bruce watson

It depends on the rocks, and your intentions.

If you are working with a slanted rock face, for example, and you can't get in a position to let you put your film plane parallel with the plane of the rock face so that you can get everything you want in focus, then a view camera might be what you need, since it gives you a lot more control in situtations like this.

OTH, if you are taking a picture of a rock on a table top and you have nearly unlimited ability to put the camera where you need it, a TLR might be a better choice.

If your maximum size print is going to be 11x14, probably any of the formats will give you satisfactory print quality, but even here I think I'd opt for medium format.

Of course, YMMV.

Garry,

Yep, they do seem to be misinformed. I'll take the research of a Henry or Haist any day over a marketing brochure.

Remember, marketeers are the same people who brought you the insinuation that a scanner (doesn't matter who's, or drum/CCD/whatever) could have a Dmax of 4.8. Maybe that's just a marketing joke?

Gregory,

The excess grain was due to you downrating the film the 250. You increased the density by increasing exposure. The more dense the negative, the more graininess....

To induce graininess, you can 1) process at a higher temperature, 2) spend more time in the developer (dilute more), 3) use an acutance developer (as opposed to a fine-grain developer), 4) increase negative density (any way you want to do it). Of course, higher ISO films have more grain than lower ISO films.

Whether or not the increase in graininess is appealing to you, only you can judge, so of course YMMV.

I've researched this in the past. My primary sources were Henry and Haist. From what I can tell, agitiation has no impact on apparent graininess at all. What does, is development temperature, time in developer, and exposure, all of which effect negative density. The biggest factor is, of course, the film's rated speed. There are probably other factors, but that's what I remember off the top of my head.

Agitation is not on the list. But... agitation can be used to lower time in development. That is, agitate more and decrease development time.

Note that the main factors effecting graininess are interlinked. To change one in a favorable direction is to change one or more in an unfavorable direction. This is the laws of physics talking to ya.

Then, of course, you might be exagerating the graininess in scanning (grain aliasing). The Nikon scanners are developing a reputation of not being B&W negative friendly. But that's a topic that's been discussed to death already - hit the archives (digital darkroom) to find out more.

You can get good B&W from the Ultrachrome inks. If you are thinking the Ultrachrome grayscale prints will equal the PiezoTones or MIS inks, you will probably be disappointed, however.

But, you can certainly try it. Won't cost you anything, and it might do what you want. If so, great. If not, you can always flush the UltraChromes and switch to the MIS or PiezoTones.

If you decide to go down the road with a RIP, the first to consider IMHO would be quadtoneRIP, which has a good reputation for printing good grayscale with Ultrachromes, and is shareware:

http://harrington.com/QuadToneRIP.html

If that doesn't float yer boat, consider ImagePrint:

http://www.colorbytesoftware.com/imageprint.htm

Me? I'm using a 7600 with Piezotones driven by the StudioPrint RIP. IMHO, it's the best inkjet grayscale printing system available today. But of course, YMMV.

<i>...can you trust your eyes?</i>

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Basically, you can trust your eye/brain visual system to do it's best to adapt to the circumstances. It performs best in "survival mode" looking for movement or colors/shapes that are out of place with the environment. Evolution required it for the species to survive.

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Unfortunately, from a color management standpoint, you can't just turn off the adaptions when you want to. The various spectrophotometers we use in color management don't adapt, they simply see what's there. And that's why we need them.

Avi,

I built up a set of lenses based on angle-of-view for 4x5. Probably 80% of my shots are horizontal, so this is based on the long dimension.

I ended up with 80, 110, 150, 240, 360. These give me roughly 15 degree increments which I find fit my working style just about right.

Some people find they can live with a single lens shorter than a 150 in their kit. Most often, this shorter lens turns out to be a 90. Others, like me, want two or more lenses. This often turns out to be a 110 and an 80/75, or a 90 and a 72.

Since you already own the 80, I sugest you try the 110 to go with it. If you later decide that you aren't using the 80 enough to justify keeping it, sell it and buy something else. Both the 80 and 110 are holding very high resale values, so this strategy seems to carry very low risks for you. However, the market is the market, so YMMV.

