Digital BW, The Print

I shoot a lot of Headshots in 35mm, see  www.rickschiller.com   Several
months ago I started giving clients digital prints for reproductions.  I
don't quite have it tweaked yet w/ Lyson QB on an 860, I wish someone had
told me even with the Lyson paper the inks metamorph to magenta.   I suppose
that's better then the very Green I got on my 870, though I think the 870 to
have subtley better tone gradiations.

I've settled on using mostly TMax 400 and occaisonally Tmax 100.   You can
develope Tmax 100 in just about any common developer and the grain is
acceptable.  I think it best exposed at 80-100 (depends on your meter) and
developed in D76 1:1.  Scanned on my cheapie Canon FS2720 is it virtually
grainless and as sharp as I've seen from this film.   You have to remember,
grain and accutance (sharpness) are not the same thing and in fact work
opposite to each other.  Tmax 100 is very fine grained, hard to ruin that;
but it is not as sharp as older emulsion films such as TriX or PlusX.   But
it is good and acceptable in D76 1:1.

Tmax400 seems to work best in D76 Stock.   I rate it at 200 and 320 and
develop accordingly.  I've tried a bunch of developers with this film, and
talked to others about their combinations.  On balance D76 seems to still
work best.   Film will be fine grained and acceptable for a 10" print, I can
get about 360dpi for this.   In my business you have to keep the grain down
as the prints are sent to lithographers for reproductions and some (cheaper)
lithographers have too much dot gain.   But the prints also have to be sharp
so its all a trade off.

A Canon FS4000 or other scanner with better dmax then the 2720 may give you
more advantage in digging out shadow detail and some people like Vuescan.  I
tried it and couldn't get it to give results quite as good and not nearly as
easily as the CanonCraft software.

You also might want to experiment with scanning at 8bit and 16bit.   It
seems 16bit should be better, more tonal gradation and then reduce to 8bit
for printing after you work it in Photoshop.   Lately I'm finding just
scanning at 8bit seems to give, on balance, a better result.

A complex and ever changing workflow.

Rick

I recently scanned a large project for a photographer who shot on the 
chromagenic B&W film, Kodak's,
if I recall, and it was very good and easy to scan, granted I use a drum 
scanner,

 From the days when I had a wet darkroom, my favorite combo was Plus-X 
souped in FG7 with the 11%
sodium sulfite added.
These old negs scan very nicely with tight clean grain, long tonalities 
and not too high a D-max, which is
the main problem with lots of silver film when it comes to scanning.

J.Z.