I cant tell the difference between Black and White vs desaturated color.

First of all, I enjoy shooting my Black and White film and

developing it. Honestly, I cannot tell the difference on internet

images or digital prints between a scanned Black and White from fp4+,

and a scanned Provia slide that was properly desaturated. I have no

doubt that a conventional darkroom print is very good and will likely

beat out a Digital print in terms of quality (I have no desire for

conventional analog printing).

 

I do know that my workflow time is cut by about 70% when I scan and

desaturate slides vs scan and tweak/clean/edit black and white film.

 

The time difference is huge for the different workflows. I have

spent greater than 1hr on one particular black and white negative

that I wanted all the dust and scratches removed. The print is

great, and it was well worth the time.

 

On the other hand, when I want a slide scanned and coverted it takes

about 5-10 minutes. Contact sheets are great just lay the slides on

a lightbox. However, the main difference is the ability to use

Digital Ice with non-silver films.

 

I just wanted to share my exerience thus far with my different

workflows. The extra time that I dont have to spend fixing scratches

in front of the Computer, I can spend time with my kids or go take

more pictures:)

 

Go ahead and flame away, or say," I TOLD YOU SO."

 

I just wanted to come clean and be as objective as I can.

 

Regards,

Steve Persky

Congratulations on finding a process that works for you. I hope that you will enjoy it for a long, long time. Thanks for sharing.

The only people who would flame you on this topic are those that have made conventional B/W processing some stupid religion and are not result oriented. Don't even waste your time, nor lower yourself to take that crowd seriously. The vast majority of commercial B/W you see published is desaturated B/W from either chrome or digital capture. Those of that can make a good scan from B/W film, and also print conventionally, will tend to agree with you.<P>

 

Ironically, the best arguement you have is right here on Photo.net. Simply go into the B/W forum here and look at the daily uploads from scans of B/W film. The vast majority of it is dull, lacks any tonal range, skips entire zones, has terrible grain structure, and just plain looks bland. The average portrait I see posted here from TMax films looks like the subject was is wearing several layers of foundation make-up. Even the worst consumer print film that's given a good scan and desaturated looks better than that junk, or low end digital capture. Most attempts to inform the poster in this result in somebody being more interesting in fiddling with B/W chemicals vs producing results, or thinks they can match large format B/W results printed on fiber based paper with their 35mm AE-1.<P>I've made great scans and digital prints from conventional B/W, but no longer by choice. Desaturating slides or my 10D capture *looks better* and affords channel mixer flexibility. <P><I>I have no doubt that a conventional darkroom print is very good and will likely beat out a Digital print in terms of quality </i><P>Bullcrap. I'll give medium and large printed B/W film hand printed onto fiber paper a nod as being tough to emulate with digital media. However, I'm been printing a good deal of my desaturated work onto Kodak Metallic via a Fuji Frontier, and the results totally demoralize *any* B/W RC paper in existence.

OT; abit; some goofballs on the net have camera manuals; service manuals; etc in PDF form; with desaturated color; that first appears as B&W......<BR><BR>. Some appear to be B&W greyscale; but are really real desaturated color. When we print these on our color copier; it uses all the CMYK toners; and costs us ten times more in "copy click cost". It also takes WAY longer to rip the files in the fiery. This error is easily prevented by sending the print job to our much faster B&W "Xerox" type printer; or ALWAYS manually forcing the print job to "greyscale"; when the job must goes to one of our color copiers. Some manuals have one or two sheets really in color; and the rest are desaturated B&W.....This is a pain in the rear; one must manually examine each PDF page; and print some as color; others as greyscale.....One customer of ours has 1 out of 10 PDF files like this; with no read-me's on what the PDF has in it....It is cheaper to always print greyscale; than manually print each color sheet; hidden in the bowels of the document....

Glasses maybe? (You said flame away)

Scratches and dust are usually due to poor handling of the film. That's not the fault of the medium.

 

There are some things a real B&W print lacks when compared to a digitally output print from a desaturated chrome:

scan lines

pixels

miore patterns

thin blacks ,weak highlights

odd contrast levels

etc. etc. etc.

 

But what is it you wanted to say here?

