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Thread: Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

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  1. #1

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    Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

    While I've done my share of B&W photography, I've been shooting color for the past few years. And before that I was shooting digital at my newspaper job. So I'm a bit out of the loop when it comes to the latest and greatest films and developers for B&W. The films haven't changed much since I last did serious film testing in college. But developers have. For an upcoming project I may want to shoot 4x5 B&W as a departure from my other large-format work that has all been shot on C-41.

    My goal would be to make great drum scans on my Howtek for large inkjet prints. But I don't want to optimize for scanning to the extent that I can't also make excellent darkroom prints. Going back to B&W is a bit of an experiment so I don't know for certain what the final product will be.

    I'm not too worried about film speed for my static subjects. I also like lots of acutance and I like the look of nice, sharp grain. (In my photo-j and street photography days, my all-time favorite was tri-x in Rodinal!) But I don't want exaggerated grain for this work, just a nice texture. I love the tonality of Tri-X but for this work I might want a bit less grain. My initial thought was to try FP-4, but I'm open to suggestions.

    Of course I'll do some testing, but any recommendations for starting points? Everyone seems to love the pyro developers these days, but how do those negs scan?

  2. #2

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    Re: Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

    Noah,

    I can't really help with the scanning aspects, there are others here who know more than I do about that, but can say that I like FP-4 very much. All my Chicago River images were done on it. I am currently doing another long term project for which I wanted a faster film, and am using TMY-2 which appears to me to be a bit sharper (higher resolution and acutance) than FP-4. The 2 films have a different look—they are both very nice, so you might want to try them both and see which you like. I find Pyrocat to be the best developer for both films, although XTOL is very close, especially diluted 1:3.

    How big will you be printing?
    ____________________________________________

    Richard Wasserman

    https://www.rwasserman.com/

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    Re: Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

    Noah,

    I get really nice scans with TMY-2 and DD-X. Smooth tones and great highlight/shadow detail.
    Jim Cole
    Flagstaff, AZ

  4. #4
    ROL's Avatar
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    Re: Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

    Here's a comparison of PMK Pyro and XTOL with FP4+. (Caveat: These are scanned prints, not cheated scanned negatives.)

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    Re: Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

    In my opinion the best compromise is XTOL!

    Cheers Armin

  6. #6
    retrogrouchy
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    Re: Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

    Any of them. The only real sin when scanning is overdeveloping; you can underdevelop a bit if you like but there's not a lot of point as it will make the dust stand out. Since you want to wet-print these eventually, just make properly-exposed and -developed negatives and they will scan nicely. While overdeveloping (to the point where the neg spans about 3.0D) will make your scan a bit grainy and unwieldy, it would be basically unprintable on normal paper, so don't worry too much about it.

    Any decent scanner (especially drums!) will have a Dmax of about 4.0D, whereas a good neg will have a dynamic range of about 1.5D that you put onto the print; you'll find you get a lot more shadow and highlight detail in a 16-bit scan than you can fit onto paper.

    Short answer is: a good scanner is way more forgiving than paper, so don't worry about it.

    (like apparently everyone else above, I too really like TMY2 in XTOL for its excellent speed and fine grain. But nearly any other combo can be made to work for you; there are no magic bullets)

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    Re: Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

    Quote Originally Posted by polyglot View Post
    (like apparently everyone else above, I too really like TMY2 in XTOL for its excellent speed and fine grain. But nearly any other combo can be made to work for you; there are no magic bullets)
    I know you're just being general, but for the record, as one of the 'above', though I have used them, I do not prefer TMAX films in large format. But then I don't hard copy fine art work digitally either.

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    Re: Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

    Quote Originally Posted by polyglot View Post
    Any decent scanner (especially drums!) will have a Dmax of about 4.0D, whereas a good neg will have a dynamic range of about 1.5D that you put onto the print; you'll find you get a lot more shadow and highlight detail in a 16-bit scan than you can fit onto paper.
    A few days ago, I scanned a Stouffer Step wedge. My Epson V700 scanner shows a range of around 16 steps, each of which is 1/2 stop. That's an 8-stop range, which in log 10 is 2.4

    Epson claims a dMax of 4.0 which equates to around 13 stops. Not this machine anyhow. But then Epson claims a lot more dpi than any of us have measured too.

  9. #9

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    Re: Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

    Thanks for the tips! I'm not looking for a magic bullet, just some starting recommendations that I can test since I've been out of the B&W world for a while.

    I never liked the look of the t-grain films when I was shooting 35mm, but then again that style of work is a whole different game from what I'm doing now. I really like the look of my old standby combination (Tri-X in Rodinal) but I want smaller grain.

    I think I'll try out TMY-2 and FP4, maybe I'll test Tri-X too since I have a few sheets. Perhaps I'll try a pyro developer as well as xtol.

    I'm pretty sure my drum scanner can do well with B&W negs when it comes to capturing the tonal range, what I don't know about is how the staining developers will affect the look of the grain when the negs are scanned and enlarged by a good amount. I don't mind grain, but if it's visible I like it to be nice, tight, sharply-defined grain.

    Frankly I'm not sure how big the prints will be. Maybe I'll just decide to do silver contact prints for a real change of pace. But most likely I'll end up printing in my normal two edition sizes of 20x25 and 40x50.

  10. #10
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    Re: Best B&W film/developer for scanning (that's not bad for optical prints either!)?

    If you like grain, TMY2 isn't ideal as it is really fine grain and LF doesn't show grain much; if you make it big, it's tight and sharp though. It's a good film in that it can capture a massive range of light and dark to an extent usable on the computer and far beyond what is printable. It's also good quality like Ilford and can be used with many developers like Ilford.

    Scanning will provide more flexibility than optical printing, so something good for optical printing will scan fine. Something too thin for optical printing will also scan fine.

    Xtol is a good choice of developer for common films like have been described. Pyro (like pyrocat-hd in glycol) is also excellent over-the-counter choice but the stain might hide some grain making it smoother rather than crispy (and that could be good for people photos). It all depends on how big and contrasty you make things. It still has plenty of detail, versatility, scanability, and printability.

    As far as printing on inkjet, the quality of the scan is more important the grain of the film. A bad scan or not high enough res scan will show square soft pixels (from upsizing or lack of res) rather than actual grain. On my epson, a scan shows a clear difference between big grain fomapan100 and little grain tmy2. It's not high-end enough to show a difference between tmy2 and tmx though. (And I consider tmx needlessly fine for most needs)


    It sounds like it's an aesthetic choice for the OP as we've pointed out some good options to try.

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