > medium edge sharpen (as appropriate ?

AF icon (auto focus?) - there is a little AF icon/button - should this be 'dark' or 'light/faded' ? Some scans appear a tad soft?

Gamma - is there a place to set this to 2.2 ? 

I used the levels histogram, and found that the A (auto) worked well to bring the white and black points to the edges of the histogram. I could manually change them as well as the midpoint. And I could also change the midtones with Gradations/curves. But...my scans are still mostly too light and flat.

I selected Greyscale 16 bit B&W negative. I figured that the film grain would overide a bit of noise and the benefit of rgb. The files were 100mb anyway as GS.

What is the maximum Optical (non interpolated) res of the Imacon (848) - I used 6300ppi.

Unfortunately there was no-one to train me just a young person that clearly didn't know the answers to any of this.

Thanks for any further clarification.
Frank


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Paul Kohl <pkohl@...> wrote:
>
> I use an Imacon Flextight regularly and have done tests on black and 
> white negative scanning. My results are that scanning as a greyscale 
> positive gets me the most efficient and tonally comprehensive scans, 
> as another poster recommended. One important thing is to set the 
> Texture/Unsharp masking sharpening setting to -120 or else the 
> software will sharpen the image. This sharpening will increase grain 
> presence in the image.
> I sharpen later in PS using the Photokit sharpened plug-in.
> The Imacon is a great machine.
> Good luck with it.
> Paul
>