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Thread: Lenny comes through....again

  1. #11

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    Re: Lenny comes through....again

    Quote Originally Posted by Zaitz View Post
    Wow that Heidelberg scan is terrible.
    I'm trying to figure out what happened. Is the operator, or some auto-focus algorithm, focusing on the texture in anti-newton-ring glass because it's easier to see than the film grain, effectively masquerading as grain? If they were focusing on the grain, I would have thought that the image sharpness would come along for the ride.

  2. #12

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    Re: Lenny comes through....again

    When you zoom in on the Heidelberg scan it looks like a lot of things are double image. Like the film moved over a slight bit during scanning. A lot of the branches you can see twice. I think that is accounting for the blur.
    My website Flickr
    "There is little or no ‘reality’ in the blacks, grays and whites of either the informational or expressive black-and-white image" -Ansel Adams

  3. #13
    austin granger's Avatar
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    Re: Lenny comes through....again

    I'd like to join in and say a good word about Lenny as well. I recently sent him two tricky 5x7 negatives of snowy scenes. The negs were over exposed and over developed but Lenny managed to make some beautiful scans-the highlights are reined in but still full of life, there's great detail in the shadows, and the overall sharpness is just terrific. I couldn't be happier. In addition, Lenny proved to be very generous with his time; we spoke at length on the phone and he was more than happy to answer my questions and offer much good advise. He even called me afterwards as a follow up to see how things went. One word of caution though; if you're a lover of HP5 or Tri-X, be prepared to defend yourself! Seriously though, the man knows what he's doing and he's kind to boot. I wish I could send him all of my negatives.

  4. #14

    Re: Lenny comes through....again

    Quote Originally Posted by austin granger View Post
    I'd like to join in and say a good word about Lenny as well. I recently sent him two tricky 5x7 negatives of snowy scenes. The negs were over exposed and over developed but Lenny managed to make some beautiful scans-the highlights are reined in but still full of life, there's great detail in the shadows, and the overall sharpness is just terrific. I couldn't be happier. In addition, Lenny proved to be very generous with his time; we spoke at length on the phone and he was more than happy to answer my questions and offer much good advise. He even called me afterwards as a follow up to see how things went. One word of caution though; if you're a lover of HP5 or Tri-X, be prepared to defend yourself! Seriously though, the man knows what he's doing and he's kind to boot. I wish I could send him all of my negatives.
    just curious, what will he say of hp5 and tri-x? and what does he recommends?

  5. #15

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    Re: Lenny comes through....again

    Quote Originally Posted by perfectedmaya View Post
    just curious, what will he say of hp5 and tri-x? and what does he recommends?
    OK, I'll bite. This is scanning we are talking about - and not contact printing. In scanning, the results I seem to like best come from film/development combos that create densely-packed grains, and a smooth tone. I used Tri-x in my early years and have great respect for the smooth tones of the original version. However, I find the grain is unnecessarily large in both the films you ask about. We have samples (in a drum scanner) that are the pixels that get generated (more or less of them than we need) and we have the dithering pattern of a printer. There is enough patterning that happens. I prefer to leave grain out of the mix if I can.

    A person asked me earlier today about D76. It is a solvent type developer that is called a fine grained developer. That's because the high amount of Sodium Sulfite eats away at the edges of the grains, making them smaller. They are therefore farther apart and the resulting print will appear more grainy. False advertising at its best.

    In my last test I worked with TMax, TMY2, Ilford Delta 100/400 and Efke 25, in about 20 different developers. Using rotary development in the Jobo, Xtol 1:1 was the best developer. (We did not include Pyro because there were so many variants and we already knew Pyro would be excellent. (Those tests will come later this year.) Delta 100 came out on top, by a hair. Both TMax and TMY2 were excellent but more expensive, the Efke was also good but the slower speed made us go back to the Delta. All of these films are excellent. We chose Delta because of its price and because Ilford has made a public commitment to B&W. Acros is a good film as well but we had no idea what Fuji was up to and we were looking for the film we could buy a bunch of going forward.

    All of these films have very tight grain and were perfectly sensitive in the sensitivity tests. None of the 400 speed films worked well with the exception of TMY2. There was enough of a difference to dismiss them for our purpose.

