[pure-silver] Re: Why does B&W Film Scan so poorly

Hi Justin,

the one thing I found that really screws up B/W scanning is this ICE 
function, the one to remove dirt and scratches from the negs. What the 
scanner does there, is take two passes over the negative: one in infrared 
to catch the damage and dust and then one scan with light to scan the neg. 
The ICE function then subtracts the infrared image from the real one, 
voila, no more dust etc.

However the problem is, that silver halide crystals look like dust to the 
infrared eye. Therefore you get very little image left, once ICE has done 
its trick.

You can avoid this by using chromogenic B/W films, i.e. the ones that get 
developed in the C-41 colour process. Or just turn off ICE.

As far as normal b/W films are concerned, scan them as colur films and look 
at the three colour channels in Photoshop to see the different renderings 
of b/w. Then you can mix these channels to adjust the fnal digital image in 
contrast and tonal values. This can be quite fiddly.

In all honesty, I have given up on scanning b/w negs. I find it far too 
time consuming. My friend Lance has a flat bed scanner and he scans several 
negs at once, which is good enough to then show the models the "prints" the 
proper way around on the screen. Sort of "quick" contact sheets.

But I find that scanning with my Nikon film scanner shows up loads of 
scratches and other marks and I have to take ages to Photoshop them out on 
a horrid 72 dpi screen, like most screens are.  This is NOT my idea of fun. 
My (colour head) enlarger has fairly soft light and hence I get very little 
visible scratches and dust and I can spot the prints in 30 seconds with my 
paint brush...much nicer work.

I just love the feel of sitting there hunched over my 30x40cm prints, using 
my brush and enjoying ther prints as I go along. Very zen in a way...:-)

Love
Snoopy

At 13:44 27.02.2005, you wrote:

>     Hi,
>
>     I love B&W. Really, I do. But I am shooting with it less and less
>because it scans horribly. It never looks nearly as good as when I scan
>colour and then desaturate.
>
>     Why is that? Any websites with tips on how to improve this? I did
>some searching and only came up with a few replies. At worst, maybe
>someone would be as so kind as to explain to me what B&W scans worse
>then colour.
>
>     Thanks
>
>     J
>
>
>--
>Justin F. Knotzke
>jknotzke@xxxxxxxxxx
>http://www.shampoo.ca
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