Best film/develper combo for scans

Unfortunately I do not have enough space for an enlarger and trays... just enough for my PC and an Imacon 646 scanner. So, some people in the APUG forum recommended this forum.

I shoot 35mm and 6x7cm, edit the scans in Photoshop and print very large B/W prints (Epson printer).

My favourite films are Tmax 100 and Tri-X, they are souped in XTol 1:1. These are good films and a good developer, but there is a disadvantage.

My Imacon works like a condensor enlarger and emphasizes the grain. As the grain becomes very visible I can not sharpen my landscape images as much as I would like to.

I heard some reports that it might be a better idea to use a developer that creates sharper negatives from the beginning so that there is not so much sharpening necessary... or staining developers... other friends tried to convince me using C-41 films like XP2... but I prefer silver films.

According to your experience, what is a better combination for very high quality scans for large prints?

I've used Imacons and found that using unsharp mask whilst scanning is an issue. Are you scanning in RGB mode? Imacon's profiles are not so good and scanning b&w negs in greyscale is not as good as rgb. In addition at one time Imacon stated that they were aware of the grain alaising issue and were coming up with a new light source for their scanners -- you might want to contact them and see if this is true and it there is an alternate slight source for your scanner.

Bob Carnie has had to overcome issues with staining devs and an imacon, maybe he will post here with a suggestion.

I used to work at a commercial lab that used Xtol for all b&w film. Since it produces relatively fine grain you would think it would scan well, and that was the opinion of the dedicated film scanning person there.

I am a bit of a novice when it comes to scanning, so I can offer no expert opinion, only what I've learned from others. It would make sense to me that to get the sharpness a true b&w film has to offer, you would have to actually resolve the grain. I remember Roger Hicks stating that you need true resolution in the realm of about 4800 ppi to do so successfully. I don't know whether that's true or not, but it makes sense to me. I have no clue what the actual resolution of the Imacon you have is, but a friend of mine uses one and his is 3200.

I've also heard Sandy King promote scanning in a single color channel, especially with negatives developed in a staining developer. I don't know if that would provide any benefits with non-staining chemistry too.

I hope that helps add to the confusion.

- Thomas

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I used to work at a commercial lab that used Xtol for all b&w film. Since it produces relatively fine grain you would think it would scan well, and that was the opinion of the dedicated film scanning person there.

Click to expand...

That's what I thought, too, but then you need to sharpen a lot because Xtol even in 1:1 does not have that extra punch I like in the images.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I remember Roger Hicks stating that you need true resolution in the realm of about 4800 ppi to do so successfully. I don't know whether that's true or not, but it makes sense to me. I have no clue what the actual resolution of the Imacon you have is, but a friend of mine uses one and his is 3200.

Click to expand...

It has 6300 dpi when you scan from a 35mm neg, and a real Dmax of 4.6.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I've also heard Sandy King promote scanning in a single color channel, especially with negatives developed in a staining developer.

Click to expand...

Sounds interesting, and I am not confused at all, it helps to narrow down on the options.

cmox said:

It has 6300 dpi when you scan from a 35mm neg, and a real Dmax of 4.6.

Click to expand...

I think you may find that the 4.6 real Dmax is actually a mathematical abstraction/construct (as in a product of colour depth per channel) and that the real or practical Dmax (as in where the scanner stops recording image information due impenetrable density) is in the vicinity of 3.x.

jd callow said:

I think you may find that the 4.6 real Dmax is actually a mathematical abstraction/construct (as in a product of colour depth per channel) and that the real or practical Dmax (as in where the scanner stops recording image information due impenetrable density) is in the vicinity of 3.x.

Click to expand...

Sure. But after having tested some other scanners (Nikon, Epson, Minolta) I can only confirm that the Imacon's capability of recording details in dense highlights is much better than with all the others. The only scanner that came close in this discipline was the KonicaMinolta Dimage Elite II (what a stupid name...). But the corners were never sharp, and it was notoriously unreliable.

Are there any films that develop density beyond 4? I thought velvia was the hardest to scan, with Dmax approaching 4 or so. I had a very, very overexposed (i.e. black) piece of b&w film that I threw on my epson flatbed and it easily pulled out the detail even though I could barely see it with my own eyes. From that I concluded that the ~3.7 or so that I get from my flatbed is sufficient for b&w work. Velvia is another matter...

Anyway regarding scannability, I have been told several times that the most scannable film is... ilford xp2. I played with it- yeah it's nice to scan. But I find that there is precious little that I can do with the film.

Most of my lab-processed stuff is worked in xtol, I don't see excessive grain in that stuff, even the IR stuff. I develop my own sheets in good old ID11/D76 1+1 and it scans swell. I tried acu-fine on some sheets and saw no practical difference compared with ID11. If I were scanning 35mm then I would probably care more and go to xtol.

What did make a big difference was scanning b&w sheet film wet... the scanned seemed far better all 'round. But I don't have a proper wet holder so I haven't gone back to that. Right now all the colour stuff is drum scanned at a lab and I just flatbed the b&w stuff myself.

We use the Imocan here for most of our work, to date we are quite happy with this Unit.
For larger scans we are sending out to National Geographics scanning dept and I am going to send work to Lenny Eiger for top , rate scans.

Stained negatives were problematic on the Imocan, when we printed at very large magnification on the Harmon Fibre base paper.
Basically it boiled down to finding the right profile setting to start with. If we used the standard BW setting or the HP5 or TriX setting for small prints or those intended for inkjet we would be ok.
We were seeing problems in the shadow areas at the high magnifications that basically showed up as added noise.
We shifted to the XP2 setting which has a higher Base Density plus fog that is somewhere near the stain density of PMK film. Instantly our preview looked good with minor tweeks.. Using the intended profiles forced us to make major curve adjustments at the scanning stage, that in the final product could not handle. By switching to a profile made for a negative with very high stain did the trick. I still cannot figure out how this worked exactly since as we know XP2 stain is very red/Magenta and PMK stain can be very Yellow/Green. I would have thought the colour would have been a factor but it seems to be the base density amount rather than the colour.
Colour to BW Conversion
for black and white output we will always scan in rgb and as some mentioned the green channel is always good.
What we do is look into all three channels because sometimes there is info in the red or even the blue*usually the noisiest* that we will *apply image* in luminosity mode and merge the green into the red, or green into the blue. Dropping the bad channel and then going back to colour mode and use the convert to BW and with the eyedropper start moving the tones around a bit to create better contrast.
I have been playing with this for the last year and lots to learn and any tips are appreciated to try.

I use a Flextight II and I scan in RGB positive mode as well, then invert and add a "film curve" in photoshop. This works much better IMO than using the built in profiles. I have used TMAX-100 and XTOL quite a bit (1:2, 1:3). For negatives I don't sharpen in Flexcolor, setting USM to -120. Setting to zero or disabling USM still gives you sharpening.

Dave Eisenlord
www.davideisenlord.com

I agree with Dave, I do not sharpen at scan stage, but later in the process.

ike said:

I use a Flextight II and I scan in RGB positive mode as well, then invert and add a "film curve" in photoshop. This works much better IMO than using the built in profiles. I have used TMAX-100 and XTOL quite a bit (1:2, 1:3). For negatives I don't sharpen in Flexcolor, setting USM to -120. Setting to zero or disabling USM still gives you sharpening.

Dave Eisenlord
www.davideisenlord.com

Click to expand...