Brett,

I too am scanning. That's one of the reasons to want to control the film's contrast, and therefore its Dmax. If you make a B&W negative too dense, scanning becomes more difficult. Not just because of the density, but also because of the Callier effect of light scattering by the silver. The effect is an interesting compression of contast in the shadows of the print. You can undo this in Photoshop, but it's not intuitively obvious. As least, it wasn't for me.

What I found is what other people have found. The negatives that scan the best are negatives that would also print well in the conventional darkroom. I try to get a zone VIII density of about 1.2. When my negatives are close to this they scan so well that they usually need minimal tweaking in Photoshop.

I couldn't get my zone VIII density down to even 1.3 using HC110, even dilution H. HC110 is just too active a developer, which doesn't work well with the continuous agitation of drum development. XTOL, on the other hand, works very well there, and is easily controllable.

So... that's why I switched to XTOL. Because I was scanning.

I have to admit that I like the Tri-X look over 100T-Max. But then, I'm using 4x5 sheets, so grain isn't an issue. But speed is.

I bought a used Jobo CPP-2 with the intent to learn 100T-Max under very controlled conditions. What I found though, was that it works just as well for Tri-X, I like the Tri-X look better, and I need the extra speed that I get from Tri-X.

That said, I spent a lot of time and effort trying to get HC-110 to work well with Tri-X in continuous agitation. I couldn't control contrast, even at 5 minutes, 20C, 30 rpm, HC-110H would still give me excess contrast.

I switched over to XTOl 1:3, and get great results. It's easy to control in continuous agitation. Grain looks about the same size, with the XTOL grain being a little more "regular." Tonality for both is very good. And XTOL 1:3 I can rate at EI 400, where the HC-110H was giving me an EI of 250. All that, and the XTOL is much more environmentally friendly.

Finally, XTOL was created as a developer for T-max, and many people find that it does an outstanding job there, as several previous posters have indicated.

So... what's not to like about XTOL (other than the 5L packaging)?

Hmmm....

(20 in)(2.54cm/in)=50.8cm

(50.8cm)/(3.6cm) = 14x enlargement (assumes full frame in long dimension, no cropping), which is bound to show grain with fast films. This indicates FP4+.

This is just a 4x enlargement for 4x5, so any film/developer combination you want should work fine.

Me, I'd go 4x5 because the extra detail and smoother tonality would work well for portraits. But, you gotta work in a way that makes you comfortable...

What blown out highlights? I see detail in your highlights.

This isn't unusual, to have detail showing in the negative but have blown out highlights in the print. That's one of the things the Zone System addresses with the way it manipulates development time - the point is to expand or, in this case, contract negative contrast to match what photo paper can handle. The end result is supposed to be an easily printable negative.

If you are scanning, however, blown out highlights are pretty much undefined. If your scanner can read a chrome, it can read through pretty much anything Tri-X can throw at it. As the scans you posted show. You could print these on an inkjet printer without trouble. Which is probably completely beside the point.

With Diafine, as I understand it, Zone System controls are sort of useless. Two part developers like Diafine are relatively immune to variations in processing parameters, with the possible exception of agitation.

Perhaps the best way to avoid excessive contrast in a negative like this is to switch to a developer that offers you better control, then decrease development time to bring the highlight values in line with your printing style.

Clearly, YMMV.

I'm a mechanical engineer by training, with 25 years experience in machine design. What Chris said is correct. Anything you put between them that is soft enough to prevent scratching, will reduce rigidity.

Screw the B1 on tight, use a strap wrench to get it off when you need to. If this means the tripod/B1 get some small scratches, so be it. If you do it right, people won't be looking for scratches on the mounting surface of your ball head -- they'll be looking at the sharpness of the branches on the distant trees in your prints.

Good timing. I just got a couple of large prints in today. Selenium Piezotones on canvas. One is 0.8 x 1.0 m (31.5x39.4 in), the other is 1.0 x 1.3 m (39.4x51.2 in). Both are drop dead gorgeous. Just stunning prints.

