bset film to shoot cover and a few pages on rare books

[destroya]

I need for insurance reason, the cover, binding and a few specific pages of some rare books I own. I will be shooting them in a studio with all the lighting equipment I can use. I only have a few hours in the studio and would really like to get it right the first time as I really dont like taking the books out and about. I will be also shooting digital so i can send them jpeg's, but film for myself.

I have many types of films to choose from. but my thinking was this would be the perfect situation to use document style films, like tech pan or CMS 20. Or should i just keep it simple and use a normal panchromatic film like tmax, acros or even a higher contrast film like rollei retro 80s? most likely i would bring 2 film cameras so i could just shoot both type and choose which i prefer. that being said....

if i use a tech pan style film, shooting pages is going to be a low contrast situation so how would you meter/ what would you shoot the film at? I know, for example tech pan, people shoot at 25 and use td-3 or technidol for a developer when trying to get a full tonal scale. but i think i remember reading someplace that when shooting low contrast documents to rate the film as high as 250? does this sound right?

any help from people who have done this before would be greatly appreciated!

thanks

john

 

[Ai Print]

If you are able to shoot medium format, I would have a back loaded with TMX100 and one loaded with CMS20 ( If they make in 120? ) It is far easier to increase contrast than it is to recover lost tones from being too high contrast, especially considering this will not just be text.

 

[Peltigera]

If it is for record purposes and not reproduction, it doesn't really matter too much which film. Colour film would record foxing and such better than monochrome film will.

 

[destroya]

thanks