traditional developing, digital printing

[rob_gruber]

Just wondering how many people here are doing traditional

developing of black and white film and then scanning the

negatives and printing digitally. How are your results?<br>

<br>

Although I love the entire analog process, I'm tempted by the

control and convenience of being able to both process and print

my pictures in a small apartment.<br>

<br>

An article in Mike Johnson's Sunday Morning photographer

column on Luminous Landscape about single black ink printing

caught my eye and piqued my interest.

 

<a

href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-02-06-1

6.shtml">http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-02-0

6-16.shtml</a>

[scott_eaton]

Most of the people I know (including myself) who are having good results scanning and printing conventional B/W film are using 120 or bigger. I suggest you look at the current archives and count the number of people having a horrendous time trying to get clean scans from conventional B/W film vs the few grandstanders who aren't. This accounts for why so many B/W photographers are saying 'screw it' and heading back into the dark-room. Ask to see an 8x10 ink-jet print from 35mm Tri-X or HP-5 before making judgement calls on low rez web images downsampled a factor of 10:1. I want to see the 1:1 4,000dpi crop.

 

Diving in to digital scanning with the expectation to produce a B/W workflow as good as conventional B/W to print is risky at least, especially with 35mm. Best results I'm getting in terms of grain to tonality are from scanning color films (neg and slide) and desaturating. I that regard there is a lot more positive potential.

[rob_gruber]

I would be scanning 120 film, Tri-X souped in HC-110. Was

thinking about an Epson Perfection 2450 and a 1280 printer and

trying the black ink only technique.

 

I don't mind a slightly courser print it's the wonderful tonality of

Tri-X in 120 that I worry about losing by going digital.

 

I don't think the scanning and desaturating of color film would

work for me as I really like the overall look of Tri-X.

[jon_porter1]

Film scanned on a low-end flatbed will give you good enough 5x7 prints to pass around at family gatherings, but the overall quality won't be anywhere near that of a conventional darkroom print. I'd hold out for a film scanner if you really want to get into digital printing.

[rob_gruber]

I've read very good reviews of the Epson 2450 for medium format

film scanning. It's not exactly low end for a flatbed and from what

I read it is comparable to a dedicated low end film scanner.

[ricardojmendez]

Rob,

 

I'm doing exactly that: working mostly with T-Max and Tri-X, scanning them on a Polaroid Sprintscan 35 Plus and printing 8x10s out on a Stylus Photo 820. I like the end results a lot, but be warned: I'm no pro and have no access to a real darkroom. Doing it this way enables me to control the printing process, instead of just trusting somebody else with the printing, and allows me to digitally burn or dodge certain areas that the lab would print "as is" (it is a good lab, but even so it is sometimes easier just to do things yourself).

[bobatkins]

I'm doing just that with 35mm B&W. Typically using HP5+ or APX25 (though I'm on my last few rolls of that:-), scanning at 4000dpi . Prints look pretty good to me, but then again I haven't done darkroom printing in the last 10 years, and I wasn't all that good at it then, so I have no base for real comparision. I assume a pro B&W printer could probably do a better job given the time (and money).

 

Ink jet printers are great when they are working, but getting them to work all the time without ink clogs etc. isn't always easy. In the end they all seem to die eventually, but by then there's always another model out which is twice as good and 1/2 the price.

 

I suppose it depends on how good an analog printer you are, what film you intend to use and what sort of results you expect. I'm happy, but you may not be.

[ken_hughes2]

I shoot/dev. tmax 100 in tmax rs and print on an epson 2000p with black ink only, usually printing on epson luster and get prints that are much better than my traditional prints.

[gwilburn]

I'm in the process of scanning all my old negatives, and most of them are Tri-X. I enjoy the digital darkroom but I don't own a photo printer. When I want prints I upload my images to an online photofinisher, convert the Greyscale images to RGB and have them printed on standard Kodak paper. Comparing the results to what I used to do in the wet darkroom, the prints look pretty decent (I was never a master printer). I like the results enough that I've dug out my film developing gear and am shooting Tri-X and HP5+ again.