The printer is Ron Landucci of Infinite Editions:

http://www.infinite-editions.com/index1.html

I highly recommend him. He's done other work for me in the past, on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag (an excellent paper). This is the first I've had him do on canvas. My expectations were very high, and Ron managed to exceed them. What more recommendation can I give than that???

The usual disclaimers apply - my only connection to Ron is that I'm a happy customer.

The dilution vs. development time thing seems to depend on agitation, and is therefore something you'll have to determine though experiment. For continuous agitation (rotary processing, for example), development time varies as the square root of dilution. For example, if you were using say XTOL full strength for 5 minutes, your time in XTOL 1:2 would be 5 x sqrt(2) = 7 minutes. That is, to develop to the same contrast index, and all other things being equal except dilution.

As agitation becomes more intermittant, the diluted time gets longer. That's why the general rule of thumb for tank development (roll films) is that you double dilution and double the time. When you get all the way out to stand development, development time begins to have little meaning anyway.

For contrast reduction, I would cut development time until I got down to about 5 minutes. Then I would increase dilution. Grain size is a function of development time, among other things, so I try to minimize time in the soup when I can.

Without seeing the film, or the file, or a print, and only looking at the histogram, I can only offer this. Typically, the scanner's internal working space has a larger gamut than Adobe1998. The conversion histograms you show don't look like a problem to me. They look more like the display errors you get trying to represent 16 bit data on an 8 bit histogram. Only a print will "tell the truth" as it were.

I'd be more concerned that your scanner is giving you a very compressed image. I'd rather see the data spread wider, and much closer to both ends of the histogram myself. To that end, I'd look at where you have your black and white points set and see if you can't get the scanner/software to spread the data out more efficiently. Better to do that in the first place than to recover in photoshop by setting levels, I think. Also, this may improve your histogram after conversion, because it will cut down on some of the display errors.

But maybe that's just me, and YMMV.

This is always an interesting question. All we can do is try to give you more information that you have to process. In the end, you'll have to make the decisions.

For 4x5, going to 20x25 is a 5x enlargement. If that's as large as you go, the current crop of flat bed CCD scanners is sufficient. This from a guy who owns and loves a drum scanner. But really, you are unlikely to see the difference, and it's a large cost difference in scanning.

From medium format, going from 6x9 (I'm guessing here) to 20x30 is about an 8.5x enlargement. For this, I think you'll see the difference between a CCD scan and a drum scan.

Now the flip side. If you already own a Jobo system (CPP-2?), you can process film and prints up to 24" IIRC. Processing paper isn't all that much different than processing film, and the Jobo has the temperature control you'd need to do either.

All you'd really need would be a good enlarger, and they can be had relatively cheaply on the used market now. Also, you'd need paper drums for the Jobo for the paper sizes you'd use.

The difference is, controls in printing color work are difficult and painful. For example, you can run into color shifts when doing much dodging and burning. Controls in an image editor are much more precise and accurate, but not necessarily easier to use or as intuitive.

I don't think I'm helping you much. It really comes down to how you want to operate, and how much money you want to spend. I think at the enlargement levels you are talking about, either way will work fairly well for you. Of course, YMMV.

Ken,

Interesting. I've never had a problem with shadows from color negative film. What do you mean my "icky?" Maybe I'm missing something (wouldn't be the first time ;-)

I'll go you one better. "...if you shoot film and scan it" do you need tranny film at all?

My answer is no, and I've sworn off tranny film if I'm scanning. I'm going to color correct anyway because most every shot needs it, tranny or negative. Negative film has superior dynamic range, and doesn't put a strain on your scanner's Dmax. The only advantage you get from tranny film is that it's easier to look at on the light box.

Of course, this is a religious argument, so YMMV.

<i>I do not understand is why a relatively small front shift has the considerable effect of preserving that vertical perspective.</i>

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Keeping the film plane parallel with the subject plane is what preserves perspective and prevents keystoning. The rise/shift movements (front or back) simply let you put the part of the scene that interests you on the film. You do this after you set the back swing/tilt movements to make the film plane parallel with the subject plane.

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For example, say I want to take a photograph of some pine trees. First thing I do is make the rear standard level and plumb (that is, parallel to the pines). Then I use lots of front rise to get the tops of the trees onto the ground glass.