Ender100@aol.com
Date: 10/25/02-10:21:07 PM Z
Hi Sandy,
I am far less experienced and knowledgeable of films than most in this group.
But I have scanned a lot of film.
Try T-Max 100..... for black and white... the grain is minimal and I think it
scans very smooth. Someone else that knows more about different film
emulsions may know better than I. Also, I understand that the reversal
process for this and other black and white films is "supposed" to give you
longer tonality and even nicer scans, especially the sepia version. I think
the cost is about $13 per roll plus shipping.
I have used the Kodak dye based Black and White (ISO 400) that is developed
in color chemical and that is not bad. It has a "softer" looking
grain/sharpness, but will do in a pinch—Judy suggested I try it for gum
prints.
A friend of mine, who runs a really good custom lab suggests shooting T-Max
100 at 400 instead of using T-max 400 if you need more speed. He feels he
gets better negatives.
Recently I have been scanning Kodak infrared 35 mm for a friend who is using t
he scans for a book of her figurative work. The scans have come out
beautiful. As expected, a lot of grain, but they are great images. I
printed her favorite at 24 x 30 and it was gorgeous—all the grain came out
great. If you feel a need to sharpen a scan with lots of grain, be careful
that you don't use a method that accentuates the grain beyond your taste for
grain.
All the scanning is on an Imacon Flextight III at 6300 ppi.
There are folks who feel that for sharp smooth scans, you should scan at just
below the threshold of the grain and then if you need a larger image,
interpolate it up in Photoshop. They feel that if you scan at a certain
resolution you get an "interference" pattern grain size and the ccd pixel
size. I have not had time to test this yet... it might take a lot of scans.
Are you thinking at all of color negative films? If so, scan in color and
use the channel mixer and pick the best of the rgb channels (usually a mix of
the red and green channels since the blue has more noise) then either discard
the rest or give them a slight shot of gaussian blur.
I didn't really answer your question as to why... would it have something to
do with grain structure and the type of scanner/resolution of scan/light
source/ccd or pmt? Some say a drum scanner does chromes better and a scanner
like the Imacon does negatives better... why would that be? Some people say
that scanning black and white negatives is very difficult...I have never
experienced that problem.
Mark Nelson
In a message dated 10/25/02 8:10:11 PM, sanking@clemson.edu writes:
<< I asked this question on one of the newsgroups but am repeating it
here since there are several people on the list who are pretty
experienced with scanning. The question is, are some 35mm negative
films better than others when the negatives are to be used for
scanning and making digital prints and/or to make enlarged negatives
for alt printing, or do the same considerations of grain and
sharpness hold when scanning as when making prints in the darkroom?
If some films are better than others for this purpose I would
appreciate some explanation of the reasons.
Sandy King >>
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