I think you are right. I do not do my own development (my darkroom days are
definitively over) but I am sure the pro lab in Barcelona does its work with
optical printing in mind. I also agree that the C41 B&W are much easier to scan
than traditional film, that is what I used for the Andalucía gallery I posted
recently.
Cheers,
Nathan
Nathan Wajsman
Alicante, Spain
http://www.frozenlight.eu
http://www.greatpix.eu
http://www.nathanfoto.com
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On Jan 18, 2010, at 4:51 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
>>
>> I'm the first to say I know nothing about B&W films, so I don't know the
>> cause, but several images came out with upper mid tones pushed up into
>> the highlight area. In others, the tonal palette and graduations seem
>> excellent to me. Fortunately, whatever the cause(s), exposure,
>> development or scanning, the high end was just squashed up near the top,
>> not clipped, so they can be adjusted.
>>
>
> I believe that what you are seeing is one of the odd characteristics of
> scanning instead of optical printing. For lack of a better way of explaining
> it, the "gamma" of the film is optimized to match the "gamma" of the paper.
> When you scan the film, the gamma is off for screen viewing.
>
> On the flip side, I find that a couple of the chromogenic films (T400CN
> specifically) scans better than they optical print. The only way I can get
> T400CN's gamma to match the paper is through split-grade printing.
>
> I've fought this very thing unendedly. Getting a good scan from B&W film is
> a miserable affair. Getting good tonalities in an optical print is far, far
> easier. I believe that both Dawid and I agree that the best way to digitize
> a B&W film image is to optically print it then digitize the print. The
> "interprint" doesn't need to be final display quality, in fact, it can be a
> little on the flat side, but the optical printing process gets the "gamma"
> to match properly and the tonal assignments correct in relationship to each
> other. Another reason to use the chemical "interprint" is for the grain. The
> aliasing that occures during the scanning process greatly accentuates the
> grain. Depending on contrast-grade, a 6x9" (image area) print from a 35mm
> roll of Delta 400 pushed one stop is nearly grainless in an optical print.
> But when the negative is scanned, the grain looks like golf-balls. If you
> scan the optical print and apply a touch of NR, the resulting image can be
> completely grain free.
>
> Chris Crawford has managed to find some way to digitize negs, but he has
> probably modified his film development to optimize it for scanning, not
> optical printing. My negs are optimized for optical printing. Based on what
> I see with Nathan's on-screen film images, I'm going to guess that his
> development is also optimized for optical printing.
>
> AG
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