Pyro and scanning

I've used PMK and ABC pyro in the past, but no longer have any of those negatives thanks to an ex-wife. I'm considering using it again, but I wonder if it works with a negative scanner. I generally do contact prints, but I've recently gotten a negative scanner for the web. Does a negative scanner see the pyro stain similarly to paper? Or does it just see the thinner silver?
Thanks,
Juan

To answer your question, I really don't know, for sure. I would think, though, that since some of the pyro stain (notably ABC and PMK) affects UV transmission that the scanner may not see the stain of the pyro accurately. The reason that I say this is that the scanners of which I am aware all use a discharge type light source (flourescent in nature). Depending on the phosphors which the manufacturer uses, these may have a sizeable UV output. Again, this is only based upon a somewhat limited awareness and not on actual experience.

The one developer that I have encountered that seems to not have the same degree of UV blocking is Sandy King's Pyrocat HD formula. The formula can be found on Ed Buffaloe's site www.unblinkingeye.com. Hope that this helps. Good luck.

I develped a lot of TRI-X 5X7 negatives in PMK back in the early 90s and they have quite a lot of greenish/brown stain. Recently I have been scanning these negatives to make enlarged digital negatives for carbon and kallitype printing. On both my scanners, an Epson 2450 and an Epson 836XL thes negatives scan ok, without any particular problem, with just slightly more contrast than what one would see with a negative developed in a non-staining developer.

Sandy King

You can see the contrast differences from the stain in the RGB channels, if you do a full color scan. You can play with combining the different channels (when converting to greyscale) with different results.

Pyro negatives, especially PMK negatives, are GREAT for scanning. The stain makes the contrast appear lower to the scanner, and as long as they're not too dense they actually seem to scan easier and with less worry about losing highlights or shadows in the process. To be honest, I often wish they printed as easily as they scanned.

One thing...DO scan them as RGB files, then convert them to gray as soon as they're scanned. I tested this once not long ago and found that there is pretty considerable difference between the tonality of pyro negs scanned RGB and grayscale.

dgh

Thanks guys. That's enough information to push me to use the Fred Picker method - "Try It."
Juan