Great post Mark, many thanks. I don't scan anything, I do wet stuff, so I'm not effected by scanning. I have a close friend who switched from B&W film to color neg for his B&W work. He converts the image to B&W in Photoshop. I have to admit that the results look great. :-) Jim >A few thoughts on this.... But first a bit of >background. I am an amateur photographer, and do the >bulk of my photography in B&W. For a profession, I am >an electronic engineer, and have spent much of my >career working on Analog To Digital (A/D) converters, >many of which are used for image digitization. > >When scanning an image, there are two, completely >separate things going on. You are sampling spatially, >and you are measuring the opacity of the film. In >sampling spatially, the determining factors are the >size of the spot which is sampled - which you rarely >if ever see specified on scanners, and the number of >samples per unit width. There is a theory (Nyquist >Theorem) which dictates how small this spot must be, >and how many samples you need to be able to sample the >image without loss of information, and the basic >answer is that the spot needs to be about half the >size of the smallest grain particles on the film. >This is where there is a significant difference >between colour film and B&W - in the colour film >process, the grains of silver are converted to dye >clouds, and they are on different layers of the >emulsion, with the end result being that there is not >as much high spatial frequency information on a colour >negative or transparancy as there is on a B&W >negative. Most scanners are designed to scan colour >images, and as a result, have their sample sizes >optimized for the colour die clouds. If you were to >design a scanner purely for B&W you would want to have >a much smaller sample size, and a greater number of >samples per inch than what you find for colour >scanners. > >The second dimension to the scanning process is the >dynamic range of the image. This is another place >where there is a real problem. On a microscopic >level, a B&W negative is just that - BLACK and WHITE - >it is only when we step back, and average the >transmission through the negative over an area that is >large compared to the grain size that greys appear. >The ideal scanner for B&W would only need a 1 bit A/D >converter, which would look over a very small area >(smaller than the grain size) - to generate a digital >black and white file, which could then be manipulated >digitally to give us what our eye sees when we look at >a good print. Alas, this is not what we have, what we >have is an A/D converter which averages the >transmission of light over an area large - but not >very large compared to the grain. The result is that >there is a relatively large amount of noise that ends >up in the image, which is created by exactly how the >grains within one of the samples from the scanner. > >There are other things that can complicate matters - >there is something called ICE which is used to reduce >such things as scratches and bits of dust on colour >negatives or slides. It works on the theory that >negatives and transparancies are transparant to IR, >regardless of the density in the visable part of the >spectrum. This assumption does not hold true for B&W >or for Kodachrome - so if using a scanner with ICE - >turn that feature off for scanning B&W. > >Where I have had the best results, is not to try >scanning the negative, but to generate a print in the >wet darkroom, then scan the print. > >Mark > > > > >__________________________________ >Do you Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more. >http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 >============================================================================================================= >To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your >account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you >subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there. ============================================================================================================= To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.