Which is the best film scanner for B&W?

What is the best film scanner for B&W film? A friend has an Imacon

that does a superb job, but they are pricey and slow. I have heard

the Nikon 4000 is a great color film scanner, but only so-so on B&W.

I have heard good things all around on the Polaroid 120. My

preference would be for a firewire or USB2 interface, and at least

4000 DPI optical resolution and relatively fast scan times. Also,

the ability to do MF is welcome, but not mandatory, as my primary

goal is 35mm B&W negative scans. Right now I'm leaning towards the

P120.

 

TIA,

The Polaroid Sprint Scan 120 does do a very good job with B&W. It would be worth comparing to the LS8000 and Multi Pro but the SS120 is probably the best for B&W by a small margin.

I think my Nikon LS-4000 is awesome with B&W.

 

Any of the latest scanners from the big players (Nikon, Minolta, Canon, Polaroid, etc.) have the capabilities to scan B&W excellently. It takes time, effort and learning to teach yourself to do the scans right and post-process them well that really counts. Do not expect any scanner to do well right out of the box just by virtue of which scanner it is---good scanning is less the product of a good scanner as it is the product of a good operator.<div></div>

<a href="http://contaxg.com/document.php?id=6899&full=1">One daytime shot for comparison</a>

Hi Richard, I like both of your shots and I too live in the SF bay

area. I too own a Nikon 4000 and have been unsuccessful at

getting good B&W scans. Would you mind sharing your

scanning technique? What is your color space? Do you scan the

B&W negative as a color negative? 14 bit mode and

oversampling? How exactly do you desaturate? What photoshop

tools do you find you need to use in photoshop to enhance the

scanned image? Thanks in advance!

Thanks Jack, Thanks Nicholas. <p>I summed up my basic workflow a few months back in an short article located here: <a href="http://www.contaxg.com/document.php?id=5043">http://www.contaxg.com/document.php?id=5043</a>. A few addendums regarding B&W scanning in particular would be that mostly I set Vuescan for Media Type: Color Negative but have the Negative setting (under the Color tab) all set for Ilford XP2 (no matter which B&W film I use), always scan TIFF file type: 48-bit RGB and scan into AdobeRGB color space. As for desaturating from there I usually will tweak a bit with Levels in PS (still in 16 bit) before changing to Grayscale. Other than Levels and perhaps a small bit of Curves the only other tools I use in PS is dodging and burning but NOT using PS's particular tools for this but layer masks as described in my work flow article. <p>

 

Now this is just overall and the basic "flow" I follow, but many times different emulsions and exposures force more experimentation and flexibility in the process. After that it's just experience and luck. Much of which was gained through good books (like Real World Photoshop) and a few good workshop/seminars, such as one I took with George Lepp and John Shaw on Digital Imaging from www.leppinstitute.com earlier this year.

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Hope that helps.