How to scan BW400CN ?

I about to scan my first ever roll of BW400CN on my Konica Minolta

Dimage Scan Dual IV. What is the best way to scan it? BW400CN is a

black and white film for C-41. Should I scan it as B/W, or should I

scan it as if it is a C-41 color film?

If you scan it as color film you will get a sepia toned image. (the film has a brownish orange tint) At least thats what my epson perfection scanner did when I scanned some 400CN as color film. I kinda liked the way they looked and I kept them brown. I would say try it both ways and see which one suites your taste.

It all comes from the same CCD image, the difference between positive/negative/color/BW is in software processing (which you can do yourself)

What it always starts from is a color positive scan

Edgar makes a very key point which far too many people fail to grasp.

 

Juergen, remember Edgar's point and things will make a lot more sense when you will end up developing a scanning technique that works for you instead of some black magic that sometimes works better than other times.

 

FWIW, I used to shoot a lot of Ilford XP2 and scanned it as a b&w neg just like all the other b&w negs. But I use Vuescan.

BW400CN scans very nicely as color negative film (which it technically is closest to) and doesn't produce any obvious color cast on my LS-5000 (T400CN was much different in this respect, with color cast varying from shot to shot). I do convert it to a grayscale image just so that it prints neutral.

 

BW400CN produces a lowish contrast image but the grain is the finer than any color film currently made. You can adjust the contrast but I find that surface defects become more visible when you increase contrast by an aggressive curves operation. If you want to get high contrast images, it's better to shoot Velvia and convert to B&W using channel mixer or some similar technique. Fine grain and high contrast with no artifacts.

 

If you like a low or medium contrast image, BW400CN is excellent.

One point which no one has mentioned. Digital ICE does not work with conventional silver

halide B/W film. In some scanning software (not sure about Minolta), the options for using

Digital ICE are disabled when you choose to scan as B/W. Hence, if you want to use Digital

ICE for dust and scratch removal, you may need to scan your film as a color negative. I use

Vuescan to run my Minolta scanner, and scan BW400CN as a color negative, but write the

output files as grayscale.

Just a newbie here folks so please forgive the newbie perspective. I have a Nikon Coolscan V-ED, Running with the Nikon software. I have been scanning BW400CN and the results have been great, particulary in the area of low noise. Perhaps it is the way I use the software but I get higher noise levels with XP2. Can anyone please add thoughts?