bruce_watson1

<p>If you've not been printing much, that is, your printer has mostly been sitting, could be pigment settling.</p>

<p>Scanners have similar problems with silver gelatin film as do darkroom enlargers. Namely, they both suffer from Callier Effect. That is, light scatter due to light reflecting off of the silver grains and grain clumps; grain and grain clumps are not translucent like the dye clouds found in color materials.</p> <p>This results in some interesting and at least somewhat subtle artifacts. One of the more interesting of these is highlight compression. Yes, you can correct for this in a photo editor. But if you can avoid it, why not?</p> <p>So, what you want from your negatives for a scanning only workflow is slightly different than what you want negatives for a darkroom workflow. Basically (I'm not going into detail here) you want less grain. You can accomplish this in a few ways. The biggest determinant of graininess is the film itself. You are right to be looking at the TMAX films. </p> <p>The next thing is develop a little less to get a little less highlight density. You want maybe a stop or two less than you would want if you were going to print in the darkroom on #2 paper. In Zone System terms, you want a density for Zone VIII of around 1.0. </p> <p>There's danger in going too far -- not enough highlight density compresses the rest of the tones too much and it becomes more of a PITA to correct (if you can) than dealing with the artifacts of Callier Effect.</p> <p>So... a modern T grain film. Expose for the shadows. Develop a little less for the highlights. Use a reasonable solvent developer like D-76 or XTOL. You should be fine.</p>

<p>Think about what happens when you "push" film, maybe you can decide what to do to get the look you want.</p> <p>First, there really is no such thing as "pushing". What people call pushing is really nothing more than underexposing. The reason for the "dramatic blacks" is that underexposing starves the shadow areas of sufficient photons to create a latent image. So... nothing to develop, resulting in clear film. In the print, this is indeed black. Featureless textureless black. Nothing magic about this.</p> <p>Second, most pushing regimes want you to increase development time. This will in fact increase density in the highlights. And this in turn increases graininess, because increasing grain clump size is in fact how you increase density. </p> <p>So what you end up with is a scene with crushed shadows, and grainy highlights, with what tonality there is pushed down the scale toward the shadows, thus increasing midtone contrast. With the increased development you can often end up with sufficient density that highlights "blow out", which also increases subjective contrast. So... crushed shadows, increased contrast, increased graininess.</p> <p>Now that you understand what's happening, you can probably see many different ways to accomplish any of these things, alone or together.</p> <p>Hint: It's really not about the developer. The emulsion is by far the greater determinate of just how grainy you can get. The new Tri-X variants are not nearly as grainy as older versions of Tri-X. You might have better luck with HP5+ since it hasn't changed in 25 years or more. That said, look for "acutance developers" instead of "fine grain" developers. Fine grain developers contain solvents to round off edges and smooth the grain clumps thus making them look somewhat smaller. For this duty that's not what you want.</p>

<p>Look up "pigment settling". What happened is you left the printer unused for so long that the pigment in the lines settled out. What "printed" when you tried to print, was just ink base, which is clear.</p> <p>Pull the ink carts, turn them upside down and shake them gently to mix everything again, and reinstall them. Then you may have to run a number of cleaning cycles to clear the ink lines. If you still get "weak" images, you'll have to replace all the carts with new ones.</p>

<p>There really is no such thing as "pushing". What you've done is under expose. By five stops.</p> <p>Film requires a sufficient number of photons to form a latent image. That's just the laws of physics. Where it doesn't receive sufficient photons, no latent image forms, and therefore there's nothing to develop. Which means it doesn't matter how long you leave the film in the developer. So expect your shadow areas to come up blank.</p> <p>Your highlights OTOH do form a latent image, so development proceeds as it should. If you leave your film in the developer longer, you increase highlight density. Which makes the grain clumps bigger (which is how you get the density increase). Which leads to that over exposed / over developed grainy look.</p> <p>Now you will get a small (1/3 stop maybe) increase in film speed by over developing, so the top end of your shadow area (in your case, maybe the top of Zone V) may show a small amount of detail. But that's it.</p> <p>What "pushing" is, is an example of the old saw "Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights" come to life. You don't have sufficient exposure for the shadows, so you've lost them. Might as well develop for the highlights and see what you have left. Just don't go too long with the developer or your highlight density will be so high that you can't "see" through it and you'll lose the highlight detail too.</p> <p> </p>

<p><em>Will either produce better sharpness and tones than the other?</em><br> <em> </em><br> Oh yes. A drum scan wins hands down. The problem is enlarger alignment. Even the good systems are a PITA, and simple changes in temperature and humidity can throw them off -- very visible in a large print. A drum scan however isn't effected by either -- the film is held in nearly perfect alignment, corner to corner. Every single time.<em><br /></em></p> <p>From a tonality perspective, a drum scan wins again. Fluid mounting does great things for a piece of film.</p> <p>OTOH, drum scans are a PITA to actually do (I'm a drum scanner operator). It takes skill and patience to get a good solid fluid mount, and it takes time and experience to do a good setup and get all the software parameters correct for your image. Then it takes quite a while to run the scan since the scanner is scanning one pixel at a time. So.... drum scans are expensive. But it you're going to make a big print, a drum scan is usually a small percentage of the total cost. My thought is to make a drum scan for any enlargement of 8x or higher. It's almost always worth it in terms of image quality. But clearly, YMMV.</p>

<p><em>I am going to get a can of wine preservative gas: Its a canister with a N_2, argon, C0_2 mixture. One sprays it into the bottle and re-cork.</em><br> <em> </em><br> Don't. Not a good idea, you'll introduce carbonic acid to the mix, altering the pH. But you're heading in the right direction more or less. Instead of trying to displace the oxygen, just pull a vacuum. Get down to your local wine store and get a <a href="http://vacuvin.com/Wine-Saver">Vacu-vin wine saver</a> system. Works a treat with XTOL. <em><br /></em></p>

<p>Tyler Boley in Seattle. The words "master printer" aren't lost here -- he's at Adams / Weston level. No, I'm not kidding, he really is that good. And he's quite a nice guy too. He would be my #1 pick.</p> <p>You might also try John Dean of Dean Imaging in Atlanta, GA. Another master printer, but with his own sensibilities. </p> <p>There's also Jon Cone in Vermont. Heck of a printer, was one of the originators of digital printing. Cone invented the Piezography system of inks and software and knows more about B&W printing than anyone I've ever met. And he's darn good with color too. </p>

<p><em>I have a drum scanner. I develop longer for it, about to 1.6. (Not quite the 1.8 or so for platinum.) I believe this less density for scanning is a fallacy. Hasn't borne out at all in my shop...</em><br> <em> </em><br> Just because you don't believe it, doesn't mean the Callier Effect doesn't exist. Callier Effect is know and proven, it's there in darkroom enlargers and scanners of all types, including your Aztek Premier.<em><br /></em></p> <p>That said, I'm surprised you can't see it, especially in the highlights. </p>