You may notice how futile it is to compare apples and oranges. Use what you've got to the best of its ability and leave it at that. We'll never be convinced that there's no difference between digital output and real paper, and we surely wont give any ground, since the industry is trying to eliminate all of our best options for film and paper. Keep shooting.

<I>There are some things a real B&W print lacks when compared to a digitally output print from a desaturated chrome</i><P>None of which occurs with a properly made digital print. I just checked the portfolions of a few posters here and found more hairs, scratches and lack of basic dodge and burn skills with their B/W images than I'll care to mention. My Digital prints from either 10D capture via Frontier, or my own Epson prints lack any digital artifacts, so, are you calling me a liar? By the same token somebody needs to hand out grain focusers and show most of you how to use them.<P>So you tell me, is this shot I'm posting from pushed HP5, or desaturated Fuji NPZ pushed a stop?

<I>We'll never be convinced that there's no difference between digital output and real paper</i><P>Kodak Metallic and Kodak Portra B/W *IS* real B/W paper.

Scott,

 

I am not sure about that photo you posted. It has a wierd texture to it, and I dont like it very much. Scott, when I posted this thread I thought all those times you kept saying that Black and White should be shot in color and desaturated. I know you are very out spoken about it. I am not trying to change anyone's opinion about the subject. I wanted to state what I found with my limited experience. I absolutely love the scans on my portfolio. They are all done with Black and White negatives. However, the work I had to put in to acheive those final images was tremendous.

 

Regards,

 

Steve

Some thoughts:

 

1. Sometimes it's necessary to make a choice upfront, maybe not always the right one, but no less necessary, to avoid downstream dithering. I think choosing to shoot in black and white can be one such choice. Shoot both.

 

2. If ICE compatibility is a factor, shoot something like XP2.

 

3. I consider black and white and color films as two close, but distinct, mediums. Your intentions when loading the camera with one or the other will (or should) be different. I look on black and white as the more abstract of the two, and closer to an art form.

 

4. The archival properties of silver-based film are superior to color dyes.

 

That said, I too think desaturated Provia can look dynamite.

<i>So you tell me, is this shot I'm posting from pushed HP5, or desaturated Fuji NPZ pushed a stop?</i><p>

 

LOL..of course it is desturated Fuji NPZ.....Anybody that knows a little about B&W can tell the difference.

Doesn't look mushy enough for HP5 and NPZ can get rather grainy in the shadows when underexposed, so I would guess it's NPZ.

<i>"The time difference is huge for the different workflows. I have spent

greater than 1hr on one particular black and white negative that I

wanted all the dust and scratches removed. The print is great, and it

was well worth the time."</i>

 

<p>

Are you processing your own film? How is it getting that scratched up?

 

<p>

Sounds like you've found a way that works for you. If you can't tell the difference between two processes, go with the one that's the least stressful. :)

 

<p>

--<br>

Eric<br>

<a href="http://canid.com/">http://canid.com/</a><br>

Methinks Mr. Eaton protests too much. If it works and you're satisfied with it, do it.

Eric,

 

I wish I knew. I think it is the negative feeder on the Nikon Coolscan V.

 

Thanks

People that like to desaturate color films...do you prefer negative or slide films? What are the differences between the two? Do you think one produces better results once desaturated than the other?

Don't take Scott's bait on these debates. He's good at it. You'll wind up with a hook in your lip.

 

Let's just admit that those of us who prefer traditional b&w do so because we enjoy the process at least as much as the results, if not more so.

Stephen,

 

You will get all kinds of noise from...Scott and Kelly. Unfortunately, ignoring horse flies doesn't make them go away.

 

You might want to check your methods when you process your own B/W--you can do much to eliminate dust, etc. I mix all chems with distilled water, run the hot water in the shower to knock out the dust in the air, mix some alcohol (91%) in my photo flo, keep my scanner covered and my film holders in a zip-loc bag, etc. I don't do any more work on my B/W negs than I do on chromes from the lab.

 

You shouldn't have ANY scratches on your film...

Scott Eaton wrote: <i>Ironically, the best arguement you have is right here on Photo.net. Simply go into the B/W forum here and look at the daily uploads from scans of B/W film. The vast majority of it is dull, lacks any tonal range, skips entire zones, has terrible grain structure, and just plain looks bland.</i>

<p>

Scanning B&W film doesn't strike me as part of any traditional B&W process. It strikes me as scanning and inverting an already desaturated image. The tool that failed them is their image processing software, not the medium.

<p>

Photoshop doesn't lend itself well to directly emulate B&W printing. Let me re-phrase that. The Photoshop workflow for best B&W image quality from B&W negatives differs from how you would approach tuning a scanned color transparency. I won't go into the details here as it's the wrong forum. The net result is that it takes several careful rounds of curve tuning and gamma changes to get an image that almost mimics what the (carefully engineered) paper prints quite easily and naturally.

<p>

It seems you're saying traditional B&W printing is for curmudgeons, and the proof you offer is a few munged scans. It's difficult to ignore this quietly, let alone accept it as reasonable logic. The graphic that comes to mind is a snake eating his tail. That's not actually the image that came to mind, but the description is close enough.

Doh. It makes more sense if I stay on topic. Sorry, Scott; I actually agree with most of what you said regarding scanning B&W neg versus desaturating slides. I'll re-assert my comment that the best B&W neg workflow in Photoshop differs quite a bit from working with positive images, including desaturating. The emphasis is on different; not more difficult, just different. If you want, ask and I'll post details so you won't have to think I'm just blowing gas.

Can you tell. One is TriX(scanned from print) one is Digital<br>

<a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/2062434"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/2062434-sm.jpg"></a><a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/1883741"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/1883741-sm.jpg"></a><br>

I am not sure how what most people do to get their B&W film images on to photo net but I personaly find that I get nice results scanning from prints with a cheap flatbed scanner. I know this is not the best way if I was going to do reproductions from the scans but for web use the results are good enough, and it is far easier than trying to scan from B&W film because even with no PS editing the scans are fairly close to the prints. I have recently been playing with digital B&W and to be honest the results are good. The most important issue is how good the image is, what you want to do with it and what do you enjoy doing.

The real test isn't how it looks here on photo.net, or even reproduced in a magazine. Compare a real silver gelatin print to a digital output B&W print and you can see a difference. Compare them again in 50 or 100 years. Well, we might not be around. I do have some 19th century B&W prints of whaling ships in New Bedford, Massachusettes harbor and they still look just fine.

 

With a film dryer that drys on the reels by blowing heated air through the reel will give you nice scratch free dustless negatives.

Stephen:

I enjoy the process of BW development, but the real kicker is cost. I can develop a dozen rolls of Tri-X for about four USD in chemistry. That same dozen rolls in C41 film is at least 50 USD (no prints, development only) for 135 at a decent lab; more for 120. Even prepaid mailers would run well over $100 (albeit with 4x6s of OK quality).

 

Stuart:

The annoying depth of field gives away the Digicam pic.

 

Carl

I have never gotten a satisfactory scan of one of my prints, ever. Even if the print is on RC and lays flat it still looks bad. Everything looks hollow, and I don't get enough shadow detail, and the highlights look blown out. Sure I can mess with the levels in Photoshop but that doesn't give me detail. If your goal is to display your images digitally than go right ahead and shoot digital or scan in color and desaturate (that seems to work better than it does for B&W film I don't know why).

 

We do B&W because we enjoy the process, and when I see a digital B&W (even Lambda) print that beats some of the silver prints I've seen, I'll admit defeat.

<i>Can you tell. One is TriX(scanned from print) one is Digital</i><p>

 

The one on the right is from Tri X. Of course this would have been more difficult if you had not put the info on the photo...:-)<p>

 

Clearly these are much better scans than what Eaton posted, and on a monitor it would have been very difficult to tell the difference. On paper it would have been a diferent matter. <p>

 

OTOH, Steve, if you have found a way that you enjoy working and gives you the quality you desire, well good for you!

<i>Can you tell. One is TriX(scanned from print) one is Digital</i><br> It is rather hard to tell on a monitor the difference but on the prints it is a very suprising story. I increased the size of the digi image in PS to make a 20x15cm (6x8inch) 300 dpi file and had it printed on an Agfa Dlab the results were rather good in fact very good and stills looks good when viewed side by side with a tradtional print. I won't be selling off my darkroom or anything like that but it does show that it is possible to make good B&W images using another method.<br> Regards......