Digital BW, The Print

Nice Work Anthony, I have been using PortraB&W for some time now."35mm" My closest Minilab, Walgreen's has just installed a Fuji Frontier 330 system. I really like the results from this combo. Leroy from Milwaukee,Wi

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Anthony Atkielski 
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2003 4:08 PM
  Subject: [Digital BW] Portra 400BW example


  I was very lukewarm about chromogenic B&W for quite a while, but I've
  discovered that Kodak Portra 400BW, at least, isn't bad at all (I haven't
  tested others enough to say).

  I went out one chilly evening and took some shots by the river with a tripod
  and a 6x6 MF camera, on Portra 400BW.  I recall using exposures of several
  seconds so that I could get some decent DOF.

  Here's one example that surprised me:

  http://www.mxsmanic.com/stairs.jpg

  The shot surprised me for several reasons:

  1. Portra 400BW is extremely sharp.

  2. The film also has amazingly fine grain, particularly for an ISO 400 film.

  3. It scans extremely well.

  4. This shot had a lot of stark contrast.  I was surprised and pleased to
  see that Portra 400BW had a great deal of headroom for manipulation, in both
  shadows and highlights.  I was able to pull rich detail from both
  (seemingly) blocked shadows and blown highlights, making them look very nice
  indeed, with no perceptible increase in noise or grain.  This allowed me to
  reduce the contrasts and come up with a very balanced image that shows
  detail in just about every corner.  Note the subtle shadows on the water
  surface, the details in the shadows on the wall on the right, and the detail
  in the highlight just opposite the lamp--much of that was extracted with
  Photoshop.  It was wonderful to be able to goof around with shadows and
  highlights and just see boatloads of extra detail waiting to be extracted.

  5. This film handles a much wider range of light intensities than I
  expected--i.e., it's a lot closer to B&W range than I at first thought it
  might be.  I didn't expect chromogenic B&W to hold contrast so well.

  6. Portra 400BW seems to work extremely well for night shots, just the
  opposite of what I had expected.

  This scan is extremely sharp.  For a full-size excerpt from the original
  scan, see

  http://www.mxsmanic.com/stairs1.jpg

  This was at 4000 dpi, and the grain is still hard to see in most of the
  image.  Fine details in the stone stand out.  I'm not sure where I had the
  focus set for this shot, as I set focus to maximum DOF rather than to target
  any specific detail.  Most of the area near the lamp is very sharp, though.

  Now, what I'd really like is to be able to get an image that looks like this
  on paper, with a dedicated B&W ink-jet printer.  How close could I come?
  Since this is MF an A3 enlargement would be easy to prepare.

  I have two other unusually successful examples of this film, one in MF and
  one in 35mm, but I accidentally overwrote the scans and I have to rescan one
  of them first.

  Portra 400BW, in summary, seems to be a kind of poor man's Tech Pan for me,
  as it has almost the same fine grain, and almost the same resolution, but it
  is much faster and does not require special B&W development.  It does have a
  kind of flat rendering like one sees in all truly panchromatic B&W films,
  but in these night shots, that doesn't seem to be an issue (sometimes it
  flattens day shots, though).



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Leroy writes:

> Nice Work Anthony, I have been using Portra
> B&W for some time now."35mm"

Thanks.  Portra works great for 35mm, too (I'm rescanning an example now).
The grain is so fine and the resolution so high that you can get beautiful
results from either format, it seems.

> My closest Minilab, Walgreen's has just installed
> a Fuji Frontier 330 system. I really like the results
> from this combo.

The advent of the Frontiers has changed a lot for me.  I can now take my
carefully optimized scans to my local one-hour lab (just up the street--a
new branch has opened), and get prints that look exactly like the images on
my monitor at a reasonable price (8x12 for $4--I like 8x12).  Since the
Frontiers came to town, I almost never print any color images on my own
ink-jet printer; the Frontier does a better job, and it's cheaper.

I've not used the Frontier much for black and white, so the jury is still
out on that; I suspect that a nice ink-jet set up dedicated to B&W (if I had
one!) might do a better job.  I do note, however, that Frontiers can print
from digital files without any color casts, since they are calibrated to
reproduce RGB grayscale as grayscale on color paper.  This is a big change
from the old analog stuff that would produce a different color cast every
time.

Ken writes:

> Anthony, what scanner and scanner software are you
> using to scan your portra 400bw?  nice results!

The scanner is a Nikon LS-8000ED, and I just use the standard NikonScan
3.1.2 software that came with it.

Although it's a bit OT, I have an example of a color scan from 35mm Velvia
at

http://www.mxsmanic.com/VelviaScan.jpg (warning: 2.2 MB!)

The scanner may not be a drum scanner, but it sure does a nice job!  (How
much better could a drum scan be??)  I understand that the LS-4000ED is
pratically identical, except that it doesn't scan MF, but I've never tried
it (my older scanners are the LS-30 and the LS-2000; I still use the latter,
mostly for high-speed negative films).

