Tailoring negative for Drum and Imacon Scan

[david_b3]

When developing black and white negs for diffusion and condenser

enlargers one usually adjusts processing times accordingly � more

(contrast) for diffusion, less (contrast) for a condenser. If I

want to develop a perfect negative specifically tailored for a high

end drum or Imacon scan should I try to produce a certain type of

negative. My intuition says make it slightly thinner so it�s well

below the dmax of the scanner. I�m sending the negs out to be scanned

so I don�t have a lot of room for experimentation. Thanks

[bernhard]

Despite your intuition, Paul Roark once said that he found it useful to develop to a HIGHER contrast, as long as the Dmax is well within the scanners range. As the scanners you mention have a very high Dmax this should be no problem and might have an advantage in tonality.

[switchedcraigmageephotogra]

All the imacons i've used can handle b&w negs of highly varying contrast very well. I quite often have to scan dense over exposed negs, and get results that look like theres just a bit of over exposure. The imacons like the Precision and 848 seem to behave a lot like condenser enlargers, so you'll get sharper grain, so might want to dev your films as though they are to be printed on a condenser enlarger. The light source in the Imacon Photo is more diffuse.<p>

So probably just dev them normally and aim for normal contrast, moving maybe towards a little lower contrast.

[bruce watson]

Drum scanners in particular have a higher DMAX than you are likely able to produce with a B&W negative. What I do (and this may be considered sacrilige to some) is develop just about everything to N+1. I find I still end up increasing contrast in Photoshop with just about every negative.

 

The difficulty isn't in seeing into the really dense areas of highlights on your film. If the detail is there, a drum scanner can get it. The problem is often not enough detail in the shadow areas. If there is no detail, there isn't a scanner made that can make it up as it scans...

 

Moral of the story: Just like for paper prints, expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights. The only change is that a drum scanner can handle more density, so I feed it more contrasty negatives. More information is better than less, in this case.