Digital BW, The Print

I have not followed all of the posts in this thread, so I apologize for a
late and perhaps redundant post.

>Traditional compensating development techniques for negatives are not
>required to produce a good print when the negative is going to be
>scanned and not printed traditionally. ...

I have found that my old system that was optimized for the enlarger is
rather inappropriate for the scanner/digital approach.  Circumstances have,
indeed, changed.

For years I used dilute Microdol X (1:3, 18 min., 75 degrees) for my Tmax
100 (after long use of Agfapan 25 and Rodinol) with very infrequent
agitation -- 3 minute agitation cycles.  This produced an extremely sharp
negative, but with grain that was higher than if a less dilute developer and
normal agitation were used.  The grain, however, was never a problem even
when I enlarged to 16x20.  The inevitable diffraction caused by even the
best enlarger lenses made me clearly favor the chemically-enhanced
sharpness, even at the expense of increased grain.

Because I use medium format, the compensating developer approach was used
both for its sharpening/adjacency effect and for the "S" shaped
characteristic curve.  This has been favored by many roll-film shooters for
years because it tends to increase the contrast of flat scenes but, with its
lower-contrast highlights, it allows high contrast scenes to fit onto the
same roll of film without the highlights being blocked-up.

Virtually all of my shooting for years was with a Rollei SL66 on a tripod
and a Pentax spot meter.  I kept notes of all exposure information and had
developed the approach based not only on my field experience but also on
resolution tests and lots of characteristic curve graphing.

I have now abandoned that approach, but only in part.  Now I find grain to
be, relatively, a more serious problem than sharpness.  I think Photoshop
does a better job of sharpening (low-noise) images than of blurring or
eliminating grain (film's version of noise) -- even with the grain-reduction
features of the scanner I use.

So, I now use Tech Pan with Xtol.  This developer has virtually no adjacency
affect.  My Nikon 8000's dynamic range also allows my to develop to higher
contrast, which is a better fit for Tech Pan.  I still, however, think that
the "S" shaped characteristic curve has value with roll film, and the Tech
Pan/Xtol combo produces this.  I have tested and scanned 12-stop ranges with
this approach.  Of course, with Photoshop, taking two shots of the same
scene is easy when on a tripod.  However, I always prefer the simpler
one-frame approach if possible.

At any rate, the lower grain of the Tech Pan makes it much easier to make
large display prints digitally than does my old sharper but much grainier
chemically-edge-enhanced Tmax.  But, I sill like the mild "S" shaped
characteristic curve.  The less I have to increase contrast in Photoshop,
the lower the various un-wanted artifacts.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com