Anthony, I agree 100%; _if_ you are willing to accept the unknowns about
image permanence with this film (will it last refrigerated?).    As nearly
as I can tell, it is a true 400 speed.This image was taken at f1.5 handheld,
1/30.    Based on memory, it captured what was there.
www.kencarney.com/sanctuary_chimayo_window.htm

  --Ken

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2003 4:08 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Portra 400BW example


> I was very lukewarm about chromogenic B&W for quite a while, but I've
> discovered that Kodak Portra 400BW, at least, isn't bad at all (I haven't
> tested others enough to say).
>
> I went out one chilly evening and took some shots by the river with a
tripod
> and a 6x6 MF camera, on Portra 400BW.  I recall using exposures of several
> seconds so that I could get some decent DOF.
>
> Here's one example that surprised me:
>
> http://www.mxsmanic.com/stairs.jpg
>
> The shot surprised me for several reasons:
>
> 1. Portra 400BW is extremely sharp.
>
> 2. The film also has amazingly fine grain, particularly for an ISO 400
film.
>
> 3. It scans extremely well.
>
> 4. This shot had a lot of stark contrast.  I was surprised and pleased to
> see that Portra 400BW had a great deal of headroom for manipulation, in
both
> shadows and highlights.  I was able to pull rich detail from both
> (seemingly) blocked shadows and blown highlights, making them look very
nice
> indeed, with no perceptible increase in noise or grain.  This allowed me
to
> reduce the contrasts and come up with a very balanced image that shows
> detail in just about every corner.  Note the subtle shadows on the water
> surface, the details in the shadows on the wall on the right, and the
detail
> in the highlight just opposite the lamp--much of that was extracted with
> Photoshop.  It was wonderful to be able to goof around with shadows and
> highlights and just see boatloads of extra detail waiting to be extracted.
>
> 5. This film handles a much wider range of light intensities than I
> expected--i.e., it's a lot closer to B&W range than I at first thought it
> might be.  I didn't expect chromogenic B&W to hold contrast so well.
>
> 6. Portra 400BW seems to work extremely well for night shots, just the
> opposite of what I had expected.
>
> This scan is extremely sharp.  For a full-size excerpt from the original
> scan, see
>
> http://www.mxsmanic.com/stairs1.jpg
>
> This was at 4000 dpi, and the grain is still hard to see in most of the
> image.  Fine details in the stone stand out.  I'm not sure where I had the
> focus set for this shot, as I set focus to maximum DOF rather than to
target
> any specific detail.  Most of the area near the lamp is very sharp,
though.
>
> Now, what I'd really like is to be able to get an image that looks like
this
> on paper, with a dedicated B&W ink-jet printer.  How close could I come?
> Since this is MF an A3 enlargement would be easy to prepare.
>
> I have two other unusually successful examples of this film, one in MF and
> one in 35mm, but I accidentally overwrote the scans and I have to rescan
one
> of them first.
>
> Portra 400BW, in summary, seems to be a kind of poor man's Tech Pan for
me,
> as it has almost the same fine grain, and almost the same resolution, but
it
> is much faster and does not require special B&W development.  It does have
a
> kind of flat rendering like one sees in all truly panchromatic B&W films,
> but in these night shots, that doesn't seem to be an issue (sometimes it
> flattens day shots, though).
>
>
>
>
> Please visit the Group Homepage to check the Files, Bookmarks, Polls and
other resources as they are often being updated. The page is at:
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint
>
> If you wish to receive no emails or just a daily digest, or you wish to
unsubscribe, please edit your Membership preferences by visiting this same
page.
>
> Please follow these basic guidelines:
> - Include your full name with your message.
> - Include the address of your website, if you have one.
> - As threads develop, trim off excess portions of earlier messages to keep
them short.
> - As the topic of a thread changes remember to change the subject header.
> - Good manners are required at all time. No personal attacks or
&amp;amp;quot;flames.&amp;amp;quot;
> - Complete your Yahoo profile.
> - Before posting a question, search the message archives and the various
resources on the homepage.

>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

Richard writes:

> I'm curious which you've tried and not liked.

Originally I remember trying Portra 400BW, Kodak Black+White (IIRC), Kodak
TCN400 (?), and XP2.  I was just getting into the chromogenics and probably
didn't spend enough time working with all of them.  Maybe if someone has
scanned the others (you?), someone can point to a few examples.  I'd love to
see a chromogenic (or indeed any B&W film) that handles light like Tri-X but
doesn't produce all that bothersome grain.

> I've gotten wonderful results from XP2 and have
> not been as keen on Portra 400BW myself.

In my case I think I just latched on to one film because I could predict the
outcome, and went with that.  Someday I need to try the other chromogenics
again.

> I find the XP2 scans but easier for me with my
> Nikon LS4000 and in medium format with my ol'
> Epson 1200U.

I forgot to mention that Portra 400BW has to be scanned as color negative,
but with grayscale output.  If you try to scan it as straight B&W, the
scanner doesn't allow for the orange mask or the low contrast, and the scan
looks pretty bad.  Newer versions of NikonScan allow this, but the older
versions of the software don't (you can't set color neg and grayscale at the
same time).

The other chromogenics sometimes produce negatives more like black and
white, so I suppose they should be scanned as true black and white.  I'll
have to try it sometime.

I only recently ventured into chromogenic for MF, with the 400BW, but the
results are beautiful.  And it's just so nice to have film that is
simultaneously fast, sharp, and almost free of grain.