    One important footnote. In our development methodology the Xtol had a very short range from N-3 to N+2. Where D-23 went from 3:45 to about 14 minutes or so to cover the development range, Xtol's range was from 4 to 7 minutes. When we went over 8 minutes of development, the grain literally exploded. Take care to not overdevelop with Xtol. We used a tight concentration 1:1 vs 1:3 to make sure that developer exhaustion was not a factor and if you don't have this issue you can move to a lesser dilution.

    I make no claim that this was a perfect test, or that these results are for everyone. It's just what I found...

    Lenny
    EigerStudios
    Museum Quality Drum Scanning and Printing

  6. #16

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    Re: Lenny comes through....again

    Lenny if you like the grain pattern and tone with your film of choice processed in D23, but not the developing times; why not change dilution and/or temperature so as to arrive at a time you like- anything against that? Apart from being good (for me anyway), D23 is so convenient, easy to mix, cheap.
    Always interested in reading your comments,
    Hans.

  7. #17

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    Re: Lenny comes through....again

    Quote Originally Posted by Lenny Eiger View Post
    ...We used a tight concentration 1:1 vs 1:3 to make sure that developer exhaustion was not a factor and if you don't have this issue you can move to a lesser dilution...
    Quote Originally Posted by Hans Berkhout View Post
    Lenny if you like the grain pattern and tone with your film of choice processed in D23, but not the developing times; why not change dilution and/or temperature so as to arrive at a time you like...
    Lenny will probably jump in and address temperature but, as concerns dilution, exhaustion is a major driver in this situation. D-23 (and D-76, Microdol-X, Perceptol, etc.) require 250 ml of stock solution per 80 square inches of film developed. XTOL needs only 100 ml for the same area, which enables processing more film per run than those others do. This is particularly advantageous with larger sheet formats.

    For example, with XTOL at 1+1 (500 ml stock plus 500 ml water), there's enough capacity for 5 8x10 sheets in a 3005 Expert drum. D-23 could only develop 2 sheets at 1+1 while respecting the processor motor's 1 liter rotation limit.

  8. #18

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    Re: Lenny comes through....again

    Quote Originally Posted by Hans Berkhout View Post
    Lenny if you like the grain pattern and tone with your film of choice processed in D23, but not the developing times; why not change dilution and/or temperature so as to arrive at a time you like- anything against that? Apart from being good (for me anyway), D23 is so convenient, easy to mix, cheap.
    Always interested in reading your comments,
    Hans.
    Sal and Hans,
    Sal is, of course, correct about the reason for the 1:1 vs 1:3. My initial tests with the Jobo and Pyro were a disaster because of developer exhaustion. This was my fault and should not reflect on Pyro at all. It's a very important factor. The idea that you would vary the amt of developer for the amt of film is crazy to me, having been thru this. I now put in the same amt of fluid no matter how many sheets I am developing. I use both the 3005 with 5 sheets of 8x10 and the 3010 with 10 sheets of 4x5.

    I used D-23 for many years when I was contact printing 8x10. It is fabulous for that purpose, IMO, smooth and delicious. However, for scanning I wanted tighter, more densely packed grains. The sodium sulfite is too good of a solvent for that.

    I have to add that a lot of this depends on who's printing. Some folks like the grainy effect (altho' it looks different on an inkjet printer than it does on a darkroom print). Some people want to print with lots of contrast, shoot with red filters and infrared film. It's all good. Personally, I like a full, very smooth tonal range, like a platinum print. Anyone reading my comments should keep this bias in mind.

    Best,

    Lenny
    EigerStudios
    Museum Quality Drum Scanning and Printing

  9. #19

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    Re: Lenny comes through....again

    Wow.

  10. #20

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    Re: Lenny comes through....again

    Quote Originally Posted by geoawelch View Post
    Wow.
    Wanted to explain this comment so that it is not misconstrued as being underwhelming or sarcastic.

    While reading this thread I was struck by Lenny's skill and the quality of his work, especially in the portion of the thread where the three scans were shown.

    I also came upon Marty Knapp's endorsement of Lenny's work. Well, let me tell you, that led me to Marty's site, breathtaking images with wonderful words to go with them. I spent over an hour there.

    So when I came to the end of the thread, it truly had been a "Wow" experience.

    With a fair amount of LF experience, and after a 10+ year hiatus, I am struck not only by the wealth of information on this site during my short time here, but also by the friendliness of the members and discussions conducted in a (usually) cordial manner.

    My apologies for hijacking the thread.

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