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Anyone have experience scanning Ektar 100 for B&W digital output?

Eric Rose

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Title says it all. I will be shooting in mainly contrasty situations and the scans will be made with an Epson V750 Pro. What's your experience with this film? My go-to C41 B&W film has always been XP2 which I am very happy with but I wanted to use just one film for this trip rather than taking two bodies, one for B&W and one for colour.

Thanks,

Eric
 
I would say why not? But perhaps Portra would be better if you want to apply B&W filters artificially in post, due to its more realistic colors. Ektar is saturated like Velvia.
 
This has more to do with your scanner's capability and your post processing skills. Obviously Kodak Ektar 100 is contrasty and doesn't have the latitude of XP2. Perhaps you should consider Kodak Portra 400 which is more of a match in terms of latitude and is also another great color film.
 
One of the consumer grade films might be good - lots of exposure latitude, unlike Ektar.
 
I have no experience with ektar as converted b/w film, but my own experience of scanning and converting colour to b/w leads me to believe it will do better than portra for all the reasons others are say it won't -- so take this w/ a grain of salt. When converting most colour to b/w it tends to look flat and unless your careful artificial filtration in PS can blow out highlights. Contrasty film tends convert to a much nicer b/w image to my eye.
 
Ummmm. Sounds like I need to do some testing. Consumer films are too grainy in my opinion to be considered. The conditions will be contrasty to begin with so I'm not sure if a "constrasty" film is the way to go. While I have years of experience with Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64, I am not sure I want to enter that battle once again. I have a Panasonic LX5 that I think I will use for colour and might just stick with FP4 for B&W. I checked my bulk loader for XP2 and it's almost finished so will not be using that. Sucks because I love the grainless skies you get with XP2.
 

You mean experience with K64 as scanning in B&W or you mean developing K64 for B&W? If the latter, care to PM me? I'm trying to do this.


~Stone

The Important Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

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