Film & Scanning

I have a new Epson 3800 arriving this week - digi neg time! However, a couple of things keeping me awake As a precursor to the questions below I normally use FP4 or HP5 film and have an epson 2450 scanner and very soon the epson 3800 printer. After playing with Keriks EDN system and curve for the printer I may go on and experiment with QTR.

If my main aim is to make 5x4 negs and scan them to make large digi negs should I expose the film differently to maximise the quality of the scan?

I have used Pyrocat HD for quite a while now and am happy with the result for both alt process and silver printing - is it easier or better to scan negs developed in non staining developer.

I have read somewhere that you should scan negs in RGB mode and use only the blue or red channel - I can't remember which.

Many thanks in advance, Carl

Having just checked the scanning resources I've found the answer to question 3.

Carl Radford said:

If my main aim is to make 5x4 negs and scan them to make large digi negs should I expose the film differently to maximise the quality of the scan?

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Sort of - Basically you can go a lot deeper, similar to the neg you might make for contact printing in platinum. You can get quite dark as well in the highlights. It's a much longer tonal range.

Carl Radford said:

I have used Pyrocat HD for quite a while now and am happy with the result for both alt process and silver printing - is it easier or better to scan negs developed in non staining developer.

Click to expand...

Not generically speaking. I like a neg that has very little grain, usually a developer without phenidone in it. I like PMK and Pyrocat, but they are excellent for silver printing, and just great for scanning. I've been using D-23 lately and having some good luck with that as well. I don't think you can go wrong with the Pyrocat, but you don't usually need to worry about blowing out the highlight. A simplified zone system works very well.

Carl Radford said:

I have read somewhere that you should scan negs in RGB mode and use only the blue or red channel - I can't remember which.

Click to expand...

I use the green channel primarily... after scanning in RGB on a drum scanner.

Thanks Lenny _ appreciate the info. I think before I start a major scanning project the scanner will get replaced by a V700 or V750 as I also have 5x7 negs. It is good to know there is no real difference in pyro vs other forms of dev though!