Recommended CI for scanning?

What is the recommended CI (or gama) to develop negatives for scanning and than

printing on a photo inkjet printer? Is the recommended CI different for films

developed in "conventional" developers versus staining developers?

 

BTW, the scanner I use is Epson 4990.

 

When films are shot and developed to be scanned, are the considerations to

determine the effective EI any different from when intended to be enlarged and

printed in a dark room?

.42 ci so it prints on a condenser enlarger with #2 paper also scans well.

 

Scanners do not like dense highlights.

Ditto what Ronald suggested.

When scanning B/W films I noticed with my scanner that the histogram only partly filled the range from 0 to 256 and wondered if the film should be developed for longer. I was told by a pro no, develop as for silver gelatin printing only.But it's a puzzle why.

Alan, that means you need to tweak your scanning. If your scanner software doesn't provide the tools for doing so, try Hamrick's VueScan. It's excellent, available as trialware, affordable to buy and offers tweaks to optimize scans for most scanners and many b&w films.

 

The reason why you should avoid extended development for scanning is because extended development virtually always increases grain and makes highlights denser. While this is no problem for conventional printing, especially with a dichro head or variable contrast enlarger using diffused light, both characteristics present problems for scanners.

 

Scanners will pick up every speck of grain. They also pick out the finest, most subtle gradations in thin negatives that would be difficult to print conventionally. So it's better to err on the side of underdevelopment, altho' I prefer to think of it as appropriate development for scanning, which happens to coincide with what also works well for condenser heads.

 

And scanners have a lot of trouble with dense highlights. Another reason to avoid overdevelopment.

 

Incidentally, scanners also work well for pushed negatives, which are underexposed with compensatory extended development. While blocked up highlights will still pose problems and scanning will pick up the grain, it will also pick up subtle shadow detail that would be difficult to reveal with conventional printing without resorting to artful dodging and burning along with selective application of contrast filtration.

Thank you, all.