Scanning. Best B&W film/chemistry.

[PenGun]

I've searched and read quite a bit and still have not found a firm conclusion, perhaps not surprising.

Pyro is suposed to be good for contact printing, some film/developer combinations are liked by many for enlarging but what scans best? Your interpretation of 'best' will be useful too ;).

I intend to scan 4x5 B&W and later colour and print on a 24" HP or perhaps a Canon or Epson. The 24" HP Z3100 I can get for $1500. A v750 is about $700.

[Ron Marshall]

My favourite combination to scan, good tonality, fine grain, sharp, is TMY in XTOL 1:1 or 1:2.

[Bruce Watson]

My favourite combination to scan, good tonality, fine grain, sharp, is TMY in XTOL 1:1 or 1:2.

What Ron said. I would add XTOL 1:3, which is what I use.

If you are ever going to use the film with an enlarger in the darkroom, then optimize for the darkroom. If you are *never* going to use the film in the darkroom, you can optimize for scanning.

That is, you can pull your development times a bit to lower your film's highlight density. Just make sure you're getting enough exposure to give you the shadow detail you want. The lower density of your highlights will lower your Callier Effect (light scatter from metallic silver) in the highlights which will result in marginally improved local contrast in your highlights. And that's a good thing.

You'll have to experiment to find what's optimum for your film/images/processing/scanner of course.

[Eric Brody]

I use TMX and TMY, and Acros, now that TMX readyloads are about to disappear. I develop in Xtol 1:2 and have been pleased with my scanning results.

Good luck.

Eric

[PenGun]

I've ordered up some TMAX-2 400. I guess it's the latest TMY ... I dunno. I have some Ilford DDX handy so I'll start with that. Thanks eh'.

[Ron Marshall]

As Bruce mentioned, negs intended for scanning can be less contrasty and thinner than those intended for conventional enlarging.

Here is a scan from a neg that I mistakenly developed to N-3 instead of N-1. It is very thin, but after a PS contrast curve it prints well.

[Ed Richards]

I have been shocked at how well the scanner gets detail from negatives I thought were hopelessly underexposed.

[PenGun]

I will definitely be dong some tests when I get the scanner next month. A range of exposures will be a start to see how far under the scanner likes.

Again, thanks eh'.

[Colin Corneau]

Ron's post reminds me that maybe it doesn't matter so much which film and developer combo one uses -- there's so much a hand skilled in digital work can do that it negates the relatively small differences.

Just a thought.

[Lenny Eiger]

Ron's post reminds me that maybe it doesn't matter so much which film and developer combo one uses -- there's so much a hand skilled in digital work can do that it negates the relatively small differences.

Just a thought.

Yeaaaaah, sort of but not exactly. It helps if you have your own scanner, you know what you want, you don't print very large and you print sort of contrasty.

There are things a great scanner can do. I have a neg that was very overexposed and my drum scanner was able to pull out a very decent image/print from it. However, when you want to have a real quality print, it is still much better to get as much as you can in the film. The zone system IS NOT dead....

Lenny

[Bjorn Nilsson]

Well, let's toss in Pyrocat-HD (and its siblings) into the discussion.
The idea of using Pyro (or in this case pyrocatechin) is that the remaining silver image is thin and there's an addition of stain which is grainless. My results with scanning pyro and pyrocat negs are very good and many others recommend Pyrocat for scanned negatives.

//Björn

[Lenny Eiger]

Lately, my favorite developer is (again) D-23. Favorite film is Efke 25.

Lenny