single photos Religious beggar with shaved head

I find that my attempts at scanning these sepia-toned prints

(Panalure paper from C41 process color negatives) lead to somewhat

washed out and reduced contrast images (Increasing the contrast

settings destroys the tonality). Would it be better to scan the

negative in color and make the sepia alteration in Photoshop? My

unskilled Photoshop test was pretty inconclusive, but those with more

experience might have greater success with one method or another. The

finished print is what I wanted to create, so it seems a bit odd to

try to recreate a successful chemical print with Photoshop...

Anyway, I have a series of these chemical prints which are going on

exhibition soon, so I was tempted to play with posting a couple on

photo.net as an experiment. Any other comments are welcome.