 

There are techniques that can be used to get better B&W scanned images. The de-noise utilities such as Neat Image do a good job of removing the ugly "grain aliasing" you tend to get when scanning films like Tri-X. Grain aliasing is less of a problem on fine-grain B&W negatives. I've not had any trouble preserving the wonderful Tri-X tonality -- in fact Photoshop gives you excellent creativity over this aspect of the image. If you like the digital darkroom workflow, there's no reason not to give it a go.

[scott_eaton]

Rob,

 

I've used both the Epson 1640 and 2450 quite extensively for 120 B/W work, and they are among the few scanners that work well for conventional B/W film. They don't have a tendency to be as aggresive with clipping highlights and forcing poor B/W points.

 

I'd recommend Rodinal with 120 Tri-X at 1:50 to pull all the tonality out of this classic emulsion over HC-110. All I can tell you is you'll likely find HC-110 and Tri-X is unremarkable when scanned in 120 and not as distinct in terms of tonality as Rodinal. What constitutes a good printing combination doesn't always make a good scanning combination.

 

The attached scan was made with Delta 400 I pushed to 800 in 6x7 format and made with a 1640. The chair is white shiny leather, but it's holding detail quite easily even with 400 film pushed to 800, and shows how the Epson scanners gracefully handle B/W films. Still, after my current batch of Tri-X and Delta are gone that's likely the last I'll be buying conventional B/W film. Results I'm getting with desaturated chromes easily match the crispness of Tri-X, color negs have more lattitude, and I'm simply not into film as much as results. Good luck.

[ken_hughes2]

I would say that the difference in latitudes between b/w and neg. color would depend on how you expose/develop your b/w.

[chris_patti1]

I've been scanning conventional B&W 120 film on an Epson 2450 and printing quadtones on an Epson 1280 for about a year now. It's a reasonable, low-cost combination. Whether you are happy with the output depends, I think, on your personal opinion about the particular tradeoffs of digital vs traditional printing. For me this depends a lot on print size: overall, I prefer the digital prints until the print size gets up above about 9x9 inches. For landscapes and other photos with lots of detail, I never like to enlarge over about 4x, but I feel that print quality goes downhill faster with the digital prints as the print sizes get bigger. I believe that the weak link in this chain is probably the scanner, but it is OK for the smaller prints I tend to prefer.

 

A lot may also depend on your style of photography. I got the impression, for example, that the "one ink" workflow described in the Mike Johnson article particularly lent itself to the rather "gritty" street photography esthetic of that particular photographer. I'm not sure it would work as well if you have a large-format style fixation on print quality.

[rob_gruber]

I do tend to like the gritty street style photography.

 

I just like shooting 120 for the improved tonality (to my eye), the

bigger negs for darkroom work and the square format.

 

I find that I just clicked with the bigger, square format first with

the Holga and now with a Rolleicord more than 35mm. I'm not

shooting it for it's lack of grain or smoothness, in fact that perfect,

lanscapey style kinda turns me off, even for landscapes.

[ken_hughes2]

I would have to disagree Chris, I work in large/medium format and work for nice smooth tonality,the one ink comb. I have mentioned works fine for this.

[rob_gruber]

Ken,

 

Do you have any special continuous flow thing set up for your

black ink only prints or do you just use standard cartridges (is

the 2000p different from the 1280 in this respect?)

[david_cuttler]

Having recently becoming active in photography after just doing family snapshots for 30 years, I tried the Scanner ink jet route. I use a Nikon LS-III, which does a fine job on negatives, but it�s in the printing I was disappointed. Sometimes it would work well, and then other times not so well. The one place it really works is with Minox negatives. You can do things with those tiny negatives that are almost impossible in a conventional darkroom. It just seemed the prints I used to make in a darkroom were so much better. Just to see if it was my memory going haywire on me, I went to a local rental darkroom and printed some 35mm negatives I just did on the Inkjet. It took awhile after being away for 30 years, but it�s like riding a bicycle it all comes back. Anyway the results were wonderful. The 35mm enlarged to 8X10 looked so much better. Also I don�t need to worry about the prints fading on the wall in the sun as the years go by. I know there are Inks & papers for inkjet printers that they say will last for 50 years or more, but who really knows? I don�t have the space at this time for a dark room so I will continue to develop my films at home with a changing bag, and go to the rental darkroom for the printing. I do not have any way to scan 120 films so there is no choice there.