Best B&Wfilm for drum scanning ?

[Gary Tarbert]

Hi guys , I would appriciate some tips or advice on the best films to use for scanning
rather than traditional darkroom proccess (i just can't get a darkroom together at the moment)i also shoot 8x10 and don't have a 8x10 enlarger.
I have never tried to scan mono before but the general consensus is mono doesn't scan well,how true is this, and what is the best way to go.cheers Gary

[Ed Richards]

> the general consensus is mono doesn't scan well

First time I have heard this. B&W scans great, none of that nasty color stuff to worry about. Hard to beat Tmax, and for 8x10 Tmax 400 would be the way to go, since grain does not matter. It has remarkable range and scans very well. As others have said, you want a slightly thinner/flatter negative for best results with a consumer grade scanner.

[Frank Petronio]

is there a bad film?

[Ron Marshall]

TMX, Delta 100, TMY and Acros have some of the finest grain and all scan very well. But I just had some HP5 drum scanned and those scans looked great.

[Bruce Watson]

Hi guys, I would appreciate some tips or advice on the best films to use for scanning rather than traditional darkroom process (I just can't get a darkroom together at the moment) I also shoot 8x10 and don't have a 8x10 enlarger. I have never tried to scan mono before but the general consensus is mono doesn't scan well, how true is this, and what is the best way to go. Cheers Gary

I do my own drum scanning of 5x4 Tri-X souped in XTOL 1:3. Certainly from my viewpoint the "general consensus" is wrong. Scanning B&W film is different than scanning color materials, but not necessarily more difficult. You just have to know what you are doing, like everything else.

If you are ever going to print your film using conventional darkroom printing, then optimize the film for darkroom printing. It will scan just fine. If however you are sure you'll only scan the film and never print it in the darkroom, you can get slightly better results by pulling development a bit (about a stop). Just make sure you have enough exposure for the shadows! This will help in scanning by decreasing somewhat the Callier Effect -- less density means less light scatter. Same as with an enlarger really, and one of the reasons to develop only that density required to do what you want to do, and no more.

[chilihead]

Polaroid Type 55P/N.

[Ted Harris]

Whatever film you prefer. You don't need to do anything different. A well exposed negative scans just fine.

[D. Bryant]

Hi guys , I would appriciate some tips or advice on the best films to use for scanning
rather than traditional darkroom proccess (i just can't get a darkroom together at the moment)i also shoot 8x10 and don't have a 8x10 enlarger.
I have never tried to scan mono before but the general consensus is mono doesn't scan well,how true is this, and what is the best way to go.cheers Gary

Any B&W film that is developed for printing on grade 1 to grade 4 paper or there abouts. If you have your development dialed in for grade 2 silver gelatin you shouldn't have any problem.

Of course your scanner capabilities will have a determination about how well it can scan denser negatives.

In short what Ted said.

Don Bryant

[Daniel_Buck]

I had my tri-X 320 4x5 drum scanned once just for a test, and I must say it turned out quite nice. A slower film would have less grain I assume, but grain doesn't bother me. If you have it scanned at a nice high resolution (like 4000dpi) be prepaired to deal with a large file (and a large price tag), if you aren't already used to large files, even more so for an 8x10.

I don't want to bring the thread in a different direction, but how large are you looking to print? The price of a decent flatbed scanner ($500 or so) would give you very nice scans of the 8x10 film (at the price of drum scanning just 2 or 3 8x10s), I imagine on an 8x10 flat bed you could easily make a 30" print with no problems. Flat beds don't capture as much detail as a drum scan does, but an 8x10 has a nice big area to scan from, so the flat bed would to nice for medium sized prints. Just something else to consider if you don't want to pay for a drum scan each time :-)

[Kirk Gittings]

If you are ever going to print your film using conventional darkroom printing, then optimize the film for darkroom printing. It will scan just fine. If however you are sure you'll only scan the film and never print it in the darkroom, you can get slightly better results by pulling development a bit (about a stop). Just make sure you have enough exposure for the shadows! This will help in scanning by decreasing somewhat the Callier Effect -- less density means less light scatter. Same as with an enlarger really, and one of the reasons to develop only that density required to do what you want to do, and no more.

I concur.