> What is a scanned work print? Scanning a print rather than the negative?
Correct.
The advantage are five-fold:
1. Recreates the gamma curve in a natural way that requires MUCH less
bit-bending. It takes an aggressive curves adjustment to make a
typical negative work if you scan it directly and manipulate
digitally.
2. Grain reduction. A typical ISO 100 35mm negative is essentially
grain-free in a 5x7 work print, but a scanned 35mm neg will produce a
heavily granulated print of the same size.
3. Ability to do wide-scale dodging/burning to "pre-edit" the image
without having to do it in the digital editor where quality is
compromised. You are able to do wholesale brightness and contrast
adjustments with little to no non-linear increase in grain.
4. Reference analog print gives you a starting point for editing.
5. Less dust/scratch spotting.
An argument could be made that the smoothness of a scanned print vs. a
scanned negative is because of the loss of sharpness due to the
additional process step. That's not necessarily true. Sharpness is
usually about the same, but you'll avoid all the grain aliasing
characteristics that occur with film scanning. One way around this is
to do multi-pass scanning of the negatives, but then you run into time
issues. It takes less time to make work prints from a roll of film and
flat-bed scan the prints than it does to fight the film scanner.
Huh?
Well, I'm going to speak for me, but here is a typical workflow:
1. Contact print the Print File sheet. Mark the images to scan. A
magnifying viewer is your friend. I may also scan the contact print to
do some playing with a specific image or two to see what might be
possible
2. Make 5x7 prints (image size 4x6") with basic exposure and contrast
adjustment to get the image into the neighborhood. Nothing too fancy,
just know that it's easier and faster here than later.
3. Scan the print.
4. Edit the image with additional spotting, sharpening, cropping,
contrast/brightness adjustments, etc.
5. Final output.
Where I'm experimenting is with the final output going back into the
analog form by printing out a negative on Overhead Transparancy Film,
and making a contact print back in the darkroom again.
Ken Norton